Photos: Melissa Tamez and Leslie Plaza Johnson/Icon Sportswire
It’s admittedly very hard to find anything positive about the White Sox season, but we do have to tip our cap to the play of right fielder Dominic Fletcher.
Entering Monday, Fletcher ranked tied for second among right fielders with 9 Defensive Runs Saved, despite not even being in the Top 50 in innings played there (he’s played just over 200 innings).
Racking up that many Runs Saved in that short an amount of time is unusual. It’s not like he’s on pace for 50 Runs Saved over a full season. Defensive Runs Saved doesn’t work like that. But his collection of highlight-worthy plays is impressive. We track Good Fielding Plays encompassing catches requiring extraordinary efforts, outfield assists, and also plays like cutting a ball off in the gap to prevent an extra base. Fletcher has an abundance of Good Fielding Plays while avoiding Defensive Misplays & Errors.
One of those Good Fielding Plays was this home run robbery against Yainer Diaz of the Astros. A player receives around 2 Runs Saved for any home run robbery (we don’t take into account the number of men on base) and he was fully worthy of it here.
This was Fletcher’s second home run robbery of the season. He had one against William Contreras of the Brewers that was actually more impressive than the Astros one. It came as a center fielder.
Fletcher can do a lot of things defensively.
He can make diving catches
Sliding catches
He can handle outfield walls
Side walls too.
He can even dodge teammates
And he can throw
So while everyone else is feeling bad about the White Sox and their chance to set an MLB record for losses, there’s at least one player doing everything he can to try to prevent that – and doing it really well.
Most Good Fielding Plays – Right Fielders
Name | Team | Good Plays-Misplays & Errors |
Anthony Santander | Orioles | 15-16 |
Hunter Renfroe | Royals | 13-11 |
George Springer | Blue Jays | 13-8 |
Wilyer Abreu | Red Sox | 12-16 |
Mike Yastrzemski | Giants | 12-13 |
Juan Soto | Yankees | 11-22 |
Dominic Fletcher | White Sox | 11-4 |