Oakland Athletics 2016 Preview: Shortstop Marcus Semien
Oakland Athletics’ Marcus Semien looks to improve his defense in 2016 after a horrible 2015
In 2015, the Oakland Athletics decided to award rookie Marcus Semien with the starting shortstop position. As many A’s fans know, this decision did not favor the Athletics. Semien was terrible defensively – especially during the first half of the year, and he committed the most errors in Major League Baseball by the time the season ended.
It must be noted that Semien never got too discouraged despite performing so poorly. His defense did improve during the second half thanks to infield guru Ron Washington. Thankfully, Semien’s offense was better than his defense. He did ok for his rookie season and hit .257 with 15 homers and 45 RBI.
Even though the Oakland Athletics acquired their former shortstop Jed Lowrie this offseason, the A’s still plan to keep Semien at short and move Lowrie to second. Manager Bob Melvin has already praised Semien this spring for his hard work and accountability when it comes to his previous defensive mistakes. If Semien continues to work with Washington to improve his fielding skills, Semien will be a quality shortstop for the Oakland Athletics in 2016.
Now that Semien is more confident in his fielding abilities at short, he will hopefully be able to focus a little bit more on his offense. When he was a prospect, he was projected to have a strong bat once he move up to the major league level. There were some glimpses of that power bat last year, but not enough to convince the fans that it will become a consistent force in the lineup.
Additionally, when Semien was in the minors, it was reported that he had a great understanding of the strike zone and a good ability to get on base. During his minor league career, he had an average .374 OBP and it was even above .400 for parts of 2013. Throughout his short career in the big leagues thus far, he only has a .304 on-base percentage. Perhaps he can work on getting that number up this season.
Overall, Semien will be better this upcoming season purely because his defense is more reliable. He has put in the time to improve this quality of his game and his hard work has paid off. Now, he just needs to focus on becoming an all around better baseball player this year.
Bold Prediction: Marcus Semien will make less than 15 errors at shortstop in 2016.
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