Yesterday Ian Desmond committed his 7th error of this young season. He is once again leading the NL in errors committed, although this time he is tied with Starlin Castro. Last year he beat Castro, the second leading error maker, by 7 total errors. I’m not sure if people are grousing in Chicago about Castro needing to be moved from SS, but Castro is also hitting .357/.382/.480 and is only 22 years old. Desmond’s 3 years older and is hitting .205/.253/.333. I’m actually not terribly worried about Desmond’s ability to hit, it’s early in the season, he’ll recover.
The bigger worry right now is the errors. He’s had two multi-error games this season already, he had 5 last year. This seems to me to be an indicator of a lack of concentration/rattling of nerves. I don’t think this is about his physical ability. You see his range and his arm and you know he CAN put it all together, you just don’t know if he will. They could leave him there, for a little while or all season. They could flip him and Espinosa, although they’d probably lose some range, both could be better in the new position. Or, as reader bdrube brought up last week, they could move the rangey SS with a cannon arm to CF – pretty intriguing and could be a good fit. So the question is, how patient should the Nats be?