I remember everyone telling me about Arias’ great athleticism, and wondering why he had so many errors. And then people telling me that he can get to more balls so he has more chances of getting more errors.

That is very false though, its just a stupid argument.

I’m going to go next Wednesday for that reason alone, to see for myself.

As was talked about in other threads you cannot simply look at the total number of erros and say he is or isn’t a good fielder. Same way you can’t look at Franklyn Germans ERA and say he is a good reliever. German allowed alot of runs that did not count on his ledger. Elvis could be making alot of errors that shouldn’t count on his ledger.

If Elvis is making these errors on simple ground balls where he is booting them or throwing wide or high then yeah his defense needs to be questioned. But if these errors are coming on balls he gets to that other SS don’t get to and in the effort to make a spectacular play he makes a wild throw I think you can chalk that up to him being young. The mental aspect of the game will come as he matures and ages. Just like the power.

There are several people who look at his lack of slugging and say he can’t hit. I would say the fact that he is 19 years old and is holding a .280 avg in AA is pretty impressive. He has a decent eye at the plate that should only improve. He has speed on the bases and as he learns how to steal bases his % will increase. His body is most likely stil growing so its very likely he will improve at the plate and even if he only gets to gap power if his defense is top notch you can take a non power hitting SS. We as Ranger fans have been kinda spoiled the last several years by our SS’s. Arod was Arod and mashed the ball all over. Then you follow that up with arguably one of the best hitters(overall not just power) this franchise has ever had. And in the field he should continue to learn and will make better mental judgements. Instead of trying to make that spectacular throw from deep in the hole off his back foot and it sail wide of 1B and the runner goes to 3rd maybe he will just hold the ball and the runner stays at 1B.

i’ve seen him a few times, and he’s not as bad as the errors make him out to be. he has great range and has made a few really nice plays that i’ve seen.

How good are minor league infields? I wouldn’t think that there is a big budget for groundskeeping.

Andrus has fantastic range. This is why scouts are excited about his defense. Most players at age 19 playing professionally are making a lot of errors. The difference with Andrus is that he is making them at AA instead of Low-A.

As a comparison, Colorado’s Chris Nelson (SS for Tulsa) is considered very athletic and has great range, better defender than hitter… has 18 errors already… and he’s older.

Renteria, who I have compared Andrus to in the past, had 33 errors in Double-A at the age of 19 and only 11 the next season in the big leagues in 106 games. And on just a pure range factor number (not the best measure) Andrus has better range at Double-A than Renteria showed.

Andrus will be fine.

will have a better career than Elvis, book it.

who make an error every 3 games or so become good defenders in the majors. Ive seen some that were reputed to be good defenders when they were in the minors though.

to think…

If Arias was this highly touted when we first got him…

Was he?

It was not an error. They scored it as a hit at the ballpark. Elvis was playing pretty deep, when a hard hit ball hit his glove. In my opinion he kept it from going to the outfield.

A lot of errors in minor league games can be attributed to scorekeepers. I’ve been at every RoughRiders home game (except the first 2 and the first half of an April double-header), and I’ve seen errors given on plays that aren’t even error-like. In some cases, the coaching staff makes sure the scoring error is corrected. Obviously, this doesn’t account for 15 errors…

Defensively, Andrus is very agile. He flashes great range. He makes accurate, off-balance throws, and is acrobatic.

He makes many spectacular plays look easy, but sometimes appears to relax a little too much on more softly hit ground balls. At least a couple of his errors have come from sitting back and waiting on the ball (as opposed to charging it), allowing it the chance to eat him up. The only throwing error of his that comes to mind was in the 7th inning of the Harrison no-hitter.

It’s definitely safe to say that Andrus’ error total is not an accurate indicator of how Andrus has played at short this season (at least for home games).