Pittsburgh Pirates: Constructing the Franchise’s All-Time Defensive Team

Third Base – Josh Harrison

Throughout the Pittsburgh Pirates history, they’ve never had a real go-to answer as the best defensive third baseman of all time like at second, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have any good hot corner defenders in their history and it was honestly quite tough as it came down to three players. But somebody had to go here and I chose Josh Harrison.

Now, yes, Harrison played all sorts of different positions with the Pirates. He even has more innings at the keystone than the hot corner, but he was a much better defender at third than second. Throughout the 1858.2 innings he played at third, Harrison had +22 defensive runs saved, the franchise leader at third, a 10.5 UZR, and 8.6 range runs above average. Harrison has the second highest FanGraphs positional defensive rating at third base for the Pirates at +13.6. Harrison may never have qualified for a Gold Glove Award, but he was an excellent defender at third base.

The two other names it came down to was Freddy Sanchez and David Freese. Both made a very compelling case to be here instead of Harrison, but Sanchez had way less innings at third than Harrison, and Freese was a very similar defender to Harrison, but Harrison had him well beat in DRS, 8 to 22.