Navigate to Baseball Savant’s outs above average (OAA) leaderboard and you’ll see a familiar face atop the rankings: Harrison Bader. The 24-year-old has found his name in national headlines because of his stellar defensive play.
To put into context how good Bader has been, the only other outfielder with 20 OAA is the Braves’ Ender Inciarte. You could argue Bader has been more impressive than Inciarte because the Cardinal has seen 143 less opportunities in the outfield.
The OAA metric is cumulative, adding and subtracting catch probability values based on whether an outfielder made play or not.