Brady House and Dylan Crews swap roster spots; Photo by Marlene Koenig/TalkNats

At one point two years ago, the Big-3 in D.C. baseball were supposed to be Dylan Crews, James Wood and Brady House. Now the Big-3 are Wood, CJ Abrams and Daylen Lile. The right move was made by Paul Toboni to send Crews for some remedial work at Triple-A. After six weeks, Crews is back and House has been sent to Triple-A to hopefully fix his flaws. Lile went through that drill last year, and it was a short stint in Triple-A.

On Monday morning, we wrote an article about tweaks to the roster. We didn’t expect a day later that Toboni would actually make changes. Good for him. House was a main topic and so was Wiemer. Good for Toboni to make those moves. But what doesn’t make sense is bringing in Andres Chaparro for Wiemer, since Wiemer’s bruise on his hand was not an issue. Essentially swapping Crews for House makes sense if the goal at the very least was to improve total team defense, while House figures things out in Siberia Rochester. But right now, we don’t know if that is the plan.

Let’s go back and revisit the defense using OAA, unearned runs, and better analytics to incrementally make this team better. We know that House was a major problem on defense. His eight errors are more than he had all of last season, and that .905 fielding percentage basically means he was committing one error in every 10 chances which is awful. He’s better than that, and hopefully they can fix him at Triple-A.

The Nats lead all of baseball with 41 unearned runs, and that equates to .837 free runs per game. When a game goes into extra innings, like on Monday, it was the unearned runs that were the difference. But beyond unearned runs, the first defensive play wasn’t made last night on a grounder past Abrams that was ruled a single. The next batter smashes a home run, and before you warmed your seat in Nats Park, the score was 2-0. Too many plays aren’t being made and that is why OAA matters beyond what is ruled an error. Abrams is technically a worse defender than House per OAA. But Toboni isn’t ready to move Abrams from shortstop.

If you concede that you are stuck with Abrams at shortstop, how can you improve the defense around him? Well, House is off the roster. Jorbit Vivas, as of now, might be the primary third baseman, and he should be better defensively.

While Wood is probably better defensive than the -5 OAA rating due to those great catches at and over the wall, his lateral movement left-and-right is not good. Crews is an above average defender in right field, and Lile has turned into a good left fielder. Analytically, why not go with an outfield of Jacob Young CF, Crews RF, and Lile LF. Move Wood to the DH role, and that should help his legs. Your infield concession is Abrams stays at shortstop, with Nasim Nunez at second base, Vivas at third base, and Luis Garcia Jr. at first base.

Those defensive configurations might change a lot in fewer errors, fewer unearned runs, and of course fewer hits by improving OAA. Now you only have two negative defenders and Garcia’s defense (-2 OAA) is improving at first base.

Hopefully this is Toboni’s master plan in creating better defense that leads to better pitching and fewer runs scored. As you are probably aware, the Nats have given up the most runs (290) in baseball and not all of that is bad defense. The pitching of course has to be better. The team ERA is second worst in baseball at 5.06. But better defense will help some — not all. Toboni has to figure out how to make the pitching better as his next set of moves.