Why Have The A’s Abandoned Defense As A Priority?

There are a lot of reasons to play someone in the field who is below average at the position. If they hit well enough they may be worth giving some of it back defensively. If your team, overall, is not sufficiently robust offensively you may feel the need to give up a little glove in order to maximize the bats. You might stick with defensive issues with a young player who has the ability to improve with time and experience.

So a team does not need to prioritize having a gold glove candidate at every position — in fact if you have Denzel Clarke in CF you have more capacity to weather a below average COFer whose deficiencies can be masked some by the galloping Denzelope.

But Moneyball taught us…