The Sports Info Solutions Defensive Players of the Month for May are Red Sox center fielder Ceddanne Rafaela, Dodgers center fielder Andy Pages, and Cardinals second baseman JJ Wetherholt.

Ceddanne Rafaela

Rafaela led all center fielders (and co-led all players) with 9 Defensive Runs Saved in May after totaling 0 in March and April.

Rafaela’s May looked a lot like his 2025 season, when he led center fielders with 20 Runs Saved and beat out Pete Crow-Armstrong for the Fielding Bible Award.

The Red Sox outfield isn’t catching balls at a particularly high rate. Their success in Defensive Runs Saved relates more to play difficulty. Wilyer Abreu and Rafaela rank 6th and 7th in Baseball Savant’s “jumps” stat, which measures how much more ground a fielder covers than average within the first 3 seconds. Rafaela is also one of the best outfielders in baseball in covering ground in the first 1.5 seconds after the ball is hit.

Here’s a good example of that from May 1 against the Astros and Jose Altuve in which Rafaela makes a play look easier than it would be for most players.

And if he must leave his feet, he can do so effectively, like he did on this play.

Most Defensive Runs Saved in May by Center Fielder

Player	Team	Runs Saved
Ceddanne Rafaela	Red Sox	9
Andy Pages	Dodgers	7
Jacob Young	Nationals	6

Andy Pages

Andy Pages finished second to Rafaela in Runs Saved by a center fielder in May with 7, but we wanted to highlight him for another reason. Pages led all center fielders with 7 Good Fielding Plays, as tracked by our Data Scouts. He did so without recording a Defensive Misplay or Error.

Pages was charged with 22 Defensive Misplays and Errors in center field last season but has only 2 so far in 2026. His 11 Good Fielding Plays are only 4 short of his total in center field last season.

Pages has been much better at catching deep balls this season than last season. Perhaps the crazy catch from Game 7 of the World Series gave him confidence and made plays like this one seem a lot easier.

Pages’ best trait as a center fielder last year was his arm. It’s shown up in his game this year too with plays like this throw-out of Brice Turang. It’s helped him to a share of the MLB lead at the position in Defensive Runs Saved this season with 13. He’s tied with Crow-Armstrong.

Andy Pages – CF Defense

Season	Defensive Runs Saved	Good Plays-Misplays & Errors
2025	-1	15-22
2026	13	11-2

JJ Wetherholt

The infield representative among our Defensive Player of the Month selections is Wetherholt, who has adjusted to moving over from shortstop without any issues. Wetherholt’s 7 Runs Saved were the most by a second baseman. Ozzie Albies was second with 4. Wetherholt’s combo of offense, defense, and baserunning has pushed him to rank tied for 9th in the NL in Wins Above Replacement (Baseball-Reference version).

One of Wetherholt’s best plays in May came early in the month when he made a diving catch off a Shohei Ohtani line drive and turned it into a double play.

And here’s another one in which he came in on a ball and, despite the prediction of the Brewers announcer, was able to get Jake Bauers out.

Wetherholt leads second basemen in the double plays component of Runs Saved. He’s turned 36, second only to Brice Turang’s 38, and done so with a 72% success rate, 10 percentage points above MLB average at the position.

Most Defensive Runs Saved in May – Second Base

Player	Team	Runs Saved
JJ Wetherholt	Cardinals	7
Ozzie Albies	Braves	4
5 players tied		3

This month’s three winners join March/April’s winners, Crow-Armstrong and Cole Young, as our honorees this season.