TCB Daily Boil: Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Jose Altuve is not the first player you think of when the term "defensive whiz" is used. Because of many reasons and probably a good helping of bias, he's not considered capable of producing elite defense at the position.

Of course, he also does things like this in Monday's late game against the Braves:

It should be noted that Altuve's defensive numbers have improved quite a bit in the last two years. According to the new Inside Edge data on FanGraphs, it appears the biggest movement in his numbers took place in the "even" play category, where Inside Edge gives players between 40 to 60 percent chance of making a play. The number of plays Altuve saw there didn't go up by much, but his percentage of making them jumped nearly 20 percent.

Could that be the shift helping him? Could it be more experience in pre-play positioning? Or, like the above video suggests, is there plenty of untapped defensive potential for Altuve just waiting to be revealed?