VEB has a piece out on Kolten Wong and his improvements against lefties this season. You can read it here:
https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2019/8/13/ ... -cardinals
That reminded me of this thread and thought it might be time for a bump. How is our 2b'man doing? I suggested that a career year for Wong could look something like Jason Kipnis, with maybe a bit more contact ability and a bit less power. Kipnis' line of comparison was: .276/.349/.429.
Wong's line right now is - .267/.350/.390 - and steadily climbing. That is across the board better than his career mark of .257/.329/.382, but a far cry from his career bests in '17 - .285/.376/.412. Wong's fWAR for the season is just 2.1, which was surprisingly low, all things considered. He's obviously hitting better, and this article covers that for us. So, is the issue defense? His defense looks eye-poppingly good to me. What's going on?
There is a very heavy disparity in the defensive stats on Fangraphs. My eyes tell me that Wong is having a tremendous defensive season. DRS says that he is having a tremendous defensive season -- his 12 defensive runs saved is down quite a bit from last year's 19 in more innings. A casual fan, like myself, can't "see" the difference between a +12 and a +19. We'll see both as "this guy is awesome". That +12, despite being lower than last year, is still BY FAR the highest DRS among 2b'man in the league. It's the 11th best DRS is the enitre game. 2nd among qualifying 2b'man is Adam Frazier at just +4. The problem is that Fangraphs uses UZR to calculate WAR, and Wong's UZR is just 3.2, good for 4th in the league among 2b'man with more than 500 innings, and 44th overall.
So, if you shift over to brWAR (Baseball Reference, which uses DRS), Wong is sitting at 3.3 WAR, just slightly under last year's 3.5 and well on his way to the best brWAR year of his career. If he continues his offensive upswing and plays GG caliber defense the rest of the way, that original line of .276/.349/.429 with less power is still in play. As is a career year by the way BR measures it.
That said, we can't just ignore UZR because it's lower. Defensive stats like UZR are best understood over the course of hundreds and hundreds of innings; even 4 month samples can have a lot of noise in it. Wong's UZR and DRS have matched up pretty well throughout his career. UZR is always lower, but that's universally true. This year is the largest disparity between the two in his career. So, chalk it up to noise and rest assured that Wong is still one of if not the best 2b defender in the league.