Not only does Hedges have the game’s best defensive stats, he plays the toughest defensive position. Nobody else was over 30, and only six other players were over 20. Last year, he racked up 31.8 fielding runs above average (FRAA) in just 120 games. Hedges is a stupendous defensive catcher, probably the best in baseball. Certainly both Hedges and the Padres would rather he not roll out one of the five worst OBPs in baseball, but he is an above-average regular even if he does.
Hedges, on the other hand, is a good player. But in general, hitters in the same neighborhood as Hedges aren’t very good overall players in the present. They’re either guys who have performed much better in the past, young players who are expected to improve, or in Odor’s case, an uncomfortable mixture of the two. One difference between Hedges and most of the players below him is that those other players aren’t expected to be there. You’ll find a lot of familiar names below Hedges on that 2017 wRC+ leaderboard: Alcides Escobar, Rougned Odor, Ian Desmond, Alex Gordon, Dansby Swanson, Billy Hamilton, Matt Wieters. That isn’t unique, even among everyday players. It’s an extra-bases-or-bust hitting profile. The problem is that last year he had the 29th-highest strikeout rate, 41st-lowest walk rate, and 26th-lowest BABIP out of those 287 players. Hedges is 2-for-24 this year, but both of his hits have gone for extra bases. 183, was 137th out of 287 players with 300 PA, one spot behind Corey Seager, and 15th out of 33 catchers.
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When Hedges makes contact, he hits for power - his ISO last year. Nine of those 304 players are pitchers, and while none of them has better career batting numbers than Hedges, Arizona’s Zack Greinke is only one spot behind him on the career wRC+ leaderboard. For his career, Hedges has a wRC+ of 54, which is 292nd out of the 304 players currently on active rosters with at least 400 career PAs. The closest thing in contemporary baseball is Padres catcher Austin Hedges, who isn’t the worst hitter in baseball, but he isn’t exactly Aaron Judge, either: Last year Hedges posted a wRC+ of 71 in 417 plate appearances, 271st out of the 287 players who batted at least 300 times. (Also only in fiction do you get characters named Adam Starblind and Guert Affenlight.) The Division III first-round position player prospect doesn’t exist in real life, nor does the mysterious world-class defender with no other baseball skills. That last stage of Skrimshander’s life is something we see in baseball from time to time, but the other two exist only in fiction.
And third, as a broken wreck of a man after he gets the yips and loses the ability to throw.
Second, after years of training, as an all-around Division III college star bound for the first round of the MLB draft. Chad Harbach’s novel The Art of Fielding follows the life of a college baseball player named Henry Skrimshander through three stages of his life: first, as a South Dakota teenager who’s developed, more or less on his own and without anyone noticing, into a world-class defensive shortstop.
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