Oneil Cruz working on defense in center field

PITTSBURGH — The early returns for Oneil Cruz‘s move to center field have generally been positive, seeing him learn to take advantage of his speed and arm to create opportunities he may not have had at shortstop. His defensive work had even graded out well despite learning on the job, with Baseball Savant grading him as +1 Outs Above Average entering play Saturday.

Saturday was the first time in his 13 games in center that Cruz seemed to struggle at his new position. He came up empty on a dive on a straight-ahead line drive by Adam Frazier in the fifth, turning a single into a triple. In the seventh, he had trouble tracking down a Bobby Witt Jr. fly ball, which turned into a double.

Both of those hits resulted in runs, and the Pirates would end up losing to the Royals at PNC Park, 5-1.

“I think when we moved him out there, we said there’s going to be bumps in the road and I think we saw a little bit of it today,” said manager Derek Shelton. “Unfortunately, a couple of plays that ended up resulting in runs. But yeah, it’s going to be a situation where there’s plays that he’s got to learn how to make.”

“I’m good in center field now,” Cruz said before the game, via interpreter and coach Stephen Morales. “I’m not coming back to shortstop. I feel like out there I feel comfortable now.”

Cruz has had the right attitude, and the right equipment even, using a Michael A. Taylor glove in his first few weeks there. (And he intends to keep using it, because after all, “if there’s no problem with it, I’ll use it.”) In his first handful of games, he’s done well going side to side, making multiple running catches that had roughly 50% catch probabilities, according to Statcast, while standing up. It’s a taste of what he could potentially do at his new position.

On Saturday, he showed he still needs to work on coming in on the ball.

The Frazier triple was another one of those 50-50 balls that he took a risk on and missed. Leading off an inning, it wasn’t necessarily a bad risk to take. The Witt ball, though, is a teaching moment. He took several steps backwards and seemed to have trouble reading the spin at first, eventually moving in late and not being able to snag it in time.

“It looked like he broke back, and then didn’t have the ability to recover,” Shelton said. “Those are the balls that he’s going to have to learn, with his ability to go back, that he can probably freeze a little bit and see where it’s at before he takes the initial couple drop steps that he took.”

Those batted balls made Mitch Keller’s line of six innings pitched, four runs allowed (three earned) look a little worse than it probably should have been, but it comes with the territory of learning a new position. The coaching staff has liked how he has attacked center field, but teachable moments like Saturday are inevitable.

“He’s been working on it,” Shelton said. “Again, there’s going to be plays he has to learn how to make, and that’s where we’re at right now. And that’s what happens when you take a middle infielder and put him in the outfield in center field.”