DUNEDIN, Fla. -- Maybe it was John McGraw who first said it. Maybe it was Tim McGraw. It might have been Rogers Hornsby. Or possibly Bruce Hornsby. It could have been Ozzie Smith. Or even Emmitt Smith.
But whoever it was who first pronounced that the key to being good at baseball was being awesome up the middle, this just in:
These Toronto Blue Jays are in total agreement.
They're famous for their collection of mashers and bashers. But if you think that's why they win, you clearly haven't watched them play very much.
"Because we're making so much noise with the sticks, everything else was kind of in the shadow of that," their catcher, Russell Martin, said. "But our defense was just supreme. I can't think of another team that's better than us. Kansas City was definitely up there, but I think we're right up there with them."
That might sound almost sacrilegious. But let's ask this again: Have you watched this team play much?
Only one team in baseball has four up-the-middle starters who all finished in the top 10 in the Fielding Bible Award voting last season. Guess who? It wasn't the Royals. (They had three.) It wasn't the Giants. (They had two.) It wasn't the Cardinals. (They also had two.) It wasn't the Astros (another club with two).
It was the Blue Jays, of course, with Martin handling the shin-guard duty, Kevin Pillar lighting up the Web Gem reel in center and the spectacular double-play tag team of Troy Tulowitzki at short and the ridiculously underrated Ryan Goins at second. With apologies to any group you choose to nominate, there's no club with a better collection of middle men than this team.
"And we're well aware of it," Pillar said. "We have a little thing among the three of us [him, Tulowitzki and Goins]. That's our little saying for each other: 'Strong up the middle.'"
It's their mantra on the field. It has become their mantra off the field. They eat pregame meals together, take early hitting together and even get haircuts together. Although we have never heard anyone say that great defense begins in the barber's chair, hey, whatever they're doing, they should keep doing it.
In a moment, we'll have some fun asking these guys about one another. But first, we need to start with ...
The numbers
With the help of ESPN Stats & Info's Marty Callinan and Jacob Nitzberg, we tried to determine if the metrics agree with the Fielding Bible voters that this is the best up-the-middle group in the game. We compared them to the other elite foursomes in Kansas City, St. Louis, San Francisco and Houston. Here is what we learned:
• Defensive Runs Saved (By Position) -- This is a FanGraphs metric that attempts to calculate the number of runs a fielder saves his team, compared to an average player. If we go by the total 2015 numbers at the four up-the-middle positions, the Royals (30) and Blue Jays (28) finished way ahead of anyone else. The other three clubs' DRS at those positions: Cardinals 13, Astros 9, Giants 2.
• Defensive Runs Saved (By Player) -- Last year's team numbers don't necessarily apply to this year. Of the four projected Opening Day starters for Toronto, for instance, only Martin started all last season at his position. Let's do this a little differently. Let's look at just these players. Here are last year's Defensive Runs Saved only for Pillar, Martin, Goins and Tulowitzki (including his Colorado stats): 36. The DRS for the Kansas City foursome (Lorenzo Cain, Salvador Perez, Omar Infante and Alcides Escobar): 25. We also looked at last year's numbers for the four probable up-the-middle starters for the other three teams. They look like this: Giants 25, Astros 13, Cardinals 12.
• ZiPS -- Finally, we used the 2016 defensive projections for each team's four projected starters, as calculated by Dan Szymborski's ZiPS system. Here's how each team ranked in Defensive Runs Above Average for those players: Blue Jays 19.7, Cardinals 16.3, Royals 15.9, Giants 8.6, Astros 5.1.
What do the numbers tell us? That we've got this right. Nobody has four impact, up-the-middle defenders like the four who will start in Toronto. But numbers can tell us only so much, so we asked these four men to review themselves. (Because Josh Donaldson joined in, we're including him too.)
Suffice it to say they had a few thoughts -- and a few highly entertaining offerings to boot. We begin with ...
The center fielder
A year ago, if you had mentioned the name Kevin Pillar, it's a good bet the most common reaction would have been: "You mean Kevin Millar? The old 'Cowboy Up' dude?" But, boy, has that changed -- after a year in which Pillar finally got his chance to do regular leather-working at age 26.
In his breakout season, all he did was take over the center-field gig in Toronto, tie for the third-most Defensive Runs Saved of any outfielder in baseball (22, counting his time in left), rack up more Web Gems (14) than anyone except Nolan Arenado (17) and earn almost twice as many No. 1 Web Gems (nine) as any player at any position.
"Not many teams get to have Superman in center field," Martin said. "It's amazing how many runs he prevents and how many extra-base hits he takes away."
"He's like a free safety out there," Donaldson said.
"He's special," Goins said. "He takes away hits like nobody else can."
Sadly, there's no stat called Hits Pilfered. But we've always thought you could tell a great outfielder with this easy test: If the ball leaves the bat and your mind says, "hit," but you look up and see the outfielder running it down, that's greatness. Pillar has that quality.
"There are balls that, normally, right off the bat, I'm like, 'OK, he's got this one,'" Martin said. "But then there are the ones that are like, 'Sssssssssssssssss [hissing sound],' and I think, 'That ball's well struck. He's not getting there.' But then he just makes up ground, and next thing you know, he's parallel to the ground and laid out and making a play."
Pillar's take: "It means the world to me, just getting this opportunity and being able to run with it. It's something I always felt I was capable of doing. If you watch me play, I'll admit I'm not the fastest guy out there or the most athletic, because there are so many other great center fielders. But I pride myself on getting the best jumps and taking the best routes to the ball I can take. And it's great to be a part of a group like this. We're constantly challenging ourselves to get better and to do what's necessary to make plays, whether that means running into the wall, climbing the wall or diving for balls."
The catcher
A funny thing happens everywhere Russell Martin goes: You look up in October, and there he is, catching another postseason game. He has now made it into seven of the past eight postseasons, with four different teams (Dodgers, Yankees, Pirates, Blue Jays). That's about as much of a coincidence as the stars showing up in the sky every night.
"He's a machine," Donaldson said.
"He's everything you'd ask of a catcher," Tulowitzki said.
"There's probably not a better catch-and-throw guy in the league," Goins said. "He shuts down the running game, no matter who's on the mound or how much time the pitcher gives him. And that's huge. When we played Kansas City last year, even in the regular season. ... I really can't remember them running. And when they play anyone else, they're running a damn marathon out there. So there's something special to shutting that down."
No catcher in baseball shut down every running game better than Martin did last year. According to baseball-reference.com, he threw out 44 percent of the runners who tried to steal on him, the best rate in either league and the best of his career.
"The one thing I didn't realize before I played with him is how strong his arm is," Tulowitzki said with a laugh. "I know now -- because I'm the one who takes his throws."
Martin, however, preferred to focus on his "knack" for leading and connecting with his pitching staff, something he does as well as any catcher alive: "My most important job is trying to get the best out of each individual who's on that mound that day. And I feel like I have a knack for understanding somebody's strengths and somebody's weaknesses. ... A lot of it's instinctual too. It's feel. I mean, you can go over a scouting report. But the hitter's out there making adjustments as well. So I feel it's kind of like jazz. There's a certain beat and rhythm. But sometimes, it's unpredictable. And I want my pitcher, in a way, to be unpredictable."
The shortstop
The biggest trade of the Blue Jays' season, in the eyes of most of the planet, was their deal for David Price. But ask their position players, and they might have been more energized by the deal that shipped Tulowitzki north of the border than they were by the Price trade.
"I always thought of him as famous, watching him grow up," Pillar said. "And then, just like that, you're sitting in the clubhouse with him. ... He's a guy who was already considered to be the best at his position, a guy who was already considered to be great and probably a Hall of Famer. But what people don't know is how much work he puts in, how he doesn't just want to be great. He wants to elite. And he'd damn near sell his soul to win a World Series. That's the only thing he talks about."
From the outside world, Tulowitzki doesn't get nearly enough love for his genius as a defender. But his fellow infielders are almost in awe of the array of things he can do.
"When Troy came over, I said, 'This is elite defense,'" Donaldson said. "And just to be able to see it, on a day-to-day basis, it was incredible. I remember one play. It was one of the first ground balls I saw him catch. It was one of his patented run-and-throws, where he's, like, looking in the glove and turning it perfectly, [to grip all] four seams, and then throwing a rocket, perfectly, to first. And I'm like, 'It's that easy, huh?'"
"I don't know if there's anybody ever to play this game, honestly, who can throw on the run better than him," Goins said. "Last year, I remember teasing him. He kept making plays to his left. But he would never do the spinning jump throw. And I was like, 'I've gotta see it, man. I see it on TV all the time. I've got to see it.' And finally in Anaheim, he did, like, a semi-version. It wasn't like the full deal. He just did, like, the semi-jump. But I was like, 'There it is. I needed to get a front-row seat for that.'"
Tulowitzki's take: "A lot of guys, they've seen stuff from me, and they want me to do those plays. They all want to see it. So they ask me to do different stuff that I do, so it was almost like a tryout when I first came over here."
In other words, we asked, is it kind of the baseball equivalent of a Springsteen crowd requesting "Thunder Road" -- the baseball crowd requesting: "Do the jump throw?"
"Oh yeah," Tulowitzki replied, chuckling. "Definitely."
The second baseman
Ryan Goins is no household name. And there's no telling how much he would have played last season if the Opening Day second baseman, Devon Travis, hadn't gotten hurt. But between Travis' injury, Jose Reyes' issues at short early in the year and a Tulowitzki injury late, Goins wound up starting 120 games at second base or shortstop.
By the time he was through, his 11 Defensive Runs Saved at those two positions, according to FanGraphs, were more than the double-play combinations of the Royals, Astros and Cardinals produced -- combined. Seriously.
"He might be the best defensive player in the league," Martin said. "I think he's that good. He's Roberto Alomar. ... You see the natural ability and the reads and the creativity. Like sliding on one leg up the middle, popping up, throwing a seed. It's impressive, man. It really is. Just the baseball IQ is there. He's just a natural. Makes everything look easy."
Wait. Did he just drop a Roberto Alomar on us? Can that be right?
"He definitely has some Robbie-esque tendencies," Pillar said. "He's an entertainer when he fields the ball. He's got that quiet swagger and showiness about him when he takes ground balls. And ultimately, he makes the plays. But he's so good at doing it that he has fun doing it. There aren't too many guys you see blowing bubbles while they're sliding in the hole and throwing balls to first base."
Goins' take: "Playing with these guys, it doesn't just elevate me. I think it elevates everyone, just to see the edge of our best players. This row of lockers right here, for me to be in the middle of it, it's just special. Not everyone gets to be on a team with five, six, seven superstar players like we have. I'm not saying it picks my level of play up, but you see these guys performing at such a high level, you want to be a part of that. ... I felt like when I got to spring training, I don't know if it was playing in the playoffs or just playing alongside these guys, but when I showed up this year, I felt like I was a better player."
Just for the record, Goins could transition to a super-utility role if Travis returns at 100 percent in midseason. But most of Goins' playing time will still come up at second or short, so no matter how this shakes out, he'll be a huge part of the most dynamic up-the-middle group in baseball. Don't underestimate what that means. That old "you've gotta be strong up the middle" ditty isn't just a cliché. It has been proven by modern metrics.
"There's no doubt that's true," new Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins said. "For one thing, it's the hardest place to be good. So if you're standing out in the middle of the diamond, you're standing out in an exceptional way because the most athletic players in the game play there. And the second way to look at it is just total chances. These guys are getting more touches on the ball. So from those two perspectives, if you're good up the middle, it makes you better. It's that simple."
But when you watch a team such as this do what it does, you realize this is no math quiz. When the Toronto Blue Jays chase down baseballs in the center ring of this circus, it's the essence of baseball at its entertaining best.
"Yeah, it's fun to watch," Martin said. "And I've got the best seat in the house."