Phillip Ervin will start for the Cincinnati Reds tonight in center field. This will be his first game in the Major Leagues in center. Not that he has a ton of big league experience, he’s only played in 16 innings in the field at the big league level and they’ve all come in the corners.
In the minor leagues, Phillip Ervin has spent time playing mostly center and left field. He only has a little mixture of time in right. From a pure speed standpoint, Ervin is a 60 runner, showing plus speed. Compared to all baseball players, he’s certainly very fast. But, compared to just other center fielders, he’s probably in the bottom third somewhere. You generally aren’t going to find center fielders that aren’t 60 or better runners. The position simply requires speed to play because of the amount of ground that needs to be covered.
As with all positions, offensive value and defensive value need to be considered when wondering about whether someone can play at a spot on the field. Right now the Cincinnati Reds starting center fielder is Billy Hamilton. We seem to know what he can, and what he can’t do. He can play defensive and he can do it better than just about anyone. He can run the bases and he can do that better than just about anyone. What he can’t do is hit. Or get on base.
While it’s not impossible for Billy Hamilton to improve his offense, at this point it does seem to be unlikely. He’s 26-years-old and hasn’t shown any improvemnts. In his first full season he hit .250/.292/.355. Four years later he’s hitting .247/.298/.329. HIs walk rate is a little bit higher. His strikeout rate is also up a little bit. His power is actually down in 2017. And that’s in a year in which everyone is hitting for significantly more power than they have ever done before (the ball is indeed juiced).
Billy Hamilton’s contributions in the field and on the bases are so good that they may indeed make up for his lack off hitting. Not that I’m beholden to WAR (for more than a few reasons), but this season has been the worst output for Hamilton in his career on both sides of the ball. By far. And it’s resulted in his posting of just 0.9 fWAR (fangraphs WAR). The average starting position player is usually 2.0 fWAR. Baseball-Reference’s version of WAR has him at just 0.6 WAR. That’s a useful player, but a well below-average starting player.
Phillip Ervin is the guy who seems most likely, at least in the short term, to be a possible answer to being able to improve on the center field position for the Reds. While the team has some very good center field prospects with guys like TJ Frield, Jose Siri, Taylor Trammell, Stuart Fairchild and Miles Gordon – all of those guys are still several years away from reaching the Major Leagues.
For Phillip Ervin, the overall numbers this season at the plate don’t scream that he’s a clear and obvious option to overtake Billy Hamilton. However, his season is weighed down by an absolutely atrocious month of May. If we remove that month from his season, in the other 329 plate appearances between Louisville and Cincinnati he’s hit .287/.363/.460 with 33 walks and 58 strikeouts. He’s also going to provide value on the bases. Clearly he won’t provide the same value there as a guy like Hamilton, but he should provide a good amount of positive value in this aspect.
The two questions for Phillip Ervin are: Can he hit enough to play every day as a center fielder? He’s struggled to hit for an average for the large part of his minor league career, and overall this season he’s struggled there too. But, outside of May, he’s done quite well – as noted above. The other question is: Can he field well enough to play center as the Major League level?
That latter question is one that is a much bigger question for me when it comes to one that the Reds need to know the answer to. In the minors the organization has the Trackman system set up, so they have all kinds of data on Phillip Ervin and what he can hit, can’t hit, how hard he can hit the ball, where he hits the ball – all of that fun stuff we can see the broadcasts spit out via Statcast in the Majors.
What the minor leagues don’t have is the other part of that system that tracks the fielders. That system also falls under the Statcast umbrella in the Majors, but it is a different set up entirely. It’s the one that we get data on about reaction time, route efficiency, distance traveled, catch probability. While I certainly don’t think scouts are missing out on these things by much, this could provide a bit more accuracy to answer the question. Getting that information is only going to be available by letting Phillip Ervin get out in the outfield and actually play.
For the Reds, having that information could be very useful in terms of figuring out whether or not they believe that Phillip Ervin could be a player that should see more time in center field if Billy Hamilton doesn’t start showing some improvements. Will the downgrade in defense be worth it for the overall package swap? Would it be worth it to simply platoon the two players, as Hamilton has struggled mightily from the right side of the plate? There’s no better time than between now and the end of the season to mix Ervin into center field 2-3 times a week and get that information for the front office to evaluate and better inform them as they move forward.