Everybody knows that Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson is going to be the whole package, but he isn’t quite there yet.
He just broke the single-season Orioles record for home runs by a shortstop with almost a month left in the season, stepping over all-time Oriole great Cal Ripken Jr. and Miguel Tejada. He was the American League Rookie of the Year last season and entered his sophomore season among the favorites to be the league’s Most Valuable Player.
So nobody is going to complain too loudly about the 23 errors he has made this year at shortstop, including two more on Friday night in a game that also featured his 36th home run.
The irony of it all is that the one area where he hasn’t been quite good enough is the one where he’s trying to be too good. At least, that’s the way manager Brandon Hyde sees it.
“I just think last night, he misplayed a couple, honestly,” Hyde said during Saturday’s pregame media session. “I think the one thing about Gunnar is, the majority of the errors he makes are on the too-aggressive side. Normally, with infielders, you want them to come get the ball and be more aggressive, and Gunnar is too aggressive at times. Instead of playing in an easy fashion at shortstop with angles, he plays sometimes a little too quick. He’s better when he backs off and plays the game a little easier.”
It’s easy to see how demanding he is of himself. The intensity Henderson displays on the field is apparent both at shortstop and at the plate. Just the way he angrily flings his bat away after a walk should tell you how hot the fire burns in his belly to be an unstoppable offensive force. That same fire is also what sends him halfway into left field to snag a pop fly in no man’s land or makes him want to defy physics with an impossible throw.
But it is possible to try too hard.
“I think that’s maybe a 22-year-old, 23-year-old playing and he’s going to learn that over time, and he kind of knows that,’’ Hyde said. “Despite the errors, he has made lots of really good plays for us. He’s played well this year.”
That’s obviously an understatement. Henderson has an electric arm and he has made dozens of dazzling plays to bail out the club’s banged-up pitching staff. His ability to throw on the run and make Web Gem plays from deep in the hole at short probably won’t get him a Gold Glove this year, but Hyde is confident that he’s just settling in at the position.
“That’s just going to come with time and games and hundreds of thousands of ground balls, and understanding that this is his first full year playing short at this level,’’ Hyde said. “You watch him take ground balls during pregame, he does it really easy. Some of the mistakes he’s made defensively this year have been just coming too hard to the baseball and trying to do too much, instead of understanding angles a little bit more and the speed of the ball.”
It might be fair to put Henderson’s error total in better perspective. He’s on pace to commit 26 in this, his first year as a full-time shortstop. Ripken averaged just under 26 errors a season in his first three years as a full-time shortstop from 1983-85.
And raw error totals aren’t necessarily the determining factor in the Gold Glove conversation. Ripken committed an MLB record-low three errors in 1990 and did not win baseball’s most prestigious defensive award.