And your 'Swiss Army Knife' award winner for 2014 is ...
Who in baseball was the best when it comes playing all over the field in 2014? The envelope please ...
By
Dayn Perry
•
3 min read
The Swiss Army Knife! It has a multitude of uses, you know. You may use it to open a tin of pork and beans, dig a latrine or murder a werewolf, among other tasks and duties. The baseball analog to the Swiss Army Knife is the utility player, who performs the baseball equivalents of opening a tin of pork and beans, digging a latrine and murdering a werewolf. They can do lots of things, you see. To honor these workaday utilitarians, we are here to declare from on high the winner of the 2014 Swiss Army Knife Award.
Here's that sentence once again, this time with an exclamation mark: To honor these workaday utilitarians, we are here to declare from on high the winner of the 2014 Swiss Army Knife Award!
Criteria? Each player eligble for the Swiss Army Knife award must log at least 300 plate appearances and see action at no fewer than five positions, three of which must be the premium, up-the-middle positions of shortstop, second base and center field. These remorseless preconditions leave us with just five contenders: Brock Holt of the Red Sox, Alexi Amarista of the Padres, Eduardo Escobar of the Twins, Emilio Bonifacio of the Cubs/Braves and Mike Aviles of the Indians.
Now let's break down their 2014 seasons in an informative and aesthetically pleasing HTML table (any weird stuff will be explained below the informative and aesthetically pleasing HTML table) ...
| 2014 "Swiss Army Knife" award contenders | ||||||
| Player | PA | wRC+ | BsR | Pos. played | Innings at SS, 2B, CF | Def |
| Alexi Amarista | 466 | 71 | 2.3 | 5 (4) | 907 | 7.4 |
| Mike Aviles | 374 | 74 | 2.3 | 6 (4) | 382 | -6.2 |
| Emilio Bonifacio | 426 | 81 | 4.9 | 6 (2) | 735 | 10.8 |
| Eduardo Escobar | 465 | 102 | 0.4 | 5 (2) | 840 2/3 | 4.4 |
| Brock Holt | 492 | 98 | 4.5 | 7 (5) | 232 2/3 | 1.1 |
| Data: Baseball-Reference Play Index, FanGraphs | ||||||
PA: Plate appearances
wRC+: Weighted Runs Created+, an advanced metric that measures all phases of production at the plate and adjusts them for ballpark and league environments. The higher the wRC+, the better the hitter was. wRC+ is scaled so that a mark of 100 reflects a league-average hitter.
BsR: Per FanGraphs, the number of runs above or below average a player was worth on the bases. Includes stolen bases, times caught stealing, extra bases taken and outs made on the bases.
Pos. played: Number of different positions played in 2014. In parentheses is the number of positions at which the player appeared in 10 or more games.
Innings at SS, 2B, CF: Total number of defensive innings the player logged at shortstop, second base and center field combined in 2014.
Def: Or "Defense." This is a player's runs saved above an average defender with the numbers adjusted to reflect positional difficulty (i.e., shortstop is more challenging than first base, center is more challenging than left).
So what do we see here? Right away, we can eliminate Aviles from contention. His bat was sub-par, and, while his positional flexibility is of course noted, he gave back a lot of runs with the glove. Bonifacio and Holt stand out in terms of base-running. Holt and Escobar stand out with the bat, and Bonifacio and Amarista take fielding honors, at least according to these numbers.
Considering the full complement of Swiss Army Knife skills, for me it comes down to Escobar and Holt. Holt gets the edge on the bases, while Escobar just edges him out with the bat (35 doubles in 133 and an SLG of .406 despite playing his home games in Target Field). Defensively, it's Escobar. He beats Holt on the basis of runs saved, and he spent many more innings at up-the-middle positions.
Your 2014 "Swiss Army Knife" award winner? Come on down, Eduardo Escobar. Please do savor this imaginary trophy statuette championship belt.
As for Brock Holt, his runner-up status and very cool name shall be his consolations.
