Welcome back! After a post on Justin Turner’s ageless approach and another on Josiah Gray’s pitch-to-pitch development experience, I’m closing out the first week with some time on defense. We’ll try to answer the question: what were the Marlins thinking in signing Jean Segura to play third base?
Watching a veteran position player shift to an entirely new role during Spring Training is, to me, both refreshing and off-putting. One of baseball’s appeals is consistency: the same players, in the same spots, every night. When a player we associate with one team changes uniforms, that can come as a shock. When that same player changes teams and positions, it can be jarring. “He can take ground balls from over here, but how will it look from over there?”
We usually see these changes move down the predictable path offered by the “defensive spectrum.” As a player ages, a move from a position requiring more athleticism to one requiring less is common. But the Marlins signed Jean Segura and all are in agreement that he’ll move across the defensive spectrum - from second base to third base.
The image below is credited to Nate Silver and superimposes actual defensive position changes over a very 2000’s latitude/longitude coordinate system. Changes that occur frequently are indicated by thicker arrows.
From the shortstop position, all water flows downhill - except that weird “3B ←→ 2B” line. This is a position swap that apparently goes both ways, though my guess is that most of that movement is actually just in one direction - from third base to second base.
Segura is moving the other direction, which makes you wonder: how and why does a team arrive at a decision like this one?
The why is probably easier to answer than the how. The Marlins had a hole at third base after non-tendering Brian Anderson. Matt Swartz at MLBTR projected Anderson to come in at $5.2 million via the arbitration process, and Miami may have thought that number to be a bit steep. It turns out they were right; Anderson signed for $3.5 million with Milwaukee. After deciding to move on from Anderson, Miami culled through a market for full-time third basemen that was pretty thin. Evan Longoria, who spent most of his career only a few hundred miles away from Miami, was still out there. But can a 37-year-old Evan Longoria still start 130 games at third base? Probably not. If the Marlins weren’t going to bring Anderson back, they’d have to be creative.
What about the how, though? What about Segura’s profile prompted the Marlins to move him over to the “third base” column of their free agent board? Let’s consider some of the sources that the Miami front office have consulted.
The Comps
The first question you might ask in considering Jean Segura as your starting third baseman might be something like, “has any other player made a move like this one before?” To frame that question in more specific terms: what other full-time second basemen made a season-to-season switch over to full-time third basemen? We can start there. See below for a comprehensive list of players who played 800+ innings at second base in one year, and 600+ innings at third base the next year (since 2010)1:
Not a long list. I should also note that both Figgins and Carpenter had prior third base experience and were merely switching back to an old position. That just leaves Moncada, who made this switch almost ten years younger than Segura will.
If we were diving further into this type of exercise, we’d also probably want to consider Segura’s age and career trajectory. He’ll be 33 on Opening Day, and he has spent over 10 seasons playing either shortstop or second base. We might extend our look backward beyond 2010, and we might consider different thresholds for experience at both positions.
There were some names I was expecting to see on this list. I watched Brandon Phillips do it in Atlanta at age 36. Phillips slid over to third base for a 25-game stint (that felt like an 80 game stint) in 2017. Short-term moves like that one are more common, but full-time moves are not. No matter how we tweak it, the pool of players who have made this specific position change is pretty limited. Miami is making a bold move here.
The Metrics
Ideally, the comparable-player approach would be refined to select players who played a similar second base to Segura. Instead of selecting all players who made the move from second to third, we’d filter down to players who match Segura on arm strength and accuracy, quickness, reactions, etc. We can’t really shave down a list that starts at a whopping two potential comps, though, so that approach won’t work.
Even if we did have more comps who have made the second-to-third base switch, we only have Statcast data for a few years. Metrics like arm strength, speed, and first-step quickness would only be available for comps from the last few seasons.
So the Marlins didn’t have any position-change comps to look at - but could the baseball operations group look at the Statcast data anyway? Sure. Segura made throws and fielded ground balls at second base, just like he will at third base. We can compare metrics on those plays to what we’d expect for a third baseman.
Actually, we can’t really make that comparison. Segura’s second base metrics represent different types of plays and throws than those he’ll have to make next year. The angles, distances, and timing are very different. But Segura can hit, remember? So let’s try anyway.
We can start with his arm. In 2022, Segura’s “Arm Strength,” measured as the average velocity on his hardest throws, was 86.5 mph. That’s the highest among all second basemen - a good sign, right? Maybe not.
Consider this fact: Segura’s three hardest throws in 2022 (a substantial portion of the pool of throws that produce this “Arm Strength” metric) were all relay throws. These were throws that Segura partnered up with Nick Castellanos (read: third-weakest right-field arm in 20222) to make from short right field. Segura had plenty of time to set and crow-hop into each of these throws. He won’t be able to do that on most of throws he’ll need to make from third base.
The next five hardest throws are all on double play turns, as Segura has time and momentum to wind up as he comes across the second base bag. Here’s his hardest throw on a true ground ball attempt - this one touching 86 mph:
So Segura can sell out for 86 mph. Don’t get me wrong - Segura has had a fine career and has spent most of it playing the sport’s most difficult position. But as he heads into this age-33 season, though, he’ll have one of the league’s weakest arms at third base. I’d comp his arm to Alex Bregman - the position’s fourth-weakest arm in 2022. When Bregman has time, he likes to do a middle-infielder-ish hesitation-shuffle before unloading. Throws like this one are similar to Segura’s top end:
With the arm as a question mark, we might find hope in another metric. I’d point to something along the lines of “first step3,” as an important one. But that metric wouldn’t transfer well from second base to third base, and it isn’t readily available - so we have to move on to our final approach.
The Eye Test
There wasn’t much in the way of historical position-change comps for the move the Marlins were considering. Segura’s Statcast metrics are also of limited use. What does that leave in the way of evaluation tools for Miami’s baseball operations group? Video and expert opinion.
The Marlins staff can gather together in a room and watch video of Jean Segura playing second base and imagine him playing third base. They’ll watch him field ground balls that mirror the depth and reaction time that he might see at third base - maybe while from instances he’s played in on the dirt with the infield in, or on the shortstop-side in an infield shift. And they’d certainly watch each of the 38 fielding attempts he had in an actual 24-game stint as a third baseman in 2020.
You might think I’m joking, but this probably happened. It’s just too tempting to use the power of imagination, especially when the “reliable” option is a 37-year-old Evan Longoria.
One thing a second baseman has that a third baseman doesn’t is time - more time to react, more time to pick a hop, more time to set and throw. When you watch Segura play second base, you can tell that he’s well aware of how much time he has. Some second basemen attack ground balls, which can sometimes create opportunities that might mimic the actions of a third basemen. Segura does not attack. Instead, he’ll sometimes let the hop pick him:
When he knows he has time to make an exchange and throw, he’ll usually use up all of it (and then some). Plays like this one don’t add any “relevant experience” to Segura’s third base resume:
How about some of the plays that are contested? Can we see Segura show off a dive and a strong throw? There are probably better examples out there, but here’s one:
This is a fine play. It shows off some first-step quickness and a throw from a tough position (post-dive) and angle. It also highlights Segura’s low throwing slot. I wonder if Segura might try (during Spring Training) to move to a slot that’s a little higher and more common for third base. His current slot is a little middle-infielderish.
Let’s look at another dive and throw - this one from 2021:
It looks like another fine play until the throw pulls the first baseman off of the bag. Segura’s arm continues to be the question mark for me.
Let’s Sign Him
Now that we’ve done our homework, it’s time to make a call. Did the video you watched encourage you? Did I mislead you with the clips I chose? Should we watch some clips of Segura at the plate to make us feel a little bit better?
To be clear, I’m not attacking or defending the signing. What interests me is the process by which a team projects a player at an entirely new position. Art, science, imagination, whatever you might call it. Just know that while you were enjoying the holidays with your family, the Marlins staff was probably holed up in a war room watching clip after clip of Jean Segura playing second base.
Yes, those are arbitrary cutoffs for innings played at both positions. But tweaking them in either direction didn’t really expand or shrink what you see in that table.
*Per Baseball Savant, minimum 300 throws. It’s hard to pick one of those 300+ that best exemplifies Castellanos’ arm, but this is a pretty good one. A play a the plate becomes…a cutoff-and-redirect:
A “first step” metric is defined as something like “the time it takes to move X feet in the direction the ball is heading”