Is Ozzie Albies a bad defender at second base?

We love Ozzie Albies here at Braves Today. He's one of the more beloved Braves, our switch-hitting Short King who is signed long-term through 2025 on a very affordable deal with two additional club options that would have him in Atlanta through 2027, his age 30 season. He's best friends with Ronald Acuña Jr, and universally liked across the fanbase.

pic.twitter.com/RygMlnA4Dt
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) May 4, 2023

But there's a been a tiny bit of complaining recently that his defense is bad at second base. Not below average, but BAD.

Let's dive under the hood and figure it out.

Fortunately, we have amazingly granular data thanks to Statcast to help us analyze where Ozzie fits amongst MLB second basemen.

The surface numbers aren't great.

Statcast ranks Ozzie in the 3rd percentile for Outs Above Average, meaning that 97% of second baseman are performing better than him this season. His OAA grade is -4, meaning he's made four less outs than the average second baseman would have made in that same span. It's only the second time in his career he's graded out as negative, with his high being +12 in 2018.

When we break down WHY he has a negative score, there's a clear explanation.

His career Outs Above Average visual chart shows he's always excelled moving laterally towards first base, (+20 OAA), but has historically suffered moving towards second base (-13 OAA).

But this season, that advantage moving towards first has largely dissipated, with Ozzie registering only 1 OAA, not enough to outweigh his historic trend of grading negatively when moving towards second (-5 OAA this season).

Interestingly, it's not a matter of range - Ozzie is getting slower, yes (his speed has moved from 88th percentile in 2017 to 56th percentile in 2023) - but it's a matter of finishing the play when he gets to the spot.

MLB.com writer Mike Petriello had an interesting thread diving into this very same topic, and he has the ability to break down the components of OAA to show us something interesting: Ozzie's glovework is slumping right now.

and very interestingly, if you split OAA up, he's doing fine with range but has had a lot of trouble finishing it off.

So what do those look like? (Note that range means "getting to the spot," not necessarily "catching the ball.") pic.twitter.com/O9RhCqLERg
— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) May 12, 2023

Petriello goes on to show video of several of these "missed" plays, and Ozzie's backhand glove work is usually the culprit, although he's also been victimized by some bad hops and a straight miss or two when moving towards first.

I'm stopping short of calling Ozzie a bad defender here: 128 defensive chances is one-fifth to one-sixth of a normal season's sample, and Ozzie's success rate IS getting higher - this year he's at 81%, which is the highest success rate of his career.

(Of note, the "Estimated Success Rate" of 85% from Statcast is the highest for any second baseman in baseball, meaning he's positioned correctly on most plays and, consequently, has had the easiest expected chances of making the plays of any second baseman this year.)

I think it's a combination of the range being negatively impacted by his drop in speed, some occasional bad luck on his defensive positioning, and some small sample size noise. Like I said, he's making plenty of plays, but relative to his past performance, he should be making even more.

There's also the possibility that his early range struggles could be lingering effects from last year's broken foot - when moving right, he'd be planting and pushing off of that left foot that was fractured by a foul ball last June. It's impossible to know more without asking the man himself, but I could see both the range being negatively impacted by that and the arm being impacted by the offseason shoulder surgery he went through in October.

If Ozzie's defensive numbers improve as we progress through the season, that may be an explanation. He's too young to significantly regress on defense, so that's a logical connection to make, but only time will tell.