Quote:
Originally Posted by kq76
Bill James is no God. Just because he wrote something doesn't mean it's necessarily true. Whether 2B or 3B is a difficult position to play really depends on your skillset. In my mind, you really want a strong and accurate arm to play 3B with quick twitch reactions, while for 2B you need to be more athletic and faster in general to cover the increased ground. Now at 30 (soon to be 31 years old) does Bregman profile to be a great 2B? Maybe not, but if you check his minor league stats, he primarily played SS. And from what I've heard, everyone thought he'd probably play 2B in the majors, but with Altuve there they moved him to 3B. So that tells me that while he might not be a great 2B, he'll probably be fine there. If he didn't have the skillset to play 2B, he wouldn't have played SS in the minors.
Now would he be more valuable at 3B with how bad Devers is there? Maybe, I don't know. I don't like the Red Sox so the more strife over there the better.
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TBH this isn't even about James being a god or not. The defensive spectrum was never intended as anything more than a quick, back-of-the-napkin deal. Usually shortstops converting to 3rd base have an easier time of it than 3rd basemen converting to shortstop. That's pretty much all this says. And yeah, with 2nd vs 3rd the big deal there isn't that 2nd is a harder position necessarily, it's that the skillset you need - hands + range, not necessarily a great arm - is a little bit harder to come across than what you need to play 3rd - hands + arm, not necessarily great range. On the *whole* 2nd is still a position with harder-to-come-by skills but that certainly doesn't mean that an individual player will always be worse at 2nd than at 3rd.
I'm not sure Bregman has any kind of first step anymore but that's not at all a question that's answered by "look at the defensive spectrum"...