What Happened to Julio Rodriguez's Defense: An Analysis In…
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What Happened to Julio Rodriguez's Defense: An Analysis
In 2025, Julio Rodriguez was the 6th best defender in CF by both OAA (10) and DRS (9). While not in the tier of the elite CF defenders (PCA, Cedanne Rafaela, Victor Scott, Jacob Young), he was clearly a plus defender out there. The results were similar in 2024 (8 OAA, 3 DRS) and in 2023 (11 OAA, -5 DRS?). Over that entire time frame, from 2023-2025, he graded out as the 6th best defender in CF.
In 2026, he's ranked as the worst CF defender by OAA (-5), and 7th worst by DRS (-4).
So what happened?
Before we start diving in, I should add that, while defensive stats take ~3 years to stabilize when evaluating a player's true talent level, they do a pretty good job at telling us what has already happened. I don't think Julio turned into a bad defender overnight. It would take a lot more innings to tell if that is the case, but by both the eye test and the stats, he's been bad this year.
When trying to figure out what is happening with a player on defense, Statcast is the place to start. Julio has slowed down a little bit from last year, from a 29.2 ft/s spring speed down to 28.7 ft/s. He's still a plus runner (88th percentile), but has slowed down from his elite speed days in his early career. Losing a little speed will hurt, but 88th percentile sprint speed is still plenty to be a good to great CF defender.
Then perhaps he's getting bad reads on fly balls all of a sudden? But again, he's been pretty in line with his career norms this season. His reaction has always been meh, but both his burst and his routes have been pluses. These numbers are all in line with what he did last year, although, like his sprint speed, they are down from his highs in 2023/24.
So he's getting roughly the same jump on the ball and has roughly the same speed to get there. Last year, he was 0 or positive in run value moving every direction. This year, he's 0 or negative in every direction. So this also isn't a case of being bad at one type of batted ball and then getting an inordinate amount of those hit with the early-season small sample size constraints.
That generally covers all the main checks for significant defensive changes, so what gives? Let's take a look at some of the individual plays that have cost him the most so far.
These first four are all 95% catch probabilities.
While we don't get to see the jump, it must've been pretty bad to be this far away from a ball that was supposed to be an easy catch https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=7f8d6b50-1ec0-305e-9619-9c7a1caa496a .
These next three plays are all pretty similar, with Julio moving backwards and near(ish) the wall. Here https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=2c3e9285-a6aa-37a5-9e2f-efddaef97c86 we can see him overrun the ball and try to twist and catch, a play he has made a few times this season (and probably should never have had to). He takes his eyes off the ball to look for the wall, but then ends up out of position to make the play. While he doesn't overrun the ball this time, he looks hesitant to get near the wall to make this catch https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=ffd7c005-f1ff-3229-9196-e0d74c9d1d1d . And then we have an awkward attempt at the wall on a ball he had plenty of time to get to https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=22377df2-130a-366c-a42a-0aa0e89b3268 , but an early jump leaves him in a bad spot to catch the ball.
This brings us to his worst play of the season https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=a0e8722d-f542-3f69-a5ec-61595e4d88fc . This ball had a 99% catch probability, 5.2 seconds to cover 83 feet. While we don't get to see his reaction, it doesn't really matter. He effectively jogs in towards the ball, overruns it, then tries to slide to slow down, and the ball lands behind him. It was somewhat windy that evening, with wind gusts reaching 23 mph.
While I won't link to all of them, going down the list of other >50% catch probability balls that end up as hits, the issues almost always come at the catch point. While a bad jump can make a catch seem harder than it should be, many are balls that should be caught on the run or before making contact with the wall, but which Julio ends up turning into a sliding attempt or an awkward "afraid-of-the-wall" type of attempt.
**tl;dr** Julio's underlying defensive stats appear about the same as last year, but he has turned a number of easy catches into hits by attempting awkward or ill-advised catch motions that result in balls bouncing off his glove or landing when he is in a bad position.
#sport
In 2025, Julio Rodriguez was the 6th best defender in CF by both OAA (10) and DRS (9). While not in the tier of the elite CF defenders (PCA, Cedanne Rafaela, Victor Scott, Jacob Young), he was clearly a plus defender out there. The results were similar in 2024 (8 OAA, 3 DRS) and in 2023 (11 OAA, -5 DRS?). Over that entire time frame, from 2023-2025, he graded out as the 6th best defender in CF.
In 2026, he's ranked as the worst CF defender by OAA (-5), and 7th worst by DRS (-4).
So what happened?
Before we start diving in, I should add that, while defensive stats take ~3 years to stabilize when evaluating a player's true talent level, they do a pretty good job at telling us what has already happened. I don't think Julio turned into a bad defender overnight. It would take a lot more innings to tell if that is the case, but by both the eye test and the stats, he's been bad this year.
When trying to figure out what is happening with a player on defense, Statcast is the place to start. Julio has slowed down a little bit from last year, from a 29.2 ft/s spring speed down to 28.7 ft/s. He's still a plus runner (88th percentile), but has slowed down from his elite speed days in his early career. Losing a little speed will hurt, but 88th percentile sprint speed is still plenty to be a good to great CF defender.
Then perhaps he's getting bad reads on fly balls all of a sudden? But again, he's been pretty in line with his career norms this season. His reaction has always been meh, but both his burst and his routes have been pluses. These numbers are all in line with what he did last year, although, like his sprint speed, they are down from his highs in 2023/24.
So he's getting roughly the same jump on the ball and has roughly the same speed to get there. Last year, he was 0 or positive in run value moving every direction. This year, he's 0 or negative in every direction. So this also isn't a case of being bad at one type of batted ball and then getting an inordinate amount of those hit with the early-season small sample size constraints.
That generally covers all the main checks for significant defensive changes, so what gives? Let's take a look at some of the individual plays that have cost him the most so far.
These first four are all 95% catch probabilities.
While we don't get to see the jump, it must've been pretty bad to be this far away from a ball that was supposed to be an easy catch https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=7f8d6b50-1ec0-305e-9619-9c7a1caa496a .
These next three plays are all pretty similar, with Julio moving backwards and near(ish) the wall. Here https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=2c3e9285-a6aa-37a5-9e2f-efddaef97c86 we can see him overrun the ball and try to twist and catch, a play he has made a few times this season (and probably should never have had to). He takes his eyes off the ball to look for the wall, but then ends up out of position to make the play. While he doesn't overrun the ball this time, he looks hesitant to get near the wall to make this catch https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=ffd7c005-f1ff-3229-9196-e0d74c9d1d1d . And then we have an awkward attempt at the wall on a ball he had plenty of time to get to https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=22377df2-130a-366c-a42a-0aa0e89b3268 , but an early jump leaves him in a bad spot to catch the ball.
This brings us to his worst play of the season https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=a0e8722d-f542-3f69-a5ec-61595e4d88fc . This ball had a 99% catch probability, 5.2 seconds to cover 83 feet. While we don't get to see his reaction, it doesn't really matter. He effectively jogs in towards the ball, overruns it, then tries to slide to slow down, and the ball lands behind him. It was somewhat windy that evening, with wind gusts reaching 23 mph.
While I won't link to all of them, going down the list of other >50% catch probability balls that end up as hits, the issues almost always come at the catch point. While a bad jump can make a catch seem harder than it should be, many are balls that should be caught on the run or before making contact with the wall, but which Julio ends up turning into a sliding attempt or an awkward "afraid-of-the-wall" type of attempt.
**tl;dr** Julio's underlying defensive stats appear about the same as last year, but he has turned a number of easy catches into hits by attempting awkward or ill-advised catch motions that result in balls bouncing off his glove or landing when he is in a bad position.
#sport
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