You might know that one of the big topics among those of us in MBG* is how much baseball lineups really matter. That is to say, people who study the game have spent a lot of time trying to devise what the optimum baseball lineup really looks like, and also how much it actually matters.
*Mother’s Basement Geeks. I am hoping to have membership cards made.
You know what the ideal conventional-wisdom lineup looks like.
Fifth: Can hit home runs and not much else.
Sixth: Can hit a few home runs.
Ninth: Pitcher in NL (except in St. Louis)/Second leadoff hitter in AL.
1. That is probably NOT the ideal lineup, if your “ideal” involves scoring the most runs possible.
2. It probably doesn’t matter as much as we want to believe.
You can read many studies and stories on lineups if you want to do a Google search, though I would say the Magna Carta on the subject is the wonderful chapter in The Book by Friend of Blog Tom Tango et al. I don’t want to get into too much detail here because if you want to know more about baseball you should read The Book right now (instead of this), but three key takeaways from their research: (1) The No. 3 spot in the lineup is wildly overrated for various reasons involving outs and runners on base (The Book recommends putting your three best hitters in the first, second and fourth spot), (2) walks are most valuable in the leadoff spot (because with the bases empty, a walk and a single have pretty much identical value), and (3) any and all lineup shifts have a tiny effect on runs scored.
I have nothing new to add to this subject, as should be obvious by now. I do believe that lineup construction is not as important as we baseball fans tend to believe, and that the millions of hours spent on talk radio and Internet chat boards griping about where the Yankees hit Derek Jeter and so on are much ado about decimal points. I also believe (as Tom and most other members of MBG do) that winning baseball often comes down to decimal points. If a baseball manager can squeeze a few runs or a couple of extra wins a year out of an optimum lineup, well, that’s a HUGE opportunity for them. Baseball managers, as we know, don’t have much control over the game action. They don’t design plays. They have limited substitutions. They can’t have their quarterback take a knee or their point guard dribble out the clock.
And, perhaps most of all, managers can’t lean on their best players in the most important situations. In just about every other team sport, you can do this. Down in the final minutes, you have Montana throw to Rice, you put the ball in the hands of Kobe, you try whatever you can to get the ball or puck to Messi or Ovechkin. But if Albert Pujols ain’t coming up in the ninth, Albert Pujols ain’t coming up in the ninth and there’s nothing you can do about it. Lineup construction matters in this: You want to get your best players up there in the most opportune times as often as possible.
I bring all this up because I saw an amazing fact on Baseball Prospectus the other day. Well, anyway, I thought it was amazing. Do you know which two players on the Kansas City Royals has come up with runners on base most often in 2011? Of course you don’t know. Why would you know?
Answer: Jeff Francoeur (273) and Alcides Escobar (243).
This absolutely blows my mind. Now, admittedly, the Royals lineup is a work in progress. But there are good hitters there. Alex Gordon is having a superb season. Billy Butler can really hit. Eric Hosmer hasn’t been up the whole year, but he’s going to be a spectacular hitter. Even Melky Cabrera, who I thought was a dreadful signing, has hit quite well this year. And the Royals have had their lineup set up all year so the guys who have come up most often with runners on base have been Frenchy and Escobar. This seems to me an epic fail*.
*You know, as the kids say … or at least as they said in 2005.
Frenchy at least is easy enough to explain — Royals management has long loved the guy with almost irrational intensity. And then he got off to a white hot start, which obviously inspired the Royals to move him to the cleanup spot for an astonishingly long time (his last 53 games — even with a recent resurgence — Francoeur has hit .238/.279/.354). But Escobar? How is that happening? Even the Royals know he can’t hit. He has a 74 OPS+ … and that is only after a monumental couple of weeks when he seemed to get two hits every game. For this reason, the Royals have almost always batted him eighth or ninth, which is exactly where the conventional wisdom lineup would have him bat. But somehow, because of the way Ned Yost sets up his lineup, he is 23rd in baseball in runners on base.
His percentage for driving in those runners, according to BP, is an abysmal 10.7% — the second-worst for anyone who has come up with 225 or more runners on base. Only Omar Infante is worse at 10.6% … and, for that matter, how in the hell is OMAR INFANTE coming up with that many runners on base?
Top 2 DOP: Adrian Gonzalez and Kevin Youkilis (David Ortiz is in Top 10 also).
Comment: Well, those are the two you would want. I think Tito is a terrific manager because things just seem to work out when he’s managing games. He has an exorbitantly talented team that got off to a terrible start. He has a couple of high-priced players (John Lackey and Carl Crawford) who have been huge disappointments so far. But when you get Gonzalez, Youkilis and Papi to the plate with runners on base, over time, it should all work out just fine.
Top 2 DOP: Robinson Cano and Curtis Granderson.
Comment: Believe it or not, no Yankees player is in the TOP THIRTY in this category. The Royals have three players who have come to the plate with at least as many runners as Cano. And yes, I know who you are blaming.* … How about Cano in the Home Run Derby? That event is about as worn out as anything in sports, but even so it was unquestionably cool at the end watching Cano crush home run after home run while his father Jose grooved pitches. Cano is such a gifted hitter.
*Which reminds me: How about this week’s Sports Illustrated Cover?
Comment: Ugh. Obviously Evan Longoria — who you would want at the top of this category — has been hurt. Still: The Rays don’t have a player in the Top 65 in this category.
Top 2 DOP: Jose Bautista and Adam Lind.
Comment: That’s who you would want and expect for John Farrell. Bautista drives in a fairly low percentage of other runners (14.5%) but this is in large part because nobody pitches to him in those situations any more. Fourteen of his baseball-leading 74 walks are intentional, and several more are unintentionally intentional.
Comment: This has nothing to do with runners on base, but I think that the next big defensive cat-fight will be over Adam Jones. As you probably know, the defensive cat-fight the last few years has been over Derek Jeter — with some people whipping up numbers that show him to be a dreadful shortstop and others throwing Gold Gloves at him the way women used to throw underwear at Tom Jones. And there was a mini-fight over Torii Hunter, who was beloved by the eye but not so much by the stats.
Now, we have Adam Jones. I spent the other day at the MLB Fan Cave where two guys are watching every single baseball game all year. They seem like good guys. And they LOVE Adam Jones. I mean that with all capital letters. They believe him to be the “best looking young center fielder since Ken Griffey” and “probably the best defensive center fielder in the American League.” And, as mentioned, they watch every game.
The stats tell a very different story. Jones’ defensive WAR this year is -2.1 (Baseball Reference). His Ultimate Zone Rating is minus-10.1 (Fangraphs … and it has been negative for three years). His Dewan Plus/Minus says that this year he has made 20 fewer plays — TWENTY — than the average center fielder, which is 35th in baseball, an astonishing feat since there are only 30 teams. Obviously, defensive stats are not black and white, and there’s a small sample size going with his defensive WAR, and so on. Still, they point in the direction of “lousy.” And, in this case, there are a couple of scouts I have talked with who agree (though they say it’s about his “instincts.”).
I don’t want to take sides in the matter … it’s bad enough being an Orioles fan these days without having one of your few positive vibes shattered by bloodless and vaguely incomprehensible stats. But the conflict is worth watching. Interesting side note: In the very game we saw together, Jones made one running catch and had another ball go over his head. In the narrative of the Adam Jones’ lover, the first was a great play and the second was an impossible catch anyway. But it’s not out of the question that in reality the first play was made harder than necessary by a bad route and that he should have caught the second. Defensive quality is not easy to lasso.
Comment: Miggy is 11th overall with 260 runners on base when he comes to the plate, which is exactly what the Tigers want. Boesch is having a very nice year. Victor Martinez and is also in the Top 50 DOP in baseball.
Comment: The Tribe would certainly like to get Travis Hafner up there more often with runners on base — at age 34 he’s hitting like the Hafner of old — but he’s just not healthy enough to play every day. After Hafner, these are the right two guys.
Comment: Adam Dunn and Juan Pierre have come up with a combined 424 runners on base. They each are driving in those runners only 11% of the time. That’s probably a reason why the White Sox are ninth in the league in runs scored.
Comment: The Valencia thing is a problem (though his runs batted in percentage is a more than tolerable 16.5%). But with Mauer, Morneau, Thome and Kubel all missing significant time, Ron Gardenhire just kind of has to do as much as they can with spit and ducktape. The Twins are only 6 1/2 games out of first place, by the way, after playing .315 baseball the first two months of the season.
Comment: More or less what you would expect with Josh Hamilton missing some time.
Comment: With the way things are going for the older guys, the Angels might be better off getting younger players Howie Kendrick and Mark Trumbo up there a bit more often with runners on base.
Comment: The Mariners don’t get many on base — they are dead last in the league in on-base percentage and don’t have anyone in the Top 75 on the list. That said, Smoak is the right guy for them to have up here. After that … there are no right answers at the moment — Dustin Ackley certainly has a chance to be very good. I do wonder if at some point the Mariners might consider moving Ichiro down in the lineup and see if in his later years he can adapt to a slightly different role.
Comment: The A’s do not have a player in the Top 80 … and only Willingham is in the Top 100. With this team there are exactly zero right answers. Of the Top 13 players in plate appearances for Oakland, exactly one — Willingham — has an OPS+ of better than 100, and Willingham is only at 103. This isn’t the best year for Moneyball to come out.
Top 2 DOP: Ryan Howard and Placido Polanco.
Comment: Howard leads all of baseball with 296 runners on base. He had an amazing 60 game-stretch recently when he hit .223 … and he still drove in 47 RBIs in those 60 games. You can say he is a run producer. You can say he’s just in a situation where there are ALWAYS runners on base. Either way, the man will get paid $145 million total from now until 2017.
Comment: The Braves are 14th in the National League in on-base percentage so they really need to make the most of their opportunities. With Dan Uggla their Top DOP guy, um, no, they’re not doing that. Uggla is driving in runners an astonishingly low 8.5% of the time. Frankly, he’s killing their offense. But you already knew that. The shame of it is, do you know who lead all of baseball in highest percentage of driving in runners? Yep: The amazing Chipper Jones (22.2%).
Comment: In a year when some of the biggest names are having down years, the most exciting award race might be for the National League comeback player of the year award. Beltran really is having a sensational season. He leads the league in doubles and is third in extra base hits. He’s just about on pace to score and drive in 100 runs for the eighth time in his career. And though he can’t run anymore, he’s maintaining his untouchable stolen base percentage — he’s three-for-three this year. It’s a certain comeback player of the year season almost any year. At the moment, though, it’s hard to see how you can give the award to anyone except St. Louis’ Lance Berkman.
Comment: Well, you would have THOUGHT that Werth was the guy the Nationals managers would want coming up. It hasn’t worked out too well so far. A healthy Ryan Zimmerman would certainly be someone you would want at the top of this list.
*Look, the Home Run Derby is supposed to be fun, right? I mean, that’s the only point of the thing. So why don’t they loosen things up, invite a few exciting young kids like Stanton to participate? How much fun would the Derby be if you had Stanton and Eric Hosmer and Jason Heyward (struggling or not) and Logan Morrison and some other younger guys with big potential competing? I actually have about 10 ways to improve the Derby and the All-Star Game … maybe I’ll write that someday.
Top 2 DOP: Prince Fielder and Casey McGehee.
Comment: Come on Ron, you gotta get Ryan Braun up there buddy. Casey McGehee? Yikes. I should say that it warms my heart to see that Yuni Betancourt is in the Top 80 — he’s come up with 208 runners on base.
Comment: With Lance Berkman not far behind … say what you will about La Russa but he does seem to construct his lineup to get his best players up there in the right times as often as anybody else. Pujols has been in the Top 10 of this category each of the last three years.
Comment: It’s good to see McCutchen at the All-Star Game. Brilliant reader Cyril wrote in to offer a very sensible explanation for why McCutchen was so absurdly overlooked (he wasn’t even included in Final Vote) … an explanation that has nothing to do with the baseball small market that is Pittsburgh. His thinking is that McCutchen’s two greatest selling points are his on-base percentage and his defensive value as expressed by the stats … and that neither of those is widely celebrated within baseball. And he makes the good point that McCutchen got off to a sluggish start, which meant that nobody was really talking about him for most of the season (unlike Jay Bruce who had a near-legendary May). Good points all. And it’s good to see, however it happened, that McCutchen is at the game now.
Top 2 DOP: Jay Bruce and Brandon Phillips/Joey Votto.
Comment: Phillips and Votto are tied with 234 runners on base. You know, Jay Bruce could have been in the Home Run Derby too … the National League team that Prince Fielder chose was just plain weird. Rickie Weeks? Matt Holliday? Let the fans choose this, for crying out loud.
Top 2 DOP: Starlin Castro and Aramis Ramirez.
Comment: I have to admit that I don’t quite get why so many people are jumping the gun and preparing Starlin Castro for the Hall of Fame. I mean, he certainly could develop into an amazing player. He’s only 21. And he smokes line drives. No question. But everybody knows that he CAN develop into an amazing player. My question is: Will he? I’m not sure. Right now: He doesn’t walk. He doesn’t hit home runs. He’s not especially fast. And there are questions about him as a defensive shortstop. He’s so young and he hits with such line-drive authority that the smart money might be on him developing big-time power and becoming a superstar. That absolutely can happen, and I am not saying it won’t happen. But the other day I heard announcers comparing him to Ernie Banks. Can we hold off for at least a few minutes?
Comment: I wish I had something to say that might make Astros fans feel a little bit better about their team. But, um, nope, nothing is coming to mind. The Astros have hit 50 homers all year … and allowed 107. Brett Myers has allowed more home runs (23) than Lee and Pence combined (18). And so on.
Comment: The Giants are a wonder. Huff is having a dreadful year — and he’s the only guy in the Top 120 in runners on base. Tejada, who is 125th on the list, has been all but unplayable. They are 15th in the league in runs scored. And yet, yep, they’re in first place again. The Giants have become the sort of team where Ryan Vogelsong, after years of evidence to the contrary, becomes unhittable.
Comment: The Diamondbacks have five guys in their everyday lineup who have a better-than-110 OPS+. They lead the National League in slugging percentage. They are third in runs scored. Can any of that last? I don’t see how … but the National League West is a weird division.
Comment: Well, those are the right guys to come up … though have you seen the year that Todd Helton his having? He’s hitting .321/.400/.494 at age 37. I guess you can include him in the epic comeback player of the year race too.
Comment: Sometimes, when I’m kind of bored, I go back and look at the offensive stats of the 2010 Seattle Mariners. It really is quite incredible. That team had a .298 on base percentage and slugged .339. That team scored 100 fewer runs than any team in the American League.
This Padres team is not quite that bad. Headley is having a nice year, actually. I’ve long been a Cameron Maybin fan — he was my Starling Castro can’t miss prospect two years ago — and maybe he’s figuring things out at 24. But in general this is a pretty depressing offense to watch play. Dead last in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage. Dead last in home runs. Dead last in doubles. They are last in the National League in runs scored, of course, but they lead the National League in steals which, in a weird way, makes them LESS exciting to watch because it all feels so futile.
The Dodgers have two above average hitters this year (Ethier and Kemp). It’s hard to build an offense when you need Kemp (the best hitter on the team) to drive in Kemp (the best base stealer on the team). Mattingly certain has had his hands tied by McCourt, but he’s doing it right. I mean, some would say to bat Kemp before Ethier, but if Kemp singled and stole second, Ethier would walk more, and then neither would score. At least they’re still pitching to Kemp with Ethier (not a base stealer) on first.
You’re the man, Joe. Irreplaceable.
Circle me mistaken; I should have said two GOOD hitters. Carroll and Miles are also above average (as is the oft-injured Blake and the not often playing Oeltjean) , and given Carroll’s OBP of .368 and 5/5 in steals, he’s almost good. The problems with the Dodgers are Furcal has become dreadful and they need him so badly that he plays when available, Blake has played less than half the time, Loney has forgotten how to hit, and Manny had to stop juicing. The Dodgers expected double play combination of Furcal and Uribe has an OPS+ of 97… combined. If Blake heals up, they could put together six okay bats (Carroll, Oeljean, Ethier, Kemp, Blake, Miles) atop the lineup, but you still only have one player with double digit homers and two with double digit steals.
What surprises me is year after year Furcal talks his way back into the lineup before he’s fully healthy, and year after year Russell Martin gets overused and then collapses, and managers never learn from the past (Martin’s moved on, but talking and playing same as always). Heck, Martin played too often in April (22 excellent games), then too often in May (22 lousy games) and then June and July stank, and now instead of three days off he’s at the All-Star game. I’d start each week saying “These are the pitching matchups, pick the four games you want to start” and maybe let him pinch hit in the others. The key to me: before ASB, 77% base stealer, after ASB, 62%. Tired legs effect every part of his game: hitting, defense, base running.
Anyway, Mattingly has done well to get Kemp the most DOP at bats, but given only Kemp, Ethier, and Loney have more than 84 games, it’s not that big a surprise.
I like your idea about the HR derby. A guy I would like to see in that is Wily Mo Pena. The guy has 9 hits this year and 5 of them are home runs. His slash line is .196/.196/.522.
Believe it or not, no Yankees player is in the TOP THIRTY in this category.
When you lead the majors in home runs, you end up with a lot of bases-empty situations.
SF Giants Nate Schierholtz has really played well lately. He may just be in a hot streak and is bound to tail off but I like how he appears to be gaining a great deal of confidence at the plate. His defensive abilities are extremely good. That throwing arm of his is most impressive. Perhaps he will become the DOP for the Giants – God knows they need something to spur that offense.
I wonder if a manager’s decisions not really affecting games has something to do with the other manager’s decisions.
A couple weeks ago, I was watching the Tigers and DBacks at Detroit. In the top of the 9th, the DBacks got the first two runners on. The score was 7-6 Arizona.
So here’s what happens. The DBacks bunt the runners over to 2nd and 3rd. So now we have 2nd and 3rd with one out. The Tigers counter by intentionally walking the next batter. So it’s bases loaded, 1 out.
The DBacks then counter by calling a squeeze play. The ball was bunted too hard to the pitcher, and it resulted in a pitcher-to-catcher-to-1B double play that ended the inning.
I think the numbers show that each one of these decisions was questionable. Yet, it worked out for both managers because 1. The DBacks won the game so Kirk Gibson looks good and 2. the IBB by the Tigers led to the double play, so Leyland looks good.
So do the sometimes ill-advised decisions of managers get cancelled out by the ill-advised decisions of the opposing manager?
As an O’s fan, I can tell you, the numbers are right. Adam Jones takes terrible routes, and he turns easy plays into highlight reel fodder.
Notice he didn’t win the GG last year – he was atrocious in CF. He’ll win it again this year because he’s made some plays that are going to be in the top 10 defensive gems, the things people remember. But he doesn’t deserve it.
If there’s an O’s OF who deserves a GG, it’s Nick Markakis. He makes RF look easy, and he’s got a rifle of an arm that people have finally learned not to run on.
Well Joe, I think Frenchy has batted behind the two Royals least likely to make an out, Alex Gordon and Billy Butler, most of the year, so it doesn’t surprise me that he leads the team in DOP. Of course, Ned Yost would certainly love having Alex Gordon and Billy Butler hit behind Alex Gordon and Billy Butler, but I am pretty sure that is against the rules. The point of my post is the reason that Frenchy is coming up with more DOP than Gordon and Butler has a lot more to do with the batters batting 1st and 2nd for the Royals NOT being on base enough in front of Gordon and Butler and not that Yost has chosen to hit Frenchy behind them (someone has to hit behind them).
As for Escobar, well the catcher’s spot and 3rd base, who have batted 6th and 7th most of the year have been much better with OBP than expected (Treanor is a respectable .354 and Betemit is .345). That is actually been a good thing for the Royals and Escobar has to bat somewhere, so yeah he has killed a lot of rallies that Treanor and Betemit tried to start early in the year. I would guess that his DOP opportunities have decreased lately since Getz has been batting 8th a lot in front of him and Moose’s sub.300 OBP has replaced Betemit in the lineup. And, of course, that hasn’t been that great of a thing.
Jeremy’s right, a power hitter in front of a batter will lessen his DOP number. And also a low OBP hitter will make others’ DOP numbers low. Thus, Frenchy may be a leader partially out of keeping others’ numbers low.
And @NMarkW, I told someone over a year ago, that while Schierholtz may be a 4th OF, he’s a 5-tool 4th OF . . . and he may be becoming a respectable 3rd OF now & for a few years. His arm and speed are plus-skills, the rest is OK, but he doesn’t hurt you much anywhere.
I recognize that Holliday is a doubles power hitter, but he is just so ridiculously underrated. He has a career .227 ISO, and .217 post-Coors, so you can’t even play that card. Yeah, I would have picked Puma if I was Prince, but even so, the idea of Matt Holliday and Rickie Weeks being equally poor choices is off-the-charts weird.
While intentionally walking the bases loaded has always seemed a poor idea to me, if I recall back correctly to when I was filling out the WPA charts fairly regularly, the numbers slightly favor the bunt when it’s two runners being moved up.
Again it’s like five years since I’ve worked with the things, so I’d welcome being corrected if anything’s changed, but wanted to kick a flag up, anyway.
@Mark Daniel – RE: bunting 1st/2nd over in the 9th. I thought the smae as you but in that specific situation, it’s probably a smart play. Run expectancy charts say that while that play slightly decreases the average number of runs a team can expect (mostly because it reduces a team’s chances of scoring 3+ runs), it actually increases a team’s chances of scoring 1 or 2 runs. It also decreases a team’s chances of scoring 0 runs. With a 1 run lead in the 9th, playing for 1 or 2 seems like a good idea.
The message of sabermetrics has largely been that the bunt is misused, not that bunting is a bad strategy per se. It depends on the situation and the hitter who is up, the hitter who is on deck or in the hole and even on the baserunners (bunting a Molina over is more risky than bunting Ichiro over for example). Having the pitcher bunt is usually smart but if the pitcher is Micah Owings or Carlos Zambrano it’s not as cut & dried. If you look at the charts, bunting the tying run over from 1st to 2nd with 0 outs in a 1 run game is probably a bad idea but it’s a pretty close call – it increases the likelihood of scoring zero runs but also increases the chances of scoring 1 run. So it probably depends on who’s batting and who’s on deck.
Now the bunter was Kelly Johnson – he K’s a lot but also hits with a lot of power. Not sure how that affects the strategy.
Hey Joe, I know they play for different teams now but how about an update on Zach and Yuni?
I am a Brewer fan. I am guessing that you would like to see Braun bat 5th. McGehee has been hitting so bad of late that he is batting sixth some times. I don’t know how the Brewers 5th through 8th compare with the rest of the NL, but it seems to be pretty weak to me. Reonicke has been platooning Gomez and Morgan. Morgan has hit so far in the first half and is a good center fielder. Gomez can field but is terrible offensively. But some how the Brewers are tied for first.
Obviously you’re talking about major league lineups, but as a high school coach, it can be particularly challenging to set a lineup. This is partly because high school players can be wildly inconsistent, and because you never know from year to year what you’re going to have. We’ve had quite a bit of success using the No. 9 spot as a second leadoff spot and then putting our best hitter No. 2. One year I had five good hitters and four awful hitters. I bunched the three best hitters at the top of the lineup, then spaced the other two out between the awful hitters. That prevented those terrible three and out innings, and if a miracle happened and an awful hitter walked or was hit by a pitch, I had a good hitter who might be able to drive him in.
How did you come up with these numbers? I know you had to put in some labor, but what was your process for figuring out the number of runners on base for each player?
The Castro-Banks comparisons were broached by Banks himself, who submitted that Starlin is already superior, which was equal parts startling and (as a fan) satisfying. I think a big part of Starlin’s perceived upside – along with the aforementioned propensity for screaming line drives at such an excitingly young age – is that Cub fans have literally nothing to look forward to beyond his potential. The skeptic (Joe, in this case) has an argument (sky-high BABIP, little power, etc). But where were Jeter, Hanley, Renteria, et al at 21?
rastronomicals and ethegolfman, thanks for the corrections. I guess I just assumed a bunt (which leads to an out) always lowers run expectancy. Clearly it does not.
Also, Justin Upton (the #3 hitter) was up after the bunt, so it was perhaps an even better idea to move the runners over.
Anyway, the inning was more or less a manager strategy-fest. There was the sac bunt, then the IBB, then the squeeze play. I wonder if anyone has done the numbers on what happens when you bunt the runners to 2nd and 3rd, and the manager then counters with an IBB.
@Mark Daniel – I didn’t have time to finish my post but while bunting in general always lowers the total run expectancy, there are many situations where it can increase 1 run expectancy & like I said, the real answer also depends heavily on the pitcher, the batter, the baserunner, the following batter.
BTW you mentioned Upton – I looked it up and Upton then was on an 11 game hitting streak where he was putting up something like a 1300 OPS so he was hot. The interesting part of that strategy is Kirk Gibson was forcing Leyland to make a decision – pitch to Upton or not? If you do, do you play the infield in?
Joe, MBG could be very easily be reinterpreted as “Money Ball Generation”. To some, it’s synonymous.
Right on about the Adam Jones comments. His power earns him a spot somewhere in the #3-5 slots, but his walk rate still stinks.
The glove is tremendously over-rated. He makes some really difficult catches, but he has cost the team precious wins by misreading balls.
More than once he has let week line drives fall in front of him when he could’ve caught them if he kept moving towards them at a fast clip.
Let’s just say: Paul Blair he ain’t.
As far as Escobar goes, it must be who Yost is hitting 6th, 7th and 8th. 72% of Escobar’s PA’s have come hitting 9th, and 18% hitting 8th, so only 10% have come in any other spots.
As an Oriole fan that absolutely loves Adam Jones* let me say that he is the epitome of the Highlight-Reel Hero, up there with Jeter.
*At least since he no longer swings at EVERY SINGLE low-and-away breaking ball. I used to find some sick pleasure in calling his strikeouts whenever he got two strikes, because any pitcher who knew what they were doing would throw a low-and-away breaking ball that he wouldn’t lay off.
For every over the wall catch that saves a home run, there is a poor route that lets a man get on-base or advance unnecessarily. For every diving catch he makes, there is a ball that he drops. Literally, in his glove and just dropped, even on lazy flies and slow-rolling singles.
He probably deserved a Gold Glove in his rookie season, but won it during a poor second season over the legendary Franklin Gutierrez year. Fortunately he didn’t win last season, or else the biggest hue and cry may well have come from Orioles fans.
I’m fine with him in centerfield, since his bat more than makes up for the mistakes he does make. But there have been fans who, even during his Gold-Glove year, feel he should be moved to left field.
There are two Orioles who deserve to be legitimate Gold Glove candidates. One is the aforementioned Markakis, who people don’t run on anymore and probably would play a better (or at least more consistent) centerfield than Jones.
The other is Matt Wieters, who is having such an amazing season I’m almost tuning in just to watch him catch. Among players with a comparable number of games caught, there isn’t one within ten percentage points of his caught-stealing percentage (and only Kelly Shoppach is a reasonably regular player with a higher percentage, though he is the backup in Tampa Bay). And his passed ball in the All-Star Game was the only one he has had all year.
2. Crappy hitters (Frenchy) quite possibly are likely to lead your team in this category because they are crappy hitters and therefore won’t get on base much for the other hitters.
By the way, I’ve always wondered this: why don’t teams put their best hitter, no matter his speed, as the first hitter in the lineup? Don’t you want your best hitter getting up the most? Putting your best hitter third may mean at the end of the game you’re hoping (fast) and (handles bat well) will get on just to give best hitter a chance to get up. Once you get past the first time through, fast guy probably won’t lead off an inning again, anyway, which is the optimum way to use his speed (single or walk, steal a base, increase the possibility of scoring without a hit). In fact, when he comes up later, there is more of a chance that he’ll come up with one or two outs because 8 and 9 hitters don’t get on very much.
Incidentally, best hitter (usually batting third) is usually a pretty speedy, or at least reasonably speedy, guy anyway. And if he leads off with a double, it’s the same as if speedy guy singled or walked and then stole.
If a team’s fast guy who leads off doesn’t really get on that much (Juan Pierre?) isn’t it a waste to have him be the guy that gets up the most?
Maybe in that situation the optimum lineup is best hitter first, second best hitter second, with speedy guy 9th, so that if speedy guy gets on there’s a better chance the next two guys will bring him home, without (handles bat well) in the way to potentially make an out before best and second best get up.
It just seems like too many teams are giving away too many outs at the top of the lineup.