Aim Small, Miss Small: A “Short” Analysis of First Base Defense

The Tampa Bay Rays are well known across MLB for forging new frontiers in pursuit of winning baseball games, and this year has been no different. Late in this 2024 season, former starting first baseman Yandy Diaz has been moved to the designated hitter role in order to keep the 33 year old slugger off the field and as healthy as possible. This gap left on the right side of the infield in St. Petersburg has been recently filled by none other than star player Brandon Lowe, who began the year as the starting second baseman. An influx of good young infield talent coming to Tropicana Field this year in Jose Caballero, Richie Palacios, Christopher Morel and Junior Caminero meant that Lowe was no longer needed at the keystone. While Lowe moving one spot over may seem like a perfect fit, the conventional wisdom that generally dictates who plays the first base position may disagree for one reason: he stands only 5’10”.

Traditionally, first baseman have been big sluggers that tend to not move very well. Emphasis on big, as the average starting first baseman since the turn of the century is 6’2”, a full 4 inches taller than Lowe and 5 inches taller than the average American male. Coaches will say that this height is a necessity for a first baseman, as it makes a bigger target for the other infielders to throw to on groundouts, gives them more reach to snare hard hit liners up the first base line, and can save precious split seconds on close plays by stretching further towards throws from infielders. Luckily for Lowe, these naysayers are wrong, and the height is not actually necessary. Since the year 2000, 197 major leaguers have played 1000 or more innings at first base. Among these, the average defensive value per 150 games (Def/150) on FanGraphs is -11.7. However, the data when broken down by height shows that there is almost no correlation between a player’s height and defensive value at first base, with an R-squared of only 0.26% (yes, you read that correctly, it is that low). Additionally, players of Lowe’s height have averaged a -11.3 Def/150, slightly above the overall average.

Table of average 1b defense by height, along with amount of players at each height that qualify

Same as above, but in graph form to drive the point home

Ultimately, I think Lowe will perform excellently at first base if tasked with the everyday starting job there in 2025. Even if the bottom falls out on his defense, his career 126 wRC+ is more than enough to play anywhere on the field. I have to side with my guy Billy Beane over Ron Washington on this piece. As Beane famously said in Moneyball (my favorite movie of all time), playing first base is really “not that hard”. The hard part is hitting enough to make up for the egregious positional adjustment, but that is a story for another time.

All data from FanGraphs through games played 9/19/24