Weird Spencer Torkelson stat proves that defensive metrics are deeply flawed

A few weeks ago, Dan Dickerson and Dan Petry took a second during the Tigers' broadcast to extol the virtues of Spencer Torkelson's work at first base. Despite being the worst first baseman in the league by Statcast's Outs Above Average, Dickerson and Petry argued that he passed the eye test, and it was rare to see him make a misstep there. They do watch him play 162 games a season, so they knew better than most.

It's not just Statcast, though. Fielding Bible's Defensive Runs Saved has Tork at -6, tied with Alec Burleson and Jonathan Aranda for the second-worst among first baseman with over 1,000 innings logged. Only Josh Naylor has been worse.

Many Tigers fans too, though, see little sense in Torkelson's poor showing according to advanced metrics. He's not perfect, but does pass the eye test more often than not. Will he ever win a Gold Glove? Probably not, but he's an overall serviceable first baseman.

The problem might be that evaluators and statisticians just haven't really figured out how to evaluate defense, though they continue to try to crack the code.

Statcast's latest stat is First Base Receiving, which scores Torkelson decently well but still among the bottom-half of qualified first baseman. Only problem is: it's really hard to see how they're quantifying this.

New Statcast stat is another mark against Spencer Torkelson's defense, but it also doesn't make much sense to Tigers fans

It's hard not to wonder if we may be overcomplicating this unnecessarily. Of course, it matters whether or not a first baseman is able to make a close play — and Mitchell was eventually ruled safe after a challenge in the clip above — but Torkelson extended himself decently, Mitchell is one of the fastest guys in the league, and McGonigle's throw wasn't a dart. Sometimes a guy just beats out an infield grounder.

And this isn't to say that we shouldn't criticize our players when they deserve it, but advanced defensive metrics are still somewhat convoluted and are still being figured out. It makes sense; hitting and pitching are easier to define and evaluate. First base is one of the lowest-leverage and least physically demanding positions on the field, which will make it even harder to quantify. We know what bad defense looks like, but it's much harder to put real numbers to it that actually make sense.

Torkelson might be the poster child for that conflict, but as long as he's not allowing throws to sail past him into the dugout, he's pretty decent in our book.

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