It wasn’t supposed to go down this way. Oneil Cruz is 26 years old and still has as much talent as just about any player in baseball. Here’s what I wrote back in August, when the Pirates moved him to the outfield and I eulogized Oneil Cruz the Shortstop: “Cruz is still just 25. I do think it’s more likely that he’ll be fine in center, and possibly even great. Quite simply, there’s more margin for error in the outfield. He’ll take some bad routes and make some bad reads, but he’ll be able to make the most of his speed…” The early returns are not exactly making either Cruz or me look great.
Cruz spent 23 games in center to end the 2024 season, and the results were mixed. His best grades came from Statcast, which had him putting up a very encouraging 2 OAA and 1 FRV. However, Cruz was credited with -3 DRS and -2.1 DRP. On a per-inning basis, the latter number made him one of the worst center fielders in baseball. Still, all those numbers included two errors, which loomed very large in such a small sample size. Outfielders tend not to make that many errors, but Cruz was brand new to the position. He was fast. He had a rocket arm. Even if all he did was cut out the errors, he’d be at the very least a decent center fielder. It was reasonable to assume that he would only get better out there.
He has not yet gotten better out there. Cruz is currently sitting on -8 DRS, -2 OAA and FRV, and -0.1 DRP. Among all outfielders, those numbers respectively rank worst, third worst, fourth worst, and fifth worst. The advanced defensive metrics work on different scales and they often disagree, but on this point they are unanimous: Cruz has been one of the very worst outfielders in all of baseball this season. According to DRS, Cruz is the least-valuable defender in baseball, full stop.
It starts before the pitch. According to Statcast, Cruz is getting some of the worst jumps in the majors. Baseball Savant’s overall jump metric says that Cruz is 3.1 feet slower than the average outfielder in the first three seconds. That ranks 62nd out of 67 qualified outfielders. Moreover, Cruz is below average in every single component of that metric. His reaction time, which measures how far he moves in the first 1.5 seconds, is 0.7 feet below average, 11th worst. His burst, which measures how far he travels in the next 1.5 seconds, is 1.7 feet below average, ninth worst. His routes grade out as 0.6 feet below average, 17th worst. As I learned a few years ago, reaction time and route tend to work in opposition. Players with great reaction times tend not to take good routes, but the tradeoff is worth it because they end up covering more ground.
Not many players are below average in both, but there’s Cruz, the purple dot, exactly where no one wants to be. He’s not reading the ball well off the bat, and even when he gets going, he’s having trouble taking a good route. The odd thing is his burst. Of the four metrics I mentioned in the last paragraph, burst is the one most correlated with success. An outfielder can deal with a subpar reaction time or a subpar route as long as they really get after the ball. This should be Cruz’s specialty.
So far this season, Cruz has an average sprint speed of 28.4 mph, a step down from the 28.7 and 28.8 he averaged in the last two seasons, but it’s early and he might get back up toward that borderline elite territory with a larger sample size. Either way, he’s still very fast, even relative to his very fast cohort of center fielders. It’s not terribly surprising that he’s not getting great jumps yet. He’s only spent 38 games in the outfield and is still developing his instincts out there. But I expected him to be making up for that with raw speed, and not only is he not doing so, he’s falling further behind. Take this play for example.
This ball had a 95% catch probability. Cruz broke back instead of in, so he had a terrible jump. However, he got on his horse and very nearly made up for that mistake with a great sliding catch. I expected to see more plays like this, where he’d make a mistake but cover up for it with athleticism. However, it’s one of the few plays I’ve seen where he has really seemed to be running full speed.
Even when Cruz catches the ball, he’s carried over the tendency he had when fielding popups as a shortstop. He drifts after the ball. I’ve watched every fly ball Cruz has caught this season, and it’s pretty rare to see him get to the right spot and camp out under the ball. Even on lazy fly balls, he tends not to find his spot, but rather to map out an intercept route.
He seems to be on cruise control during tougher plays too. Granted, Cruz’s long, graceful strides often make him look like he’s moving slower than he really is, but still, he’s not yet moving confidently out there. He’s not going after the ball the way a good center fielder would. The play below had a 65% catch probability. It gets caught two-thirds of the time, but you’d never know that given how far away Cruz was when it bounced off the warning track.
He never really got into gear, and despite the 65% catch probability, it never really looked like he had a chance. He’s just not at a place where he can track the ball and utilize his speed to go out and get it.
Lastly, Cruz is still making errors. He’s tied for the most in baseball with four, twice as many as any other outfielder. One of those errors came on a fly ball deep in the gap. The play only had a 60% catch probability, making it a three-star chance.
This was arguably Cruz’s best read as an outfielder. He didn’t seem to get a late break, and he was closing on the ball hard. Approaching both the wall and the right fielder at high speed distracted just him enough for the ball to clank off his glove. This is a play Cruz makes once he’s more comfortable. Amazingly, the other three errors came on groundballs, the exact plays you’d think a shortstop would be able to nail.
In a way, you could read all of this as encouraging. Cruz is still getting bad jumps and taking bad routes. He’s still not comfortable enough to chase the ball down. He’s still making errors. In other words, there’s a lot of room for improvement. He just hasn’t figured it out yet. He won’t be this bad forever. He’d still grade out as solid right now, according to some metrics, just by cutting out the errors. However, he’s been a center fielder for a while now. It’s clearly not coming naturally to him, so when the improvement does come, we probably shouldn’t expect it to be dramatic, burying any dreams we may have had about watching him transform from iffy shortstop to excellent outfielder like Jackson Merrill or Mookie Betts. Over four seasons, Cruz put up -9 DRS as a shortstop. He’s already at -11 as a center fielder.
Lastly, Cruz isn’t going to stay this fast forever. He’s 6-foot-7 and listed at 240 pounds, and age isn’t always kind to players that big. He’s still just 26, but he’s bound for a corner soon enough. Cruz has all the tools in the world, and although it was disappointing to see him move off shortstop, the upshot of the move was that it rekindled for a while our hope that he might finally tap into a couple of them. After these first few weeks, though, we should probably adjust our expectations. Cruz is still one of the most exciting players in the game and it would be foolish to count him out entirely, but right now the case for optimism is pretty thin.
Content Source: blogs.fangraphs.com