Oneil Cruz great potential to star in center field

This story was excerpted from Alex Stumpf’s Pirates Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

PITTSBURGH — The Pirates announced a major shakeup to their defensive alignment this week, sharing that they plan to move Oneil Cruz from shortstop to center field. We’ve heard from Bucs manager Derek Shelton, general manager Ben Cherington and Cruz about the change, and all parties seem amicable about the decision. That leaves just one underlying question:

We’ve seen it happen across the league in the past. The Padres’ Fernando Tatis Jr. is the reigning Platinum Glove Award winner, and he made the change last year. On Tuesday, Cruz said that he planned to reach out to Tatis for advice, and at the very least, he said all the right things after having a few days to digest the news.

“If that’s the move, I’m going to try to do my best every day to become one of the best,” Cruz said about becoming an outfielder, via interpreter and coach Stephen Morales.

So can Cruz pull off a Tatis-like transition and be elite? Or will he at least become a quality center fielder? He has some tools that suggest so.

Cruz’s two greatest physical attributes as a fielder are his sprint speed and his arm strength. Looking at the latter first, Cruz has averaged 95.6 mph on his top five percent of throws this season, which is the sixth strongest of any position player in the Major Leagues. Baseball Savant measures the top 10% of throws for outfielders, but the only center fielders who can top that are Brenton Doyle of the Rockies (97.7 mph) and Colton Cowser of the Orioles (95.9 mph).

Playing the outfield is obviously different from the infield for a multitude of reasons, and the opportunity to use your arm strength is one. On the dirt, an infielder may only have time for a crow hop to get extra zip on a throw. Outfielders can get a running start to catch a fly ball or have their momentum carry them as they charge in on a ball. The top end of Cruz’s throws as an infielder already compares well to any outfielder, and it should remain one of the best in the game.

“The one thing we are going to run into with Cruz is he has a weapon in his arm and he’s going to want to use it at times,” Shelton said. “There will be times where we will probably try to bring it back a little bit. I would rather that be the case than having to push him the other way.”

Despite being one of the fastest players on the team, Cruz’s initial burst to get to travel five feet is pretty pedestrian. On average, it takes him 0.55 seconds to travel that first five feet. Of the 20 Pirates who have had the most competitive runs, Cruz ranks 11th, tied with Rowdy Tellez. Obviously it’s a small sample size, but those first two steps are vital for infielders.

A lot of that is Cruz’s body. He’s 6-foot-7, and he has packed on plenty of muscle, which is a lot more mass that he has to try to get to full speed with.

After that initial burst, Cruz is as fast as almost anyone. It takes him 3.3 seconds to travel the last 85 feet in a 90-foot sprint. Only Ji Hwan Bae has a faster time in those last 85 feet on the Pirates (3.29 seconds). If you want to maximize Cruz’s speed, chasing down fly balls and giving him a large canvas to work with in center field could do it.

In smaller spaces like shortstop, reaction distance and bursts towards short distances are more important. To draw a football comparison, if your tall wide receiver has top-end speed, would you rather have him run deep or try to stick him in the slot with shorter, more precise routes?

With Cruz, you almost have to go to other sports to try to make comparisons. He was a unicorn at shortstop, and he worked as hard as anyone to try to stick at that position. It was just always an uphill climb for him to be a quality defender there.

In center field, Cruz’s best defensive skills could be, theoretically, fully leveraged. There’s obviously some disappointment on his end that he couldn’t make it work at shortstop, but if he wants to become one of the best center fielders in the game, he has the potential and the opportunity to do so.