Could The Brewers Try Something New in Center Field?

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Photo by Mike McGinnis - Getty Images

Carlos Gomez

The Brewers entered the 2024 season with a relatively good problem to have: They have a lot of players who can play center field. While this creates a challenge for lineup and roster construction, it might also provide an opportunity to test a theory on center field performance. 

Baseball has several “premium” defensive positions that are difficult in unique ways. Catchers take an unparalleled physical beating during games. Playing shortstop requires a combination of quickness, arm strength and precision that most people will never have. Neither, however, spend as much time in motion as a center fielder. 

Watch a center fielder for nine innings and you might see him run in every direction from his starting location. He’s expected to cover the most ground in the outfield (this 2018 piece estimates center fielders record almost 40% of outfield putouts), but he also backs up plays in both corners and he has to be there if a catcher or pitcher’s throw to second base goes awry. Over the course of nine innings in the field there aren’t many balls in play a center fielder can just stand and watch. 

Then, after he’s spent hours intermittently running, he’s expected to settle in at the plate and hit. Successfully hitting at the MLB level might be the hardest task in sports. It requires incredible focus, instantaneous decision making and elite-level hand-eye coordination. As any endurance athlete (or even me, a middle-aged man who bicycles) can tell you, those skills diminish when you’re tired. To be clear, there’s a wide gulf of difference between an elite MLB center fielder and your average person. The center fielder is still human, however, and even a slight dip in cognitive skills due to nominal fatigue (even one too small for the athlete themselves to notice it) could be enough to make a difference at the plate. 

Anecdotally, one example of this is former Brewer Carlos Gomez. One of Gomez’s most identifiable qualities was his infectious, seemingly boundless energy. By the late innings of games, however, “Go-Go” had been going and going for three hours or more and, even over a very large sample, the gap in his offensive performance was noticeable as games went along: 

• For his career, in the first three innings of games Gomez batted 1805 times and his on-base plus slugging (OPS) was .754. 
• In the next three innings he didn’t see much change. He batted 1711 times in innings 4-6 and had an OPS of .766.  
• In the final three innings of games, however, Gomez batted 1598 times, which is about the equivalent of three full MLB seasons of data. His OPS in those trips to the plate was .670. His on-base percentage in those plate appearances was down 30 points and his slugging was down almost 70. In extra innings Gomez’s sample size was smaller but his OPS dropped to .349. 

The next step, then, is determining if this effect is widespread across regular center fielders or if Gomez is an isolated case. From 2018-23 (five full seasons plus 2020’s 60-game campaign) there were 13 players who logged at least 1600 plate appearances while playing center field. There’s a wide array of offensive talent levels on that list: Mike Trout, Starling Marte and Brandon Nimmo are all standout performers at the plate, while Myles Straw, Michael A. Taylor and Victor Robles all have an OPS of .670 or below.  

Collectively, that group has accumulated nearly 45,000 plate appearances across careers mostly spent in center field. On average, from the seventh through ninth innings of games they see their OPS drop by 41 points. Eleven of the 13 see some drop, with only Cody Bellinger (74 points better) and Trent Grisham (29 points better) bucking the trend.

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While we’ve already established that hitting in the major leagues is hard, it’s worth acknowledging that hitting late in games is harder yet. The final innings of MLB games are when hitters are most likely to see the game’s best relievers, so it makes sense that offense would dip a bit. Baseball Reference’s tOPS+ stat estimates that in 2023 all MLB hitters were at approximately 94% of their regular production in the game’s last three innings. The median of our group of regular center fielders, however, was at 91%. Some were much lower: Robles, Bradley and Bader, who occupy the top three spots in the table above, were at 75%, 80% and 81%, respectively. 

It’s possible that teams are already taking this into account. In 2023 there were only seven players who accumulated at least 500 plate appearances in games while they were playing center field. Mariners star Julio Rodriguez stands way out from this field: He played center in 152 games and batted 700 times while playing the position. Rodriguez, for what it’s worth, posted an .864 OPS in the first three innings, an .809 mark in the next three and a .783 mark in the final three. Over the course of his career Rodriguez has a 90 tOPS+ for the final three innings, which puts him roughly in line with the sample above. It’s also possible that wearable technology has given teams more capacity than they ever had before to measure players’ vital data and take them out of games if their biometric information suggests they might experience diminished performance. 

With that said, the Brewers’ wealth of capable center fielders leaves them better equipped than most to try to avoid center fielder fatigue. Whether the answer is more frequent in-game substitutions, more rest days or something else, the Brewers shouldn’t need to ride any one center fielder to the point of reduced effectiveness.