I have spent the greater part of the past two years defending reasons why Albert Almora wasn’t receiving more playing time. While some of this has possibly come off as Almora-bashing, in all honesty, I loved the guy.
But, there isn’t a soul that can sit here and say that, offensively, Almora pulled his weight over the past two seasons. In fact, in the past two seasons, he was the ninth-worst offensive player with at least 800 plate appearances.
But his defense! I mean, don’t you remember him robbing Yadier Molina!
Well, his defense was quite bad in 2019, outside a few spectacular plays. If you roll his 2018 and 2019 together, he’s the ninth-best defensive centerfielder and has a negative UZR/150 rating.
UZR puts a run value to defense, attempting to quantify how many runs a player saved or gave up through their fielding prowess (or lack thereof). UZR/150 spreads that out across 150 games. Fangraphs has a great explanation of UZR and measuring defensive metrics.
In contrast, Kyle Schwarber (I know you will now discredit the stat, but I urge you to read and understand UZR before bashing it) has a UZR/150 of 5.6 over the past two seasons, compared to Almora’s 0.4. Now, a LF will be rated (differently) than a CF due to situations. A corner outfielder will likely have more opportunity to throw a base runner out than a centerfielder does. So in essence, if Schwarber makes all the expected plays and can still record outs while throwing the ball, calculations can be shifted to his favor for recording more outs on plays hit to him.
All-in-all, while we look to Almora as a defensive genius, he’s really quite normal.
If you have a replacement level defensive CF, that provides less than league average offense – you have a weak link.
I do not expect to see Almora back with the Cubs in 2020. I think he is a guy that will be sent somewhere, and he will likely return a decent bullpen arm. I don’t know if the Cubs would be able to replace Almora with a leadoff type of CF’er, and I don’t see that guy in the centerfielder free-agent market.
This might be one of those things where the Cubs will need to navigate a trade to receive that type of player, and, no, the Cubs will not get that guy for Almora.
