Stat change shows Nicky Lopez’s 2021 Royals season was better than originally thought
One of the bigger surprises regarding last year’s Gold Glove awards was the snub of Royals shortstop Nicky Lopez.
Despite leading the majors in Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) and Defensive Runs Above Average, Lopez wasn’t even a finalist for the award.
“That was the toughest part is it should be based off of that stuff — how you do,” Lopez said this week of advanced metrics, “but I don’t think necessarily that award is based off of that.”
Carlos Correa, who was with the Astros last season, won the award, while Seattle’s J.P. Crawford and former Twins shortstop Andrelton Simmons were the other finalists.
It’s too late to rewrite the history book, but Lopez recently got some vindication from the metric-driven website FanGraphs. David Appelman wrote a story titled, “A FanGraphs WAR fielding update.”
“Since we launched FanGraphs WAR in 2008, we have used various components of Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) such as Range, Outfield Arm, and Double Play Conversion to evaluate position player fielding,” Appleman wrote. “Today, we’re changing one of those components. Retroactive to the 2016 season, we have swapped out the Range component of UZR for the Statcast metric Fielding Runs Prevented, which is Outs Above Average (OAA) converted to runs above average. The UZR Outfield Arm and Double Play Conversion components of WAR remain unchanged.”
This change resulted in mostly a swing of plus- or minus-1 WAR for players. But in Lopez’s case, it was a tremendous change as he now had a 6 WAR season in 2021, and his plus-27.3 defensive runs was better than any player at any position in the majors. Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor was second (20.8) and Oakland catcher Sean Murphy was third (19.7).
Lopez took note of the change that showed he was the best defensive player in the majors in 2021.
“Supposedly it was like, six (WAR) or something,” Lopez said. “Yeah, that’s what I saw. It’s kinda cool.”
It won’t do Lopez any good when it comes to last year’s awards, of course.
But when asked if the defensive statistical change validated that he’d had a Gold Glove-caliber season, Lopez said: “Yeah. Obviously it’s out of my control.”
“It was one of those things I thought I’d put together a great season,” Lopez added, “and good enough to at least be nominated. But obviously they thought different.”
This story was originally published May 6, 2022 at 9:03 AM.
