Jake Cronenworth is having an excellent year. The Padres’ second baseman was a force as a rookie, posting a 125 wRC+ and a 1.4 fWAR over the shortened 2020 season, and he’s been just as good this year, already turning in 3.2 fWAR behind a 123 wRC+.
Now, things are about to change.
As part of the Padres’ acquisition of Adam Frazier yesterday, Cronenworth figures to be spending a lot more time at first base, with Frazier replacing the struggling Eric Hosmer in the lineup. This won’t affect his hitting. It’s unlikely to make a significant difference to his defensive value, one would imagine. And yet Jake Cronenworth, by virtue of playing first base, is suddenly going to be less valuable, at least measuring by WAR.
Why’s that? WAR takes position into account. WAR knows that there are better-hitting first basemen than there are second-basemen, an effect so significant that some back of the envelope math says Cronenworth’s 3.2 fWAR would be just 2.5 fWAR or so were he a first baseman, and that’s assuming his defensive value stays constant. That’s back of the envelope (extrapolated from finding first basemen—Jared Walsh, Trey Mancini, José Abreu, Ty France—with similar offensive numbers to Cronenworth and doing some linear stuff with the defensive piece), so it might be off by a few notches, but that’s a significant decrease in WAR!
Will this affect Cronenworth negatively going forward? It’s possible. It’s possible he’ll become a borderline Hall of Famer, say, and that a lesser WAR from getting shunted over to first base will cause some voters to leave him off their ballots. But the most likely answer is that it won’t affect him much at all. The numbers are close enough, offensive stats are so easy to compare, and when it comes to things like arbitration, Cronenworth should benefit from the fact that he at least could adequately play second base, even if he isn’t actively doing it anymore for the Padres (or isn’t doing it as much—Frazier can play some in the outfield, so Cronenworth will probably still get some starts at second). But it’s worth remembering how position-centric WAR is, and what that does to guys’ WAR when they play an easier position due to nothing more than the composition of their team’s roster, especially as teams at least seem to (I haven’t looked at number on this) get more adept at moving guys around the field.
