It's almost impossible to judge defense from the TV feed. You have no idea where the OF is positioned and how much ground they're actually covering before a play. Mostly we just see if they screw up the catch or make a nice dive.
And that's fair but if we are now talking about defensive positioning, isn't that on the Manager with his defensive alignment. We see it all the time now, players taking that defensive line up card out of their back pocket and adjust based on the hitter/pitcher combo.
So my assumption is that people don't feel he makes enough "plays" in the Outfield. His error count is minimal (only 6 in 300 games in the OF) and his Fielding % is solid (.990) for the OF (not counting his 3rd base stats where yea, he was god awful defensively there).
Personally, I think Defensive Runs Saved is a flawed Metric as outfield positioning has everything to do with it and that positioning usually comes from the Manager so really its more of a metric based on athletic ability. Billy Hamilton is a Stud defensively based on that Metric but sucks balls at the plate. Were the Reds winning because of Billy's Defense....Nope.
My point is, its the infield defense that inherently matters more in baseball than the outfield defense. Nick in either left or right is just fine, its 2nd Base and back up SS we need to shore up as those issues cost us many more games than any of the issues in our Outfield from a defensive standpoint.
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