Best Fielding Second Basemen

dallasactuary

No commentary, just wanted to finish (I did third basemen years ago, and 1B, OF and pitchers aren't interesting as fielders).

Bobby Doerr
Nellie Fox
Frankie Frisch
Bobby Grich
Orlando Hudson
Bill Mazeroski
Bid McPhee
Ski Melillo
Red Schoendienst
Frank White

JoeBanzai

How did Gehringer do? He led AL in fielding nine times. Or seven times.

dallasactuary

Originally posted by: JoeBanzai
How did Gehringer do? He led AL in fielding nine times. Or seven times.

He doesn't do very well compared to my top 10; compared to the universe of second basemen he does very well. If I did a top 50 he'd be there, maybe in the top 30.

Avoiding errors was Gehringer's primary defensive asset - and it's an important one - but his range for his career was below league average. Both WAR and Win Shares show his as a very good second baseman; great for a short time, average much of the rest of the time.

RAPTORSRULE04

robby alomar

dallasactuary

Alomar had a nice peak in the late 90's, but he was terrible after that and below average before that. I don't know where he'd rank because from my initial universe (selected based on games played) of several hundred, he was in the first group that got cut. He has negative zone runs, a range factor below league average, a career WAR of 2.4 (the top 10 got that many in a single season multiple times), and so on. He does well in fielding percentage (but still worse than everyone in the top 10), but in context it's clear that that's at least as much because he only fielded the balls hit near him as it is to any special fielding skill. He also has a ton of Gold Gloves; Exhibit A in the case that Gold Gloves don't mean much.