Colorado Rockies: José Iglesias is Raimel Tapia 2.0

What do José Iglesias and Raimel Tapia look like defensively?

Defensively, the metrics say that Colorado Rockies outfielder Raimel Tapia was far superior to José Iglesias in 2021.

• Iglesias: -22 Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), -1.4 dWAR, -6.1 UZR, 0 Outs Above Average (OAA)
• Tapia: 8 DRS, 0.3 dWAR, 4.1 UZR, 1 OAA

For Iglesias’ DRS, that was the worst in baseball by a country mile. In fact, make that two country miles, as no other player in the sport had worse than -13 DRS. But he had been much better in previous seasons, whereas Tapia had not been as good.

In fact, from 2019 through 2020, here are their defensive stats.

• Iglesias: 3 DRS, -0.9 dWAR, 6.4 UZR, 17 OAA
• Tapia: -1 DRS, 0.8 dWAR, -2.7 UZR, 4 OAA

Combine 2019 through 2021 and it looks like this:

• Iglesias: -19 DRS, -2.3 dWAR, 0.3 UZR, 17 OAA
• Tapia: 7 DRS, 1.1 dWAR, 1.4 UZR, 5 OAA

So Tapia has a big edge in DRS, a smaller edge in dWAR, a slight edge in UZR, and a large gap in OAA.

Overall, in the last two full seasons (2019 and 2021), Iglesias had an rWAR of 0.3 and an fWAR of 2.4. Tapia had a 0.4 fWAR and a -0.4 fWAR. The metrics say that Tapia is the better defender but with Iglesias and Tapia having identical raw offensive stats, Iglesias has a slight edge since he didn’t play half of his games at Coors Field in 2021.

For Trevor Story both defensively and offensively, his third-most comparable player through his age 28 season is Troy Tulowitzki.

Replacing an All-Star who was is comparable to Tulowitzki and most comparable to Hall of Famer Ernie Banks for a couple of seasons with a replacement-level player or below is going to be a hard thing for Rockies fans to swallow in 2022, especially when they already have a very similar player that could (or should) be riding the bench more often this season because he hasn’t developed enough at the plate.