5 Facts About Marco Scutaro

1. Marco Scutaro was signed for his defense, and while he wasn't bad last season, he certainly wasn't spectacular. He ranked only 87th overall in RZR in 2009, and just 17th among shortstops. Among UZR, he ranked only 66th, and just 14th among shortstops. He ranked just 14th in UZR/150 games among shortstops. Among shortstops, he was just 11th in Range Factor per nine innings and 10th in Range Factor per game. He ranked 15th among shortstops in double play runs above average. In terms of FRAA1 however, Scutaro scored fourth among shortstops and 28th overall. Finally, Scutaro fared better in 2008, at least in terms of FRAA1, as he was +11 in 2009 and +30 in 2008.

2. Last year, Scutaro's best overall season, he ranked 32nd overall in WARP1, with a total of 5.92. The only Red Sox player ranked higher was Jon Lester, at 28th with a WARP1 of 6.3.

3. For his career, Scutaro has hit righties better than lefties, a rarity for right-handed batters. However, much of that is owed to trouble against lefties earlier in his career. From 2002-2005, he hit only .221 against lefties, though with just 249 at-bats across four years, it wasn't a very large sample. In the past four seasons, he nearly doubled that total, as he amassed 446 at-bats against lefties and did much better, making himself about equal against lefties and righties:

..vs. LHP.. ...vs. RHP...
Years AB AVG AB AVG
'02-'05 249 .221 698 .268
'06-'09 446 .267 1348 .272

4. The Rogers Centre was not kind to Scutaro. His past two seasons in Toronto, he hit .242/.342/.370 at home, giving him a .712 home OPS, and .307/.381/.398 on the road, giving him a .779 road OPS.

5. Scutaro makes hard contact in the air more than most shortstops. In the past two seasons, 12 shortstops had 500 plate appearances or more in both seasons - Yuniesky Betancourt, Orlando Cabrera, Stephen Drew, Yunel Escobar, Christian Guzman, Derek Jeter, Hanley Ramirez, Edgar Renteria, Jimmy Rollins, Scutaro, Miguel Tejada and Ryan Theriot. Of the 12, Scutaro ranked second in both fly ball percentage and line drive percentage, and he ranked 11th in ground ball percentage. He also hit into the fifth fewest pop-ups. 52.15% of Scutaro's batted balls the past two seasons were either fly balls or line drives, which also ranks second among the 12 shortstops, behind only Stephen Drew. So if Scutaro can learn to pull the ball more frequently (he has only pulled the ball in 25% of his overall career plate appearances) he could really rack up the doubles at Fenway Park.