This post was suggested by reader Paul E who remarked on the defensive accomplishments of Brett Lawrie of the Blue Jays. Toronto acquired Lawrie from the Brewers after the 2010 season, and brought him up to the big team in mid-summer last year. Other than a week missed to injury at the end of last season, he’s been the Jays’ regular third baseman since.

As of this writing, Lawrie has a career of slightly less than half of a 162 game season. Yet, he is in a tie for 13th place since 1901 among all non-pitchers in WAR fielding runs accumulated in the first two seasons of a career.

Here’s the list.

So, all of the players ahead of him have at least 3 times as many PAs and 3.5 times as many games. At his current rate and barring injury, Lawrie will be at the top of this list by the end of the year, and probably by a comfortable margin. And, in just a season and a quarter of playing time!

So, how do Lawrie’s fielding runs compare as a rate stat? I’ll use PAs as a measure of playing time and compare to WAR Fielding Runs. Here are the players to accumulate career WAR Fielding Runs of more than 3.5% of PAs (min. 300 PAs).

That 9.2% Rfield per PA kind of stands out, doesn’t it? Nobody else over 6.2% and only one other above 4.8%. Also, it seems you should be named Brett if you want to be a top fielder – the three Bretts on this list have the top 3 scores.

I know what you’re going to say – sample size, sample size, sample size. Most of the players here are active or had only very short careers. And, only the top 2 players on this list had careers of a significant length, so maintaining Fielding Runs at this rate for an extended period isn’t likely. True enough. But, for Lawrie, we’re not talking about having a good week or a good month – it is half a season of everyday work. Is it likely that, playing everyday over that long a period, defensive stats could be so massively skewed from representing true ability? Skewed somewhat, sure – but as much as this appears to be? I guess I’ll let you statisticians out there answer those last two questions.

So, is it a mirage or could we be looking at one of the best defensive third basemen ever? What do you think?