A Letter from Left Field
Are outfielders' arms weaker or no longer on display?
Welcome to Warning Track Power, a weekly newsletter of baseball stories and analysis grounded in front office and scouting experiences and the personalities encountered along the way.
I paid a visit to the WTP mailbox earlier this week.
To my surprise, more than just the International Male catalog was awaiting me. There was also a letter.
Late for a birthday card and early for holiday greetings, I grew concerned that the copyright attorneys had come calling after an incorrectly attributed photo credit.
You can imagine my relief when I realized the note had come from a reader.
Dear WTP,
Can you tell me why today’s infielders appear to have better arms than those of yesteryear, but outfielders’ arms appear to be worse?
Glenn M. Woodstown, N.J.
I looked back into the envelope, making sure there wasn’t a twenty for the effort that I had missed upon first pass.
Then I began to ponder Glenn’s question. The strength of today’s infield arms is on display daily.
Matt Chapman, Manny Machado, Carlos Correa, Miguel Sano, Nolan Arenado, Fernando Tatis Jr, Javier Baez. Infielders are bigger, stronger, and more dynamically conditioned than those of yesteryear.1
In an attempt to define the parameters of those halcyon days, I think we can all agree that Statcast data didn’t exist then. Those golden arms of seasons past were not measured by radar. Therefore, we’d need to use the eye test.
I asked a few scouts and evaluators with MLB teams if they had noticed any recent discrepancies in arm strength among outfielders.
A couple well-trained observers didn’t think there was any basis to Glenn’s question, but one scout who remembers a few things about yesteryear suggested that infielders’ arms appear to have gotten stronger only because they haven’t dropped off at the precipitous rate by which outfielders’ arms have.
One thing that’s clear is that outfielders are not throwing as many players out on the bases as of late. Perhaps a yet-unidentified side effect of COVID-19, outfield assists dropped significantly last year and held fairly steady this season. (The 2020 total below was projected off the limited number of games played.)
The great cannons are still out there, though. As if they sensed a challenge had been issued, Mookie Betts and Kevin Kiermaier both showed off their arms (and athleticism) with great plays in the postseason.
With a greater emphasis on home runs and strikeouts in today’s game, baserunning and throws from the outfield have both become largely ignored — and sometimes forgotten.
Seeking some inspiration from an outfielder who treats his defense as a craft, I turned to one of my favorite ballplayers: two-time Gold Glove winner Gerardo Parra.
Long before any Baby Shark sightings — but not quite yesteryear — Parra was a defensive weapon for the Diamondbacks. In the 2011 season, Parra led MLB with 12 assists as a leftfielder.
Throughout that season, it felt like word hadn’t made it around the league that Parra’s left arm wasn’t to be challenged. At times, he seemed to toy with runners — slow-playing a base hit to bait an opponent into thinking he could advance.
“Sometimes I cheat a little bit,” Parra admits with a chuckle at the suggestion that he plays mind games with baserunners.
The 2019 World Series champion credits the instruction he received early in his minor league career with building his arm strength and honing his accuracy.
Once he reached the big leagues, Parra says it was Eric Young — first base coach and outfield coach for the D-backs in 2011 and 2012 — who helped him with some of the finer points of the position.
“You have to prepare and know who’s running,” Parra shares. “You have to know what’s your best position to throw from.”
After moving to right field in 2013, Parra led the league in assists from that position with 15. He’s a force from all three spots in the outfield, as you can see in this brief compilation.
In Spring Training, he works on his release point and footwork. Most importantly, the always smiling Parra says he’s still having fun.
Parra is a great case study because he did not receive a huge signing bonus as an amateur, and his throwing arm wasn’t even mentioned in the earliest reports in Baseball America. His abilities were developed over time — a testament to both the player and the coaches who worked with him.
There’s the old baseball saying that speed never slumps. Parra’s infectious joy shows up at the ballpark everyday, too. With his defensive energy leading the way, he’s a reminder of why we love the game and the ways an outfielder can impact it.
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Yesteryear is a word dripping in nostalgia. In baseball terms, it’s hard for me to consider yesteryear without thinking of Lou Gehrig’s speech, the original Home Run Derby from 1960 (rerun on ESPN in the late ’80s), and This Week In Baseball. Here’s the first episode of Home Run Derby — Mantle vs. Mays!
If only arm strength could always correlate with joy for the game…