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Hitting measures are driven by objective facts, while fielding tends to rely on estimates on top of estimates.The uncertainty in measuring fielding is compounded how few plays a season there are for a given player to demonstrate his ability.While 62 plays represents a fairly staggering fielding performance, it is also only one play every 24 innings or so.In 2011, the leader was Braves second baseman Omar Infante, who converted 58 more plays than the average player, equivalent to one extra play every 22 innings.Those added plays, although infrequent, are quite meaningful.Making an extra play in the infield is approximately equivalent to hitting a double at the plate.The rule of thumb is that two to three years of fielding data is as reliable as one season of hitting data.Of course, by the time you get enough information to make an educated guess at the player’s defensive talent, he’s gotten older and your conclusion no longer applies.It’s much more likely to be the product of uncertain data, or the influences of a small sample.Batting value is much more consistent from year to year.In terms of judging whether a player is a good addition for a team, it’s less useful.As we learned earlier, teams at different levels of competitiveness have different requirements for putting games in the W column.For good teams, it’s more important to keep runs off the board than to put them there yourself.For bad teams, adding offense should be imperative.It’s Money That MattersAs you can see, it’s difficult just to get started.Adjust for the uncertainty around fielding.Look at your team’s runs scored and runs allowed, and pick the appropriate player.Alas, it’s not that simple, particularly when we bring these ideas into the real world.As outside observers we can measure a player’s value without looking at his salary, but a general manager doesn’t have that luxury.Money has to play a part in the evaluation.The good is priced at the point where the supply curve and demand curve intersect.Now do the same for the bats off the bench.It’s a lot easier to name the good gloves, isn’t it?That’s because hitting talent is more scarce than fielding talent.Strangeglove in the field, but there are a lot more players who can field at a major league level.Most don’t get a chance because they can’t hit well enough to earn a spot.This spread of talent informs our choice of replacement level.The fact that there is some justification for paying more for offense than for defense doesn’t mean that teams are necessarily doing a great job at it.Over the past five years or so, we’ve seen a fair number of players with flashy offensive numbers get contracts that seem like tremendous overpays.Gaby Sanchez, 2011Recently, however, this overvaluation of offense has seen a correction.As teams have gotten better at measuring defense and recognizing its effect on pitchers, they’ve put more of an emphasis on signing players who can contribute in the field as well as with the bat.In the past, general managers might have overlooked their negative performance in the field, but the sluggers were paid according to their overall value, and not just their value at the plate.Leveraging Awareness of DefenseAs the cost of defensive skill appears to be rising, is there an opportunity for teams to be creative with their rosters and perhaps uncover a new competitive advantage?Let’s look at the 2011 Tampa Bay Rays.Waiting in the wings was top prospect Desmond Jennings, who opened the campaign in the minors due to some combination of needing more seasoning and the Rays wanting to keep his arbitration clock from running.The middle infield was as shallowly staffed as the outfield was deep.Shortstop was a particular problem.Incumbent Reid Brignac slumped badly in April and never recovered.The club fell back on two journeymen, Sean Rodriguez and Elliot Johnson, neither of whom added much at the plate, with the result that on the season Rays’ shortstops combined to hit an execrable .193/.256/.282, over nine runs below replacement level.Center fielder Upton had been sent to the outfield in 2007 after failing in trials at shortstop and third base by fielding .901 and .908, respectively.What if the Rays had tried to solve their shortstop problem by moving Upton back to the infield, hoping his bat would make up for his miserable defense?In 2011, Upton was 32 runs above average offensively and two runs above average in center field.Let’s assume our hypothetical Upton would have delivered the same offensive performance in the same amount of playing time.That’s not the entire calculation.If Upton had moved to shortstop, the Rays would essentially have been be trading Brignac, Johnson, and Rodriguez for Jennings.Making that move on Opening Day would likely have gained the Rays at least two wins, meaning they wouldn’t have needed Dan Johnson’s heroics in game 162 to clinch a playoff berth.And if Upton was as bad or worse at shortstop as he used to be?For a more outlandish example, what if the Red Sox decided to move Manny Ramirez to shortstop in 2007 to get Jacoby Ellsbury more playing time?Ramirez had a down year by his standards, but still contributed over three wins with the bat.How bad could Manny be at shortstop before the move cost the team?Moving from left field to shortstop would have added about 12 runs to his value, which means he would have been just as valuable overall as a –24 fielder at shortstop.It’s entirely possible he’d have been that bad there, too, but it would have been fun to see him try.Moving players on paper is fun, but in the real world these shifts would likely have further consequences, including demoralization of a player who daily embarrassed himself on defense and a rebellion by the pitching staff.Thought experiments like these are mainly useful to illustrate the relative value of offense and defense at player level.But average isn’t the only number we’re interested in.The spread of talent is extremely important to properly valuing a skill.Clearly there is a lot more distance between the best hitter and the average hitter than between the best fielder and the average fielder.And in many cases, you might be able to extract more overall value by putting your batting star at a position he might be less than suited for if it enabled you to replace a weak link with a strong one.The goal isn’t to maximize the value of any one player, but to maximize the value of the team, which is easier to do by overweighting offense.At the end of the day, general managers are looking for how best to improve their teams while staying within their budget.At most, trading off offense and defense should be a secondary factor in a decision.With the current state of affairs, we’re much more confident in our ability to measure a player’s value at the plate than with the glove.Because of that added confidence, and because it’s harder to find a good hitter, teams put a premium on offensive talent.Of course, whether a team can find a good deal on a defensive player or on an offensive player depends on market forces more than anything else.Based on which players are available, and which way the market is trending, offense might cost more than defense, or vice versa.This is because journeyman utility player is a description that largely negates the possibility of hope and also of disappointment.For a long, long while, that ranking would serve as the apex of his professional career.The club that initially drafted him, the Pittsburgh Pirates, let him go unprotected in the 2003 Rule 5 draft, perhaps because it had become disenchanted with Bautista after a temper tantrum involving a trash can cost him 10 weeks on the disabled list with a broken hand.The Baltimore Orioles bit, starting the young infielder on a bizarre odyssey through five organizations in a single season.Because Rule 5 picks must spend their entire season in the major leagues, they are a burden to teams that must sacrifice a roster spot to a player who is usually unprepared to play in the majors.When an injury crunch comes, they are usually the first players sacrificed.Bautista was no exception.That same month, after just 12 games and 15 plate appearances, they sold his rights to the Kansas City Royals, who gave him a quick look and traded him to the New York Mets.The Mets held him for a good 10 seconds before he ended up flipped back to the Pirates again.Between the broken hand and the roster shuffle, he had played little in two seasons.The Pirates would require him to spend most of a third year in the minors reestablishing that he could play.Bautista hit only .241/.329/.403 in 400 games with the Bucs.I knew it was probably going to be my last chance to be a starter on a team, Bautista told the Toronto Star in the midst of his 2011 season.My time was running out to prove that I was a capable starter.If I didn’t prove that, then I was going to fall into a backup, utility role.And that was something I definitely did not want to happen.At first, Bautista didn’t find any more success in Toronto than he had anywhere else.Bautista’s 2010 season hit like a lightning strike.He hit 54 home runs, five shy of his career total to date.His walk rate increased nearly 20 percent.Bautista’s 2010 season was unprecedented.Bautista showed the largest improvement of anybody who meets these qualifications.Looking at the other nine seasons, in all but one case this season represents the best season of that player’s career.Robin Yount manages to avoid that by appearing on this list twice, but even so, these represent the best two seasons of his career.Both kinds of players tended to regress after their banner year.Taken as a group, there were 77 players who met our criteria, posted an improve score of at least 20, and played in at least one more season after their banner year.While they continue to be better than what they were, as a group they fall well short of the improvement they had shown before.In fact, only seven players showed a greater improvement the second year than they had the first.Once we round out to three decimal places, two of these players show no meaningful increase whatsoever.The closest anyone comes to Bautista in terms of the magnitude of the year two increase is the juiced Ken Caminiti, and he is still dwarfed by the magnitude of Bautista’s evolution.So how did he do it?But not in the way you might think.One day last summer, Dwayne Murphy, the Blue Jays’ hitting coach, said he approached Bautista and brought him over to a mirror.There, Murphy demonstrated Bautista’s swing, so long and looping that pitchers routinely overpowered him with fastballs on the inner half of the plate.Murphy told Bautista his swing needed to be shorter and more direct.Bautista took that to heart, and started working on it that day.He’s always had power, Murphy said Saturday morning in the hallway outside the Jays’ clubhouse at Target Field.He just needed a couple of tweaks.If the changes in process were mere tweaks, the changes to his output certainly were not.Many have cast aspersions upon Bautista’s change.This is to be expected in a world conditioned by Bonds, McGwire, and the rest, but it doesn’t follow that because some unexpected accomplishments were tainted, they all are.Indeed, though Cox dismissed as too funny assertions that steroids can’t help a baseball player hit home runs, help is a vague term that does not convey the complexity of baseball in the steroids period.Nor can we cite those same environmental factors in Bautista’s rise, as offense, as measured in runs and home runs, has dropped off across the league rather than risen.