Wetherholt Makes It Look Easy: A Defensive Case for Rookie of the Year

· Yahoo Sports

KANSAS CITY, MO - JUNE 19: JJ Wetherholt #26 of the St. Louis Cardinals throws during the game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Kansas City Royals at Kauffman Stadium on Friday, June 19, 2026 in Kansas City, Missouri. (Photo by Kyle Rivas/MLB Photos via Getty Images) | MLB Photos via Getty Images

If the season ended today, Sal Stewart is the presumed National League Rookie of the Year. This bothers me. As you may be aware, I am a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals hired a new fellow by the name of JJ Wetherholt to play second base and bat leadoff for them this year. He has really done an excellent job this season. He has done such an excellent job, that if I run over to FanGraphs and look at the leaderboards, I see he has posted more WAR than any other National League rookie. The big problem with JJ’s Rookie of the Year case is that he has racked up value in a less flashy way than the Cincinnati slugger. While Stewart has been smacking home runs, Wetherholt has been getting on base and playing incredible defense.

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Today I want to have some fun and look at some of Wetherholt’s defensive highlights this year through the lens of Outs Above Average (OAA). This metric is one of the primary inputs to FanGraphs’ WAR formula, but it can feel like a bit of a black box. My goal is not to convince you that WAR is perfect or tells the whole story of a player, but rather to connect some visuals to the underlying metrics upon which JJ has built his Rookie of the Year resume. 

While defensive statistics are arguably less accurate than offensive statistics, they are certainly more opaque. You can meander over to Wetherholt’s Baseball Savant profile and note that his OAA on the season is 22, which places him in the 100th percentile. That is pretty good! Here is the definition of OAA per the MLB glossary,

Outs Above Average for infielders takes the following factors into account.

• How far the fielder has to go to reach the ball (“the intercept point”).
• How much time he has to get there.
• How far he then is from the base the runner is heading to.
• On force plays, how fast the batter is, on average. 

The Statcast technology knows where players are positioned, so shifting and positioning do not artificially impact the metric. Statcast tags each ball with a probability of turning into an out. If a player converts a ball with a 93% chance of being an out, they would be awarded 0.07 OAA.

Alright, seems like a good statistic to me, but what does it look like to accrue an out above average? For outfielders, Baseball Savant has a lovely visualization tool. You can hover over a given play to see the catch probability and click directly to a video of the play. Well, it turns out, for infielders, this is not readily available. Fortunately, I found this Fangraphs article where Michael Rosen outlines a very manual workaround to finding play-specific OAA for infielders. 

Using this methodology, you can extract play-level data, including the batter handedness, the home park, the launch speed, and the month in which the play occurred. The problem is that there is no unique identifier, so you have to manually search for plays that match up with those high-level criteria. With these data points, I set out on a scavenger hunt to find a visual representation as to how Wetherholt has managed to accrue 22 OAA. 

Alright, drumroll please: JJ Wetherholt’s top defensive play of the year according to OAA.

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According to Statcast, this play had a less than 1% probability of turning into an out, so Wetherholt received almost a full OAA. To my eye, this looks something closer to a 50/50 chance. The ball was not hit particularly hard (84 mph) and the runner, Lane Thomas, has 91st percentile sprint speed. Wetherholt makes the play look easier than it is with his excellent footwork and quick transfer, but I am still not sure if that looks like his best play of the year. 

Next, let’s take a look at a play that Statcast gave a 26% chance of turning into an out.

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Wetherholt ranged 27 feet to his right and easily threw out a good runner in Ian Happ. I am already seeing a theme emerge. Wetherholt is making plays, particularly to his right, look too easy! For a point of comparison, here is Sal Stewart trying to complete a similar play.

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Now, I know this ended in an error, so it looks worse, but both balls were hit at essentially the same exit velocity and with negative launch angles. Stewart only had to range 20 feet to his right and was clearly at the edge of his range. I know that no one is arguing that Stewart is a better defender than Wetherholt, but I think this comparison helps highlight how easy JJ can make a play look. 

Alright, depending on your view of the difficulty of these first two plays, you may be leaning towards OAA overrating defensive contributions. This eye test cuts both ways, though. This next play only credits JJ with 0.04 OAA.

Here, Wetherholt goes full extension to snag a 92 mph line drive and turn it into a double play. The runner on first, Alex Freeland, seems to agree with me as he is caught about 40 feet away from the bag before he realizes the error of his ways.

This play gave Wetherholt a mere 0.08 OAA.

Wetherholt had to range 18 feet and throw from his knees to get a solid runner in James Wood.

With a nice save from Burleson, Wetherholt converted this 96 mph rocket into an out, but was rewarded with just 0.13 OAA.

Let’s get Masyn Winn a quick cameo. This sweet double play start only gave JJ 0.15 OAA.

This ball was also scorched at 99 mph off the bat. Wetherholt had to range 19 feet to his left and make a spinning throw to start the turn.

Wetherholt isn’t typically allowed on Winn’s side of the field, but here he ranges to the shortstop side of the bag to collect another 0.18 OAA.

Finally is a nice look at Wetherholt coming in on a ball to pick up 0.5 OAA.

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Jake Bauers is a slightly below-average runner, but Wetherholt had to go a long way, 51 feet, to get to this ball and make the play. 

Wetherholt has had his fair share of highlight plays this year, but it has been his incredible consistency that has allowed him to rack up one of the most valuable defensive seasons in baseball. 

Assuming you are bored with watching highlights and would prefer to look at an eye chart, here is a breakdown that illustrates the types of plays that are driving Wetherholt’s defensive value.

This table shows that Wetherholt has had 106 balls hit into his zone with a probability of an out between 0% and 25%. The average expected out was 2%. Wetherholt converted 3% of these plays into outs giving him one OAA on the most difficult opportunities. You can see that he has accrued most of his value by his consistency of performance on balls with a greater than 75% chance of turning into an out. 

Does this compilation of clips convince you that Outs Above Average and WAR are perfect statistics? Of course not! But hopefully it puts a little color behind the season that Wetherholt has put together. I remain convinced that he is the best rookie on the senior circuit. Wetherholt is at 4.4 WAR, with Stewart sitting at 2.6. The gap is even bigger over at Baseball Reference where Wetherholt leads Sal by 2.5 bWAR. 

Yes, I know Sal Stewart has put up a more impressive offensive season than Wetherholt. There is plenty that could be said about each hitter’s home ballpark and the value provided on the base paths, but this really comes down to defense. The argument against Wetherholt is that defensive statistics are more volatile and less precise than offensive statistics, so his WAR contributions can be mentally discounted. I agree with that conceptually as a tiebreaker, but come on. A 1.8 WAR gap is not a rounding error. That is the full season fWAR for Michael Busch! If Wetherholt can come back quickly from his injury, he could still have 15 games to pad his resume, but even if he doesn’t, he has earned the hardware. His defensive consistency and excellence may not be appreciated by Rookie of the Year voters, but it helps win ballgames, which is sort of the whole point.

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