For baseball's most mediocre hitters, two's company

Here's the other piece I wrote for my application to Fangraphs.
I refer a lot to a statistic called wOBA (weighted on base average), which takes on base percentage and slugging percentage, adds a little to the importance of OBP and gives you a nice little three digit statistic to measure with which to measure a hitter's success at the plate. It's best looked at the same way one would see OBP - .330 average, .300 horrible, .350 pretty good, .400 great. If you'd like a much better explanation than that (I don't blame you at all there), here it is.

After spending the last week watching Marco Scutaro, Jed Lowrie and Darnell McDonald toil about in the second spot of baseball's second best offense, I've begun to suspect that maybe superior pitching talent and a lack of juiced-up sluggers aren't the only reasons we find ourselves in this new era of low offensive outputs. Could it be that part of baseball's run problem right now stems from a general lack of manager intuition when it comes to lineup construction?

According to The Book, the three most important spots in a lineup are the 1,2 and 4 spots. The most logical strategy is to provide your best hitters with the most opportunities to bat, especially with men on base, and those three spots in the lineup are statistically proven to be it.

I noticed last night that arguably baseball's worst offensive player, Franklin Gutierrez (yep, even worse than Yuni Betancourt) was batting second for the Mariners, so I took a look at what the rest of the league was doing about the two-hole. Here's a list of last night's number two hitters, along with their season wOBA and its rank against the other non-pitchers in each lineup:

Curtis Granderson, Yanks wOBA .412 1^st

Allen Craig, Cardinals wOBA .395 3^rd

Alex Presley, Pirates wOBA .369 1^st

Brent Lillibridge, White Sox wOBA .368 2^nd

JJ Hardy, O's wOBA .354 1^st

Melky Cabrera, Royals wOBA .351 3^rd

Ryan Roberts, Diamondbacks wOBA .348 3^rd

Nyjer Morgan, Brewers wOBA .343 4^th

Eric Thames, Blue Jays wOBA .334 6^th (slightly contentious as he ranks behind the small sample size of Brett Lawrie)

Dexter Fowler, Rockies wOBA .332 4^th

Bobby Abreu, Angels wOBA .327 4^th

Coco Crisp, Athletics wOBA .327 4^th (although Brandon Allen is ahead with a tiny sample size from playing in both leagues)

Ruben Tejada, Mets wOBA .321 5^th

Johnny Damon, Rays wOBA .319 6^th

Marco Scutaro, Red Sox wOBA .316 6^th

Trevor Plouffe, Twins wOBA .312 3^rd

Jeff Keppinger, Giants wOBA .311 4^th

Martin Prado, Braves wOBA .310 7^th

Jason Bourgeois, Astros wOBA .310 4^th

Placido Polanco, Phillies wOBA .307 7^th

Darwin Barney, Cubs wOBA .306 LAST

Elvis Andrus, Rangers wOBA .305 8^th

Omar Infante, Marlins wOBA .302 7^th

James Loney, Dodgers wOBA .300 LAST

Fred Lewis, Reds wOBA .283 7^th

Jason Bartlett, Padres wOBA .282 7^th

Magglio Ordonez, Tigers wOBA .261 8^th

Cord Phelps, Indians wOBA .255 LAST

Franklin Gutierrez wOBA .247 LAST

Brian Bixler, Nats wOBA .233 LAST

Obviously 23 of the 30 MLB teams missed the memo about the two-hitter being one of the three most important slots. The most interesting thing about all this is that only two of the current division leaders used one of their three best available hitters in that slot last night. I'm not sure how serious the Tigers and Indians are about winning their division this year but they're definitely not doing themselves any favours by giving the likes of Magglio Ordonez and Cord Phelps that many at-bats. The same could be said about the Red Sox, who although being pretty much guaranteed a playoff spot this year (coolstandings.com gives them a cool 98.9% chance of playing October ball), can't be let off the hook when they've been batting Scutaro so high in the order whilst hitting the far more talented Josh Reddick as low as ninth. So much for the constant search for any slight edge over their bitter New York rivals, eh?

You could argue that non-contending teams like the Mariners and Nationals, who might not possess the offensive firepower of teams like the Red Sox and Yankees, might not have many alternatives to batting guys like Gutierrez and Bixler so high up in the lineup. However, as you can see from the list above, both those players had the WORST wOBA in their respective lineup. So even if both teams put their best two hitters in the leadoff and cleanup spots, they still have SIX more guys (five for the Nats when you consider the pitcher) who are arguably more valuable in the two-spot.

It certainly does seem like Major League managers in general could be a lot more efficient with their lineup construction than they currently are.

Derek Jeter - Resurrection or due for regression?

I recently wrote the following piece to submit as part of my application to write for my favourite baseball analysis site, www.fangraphs.com

All the stats are courtesy of Fangraphs, and for those who aren't familiar with it, BABIP stands for Batting Average on Balls In Play and measures the rate a hitter reaches base when he doesn't walk, strike out, hit a home run or get hit by a pitch. An abnormally high BABIP is quite often the result of good luck among other factors and generally means the hitter is due for a downturn in his statistics as his BABIP regresses back towards his normal rate.

Anyway, here it is. Enjoy

For most of this season and last, it's looked as if the illustrious career of Derek Jeter was going to end in a flurry of softly hit groundballs and double-plays (moreso on the the offensive side of things than the defensive side for sure).

There was even a brief period when Jeter hit the disabled list and it seemed like a blessing in disguise (not a very good disguise), as the Yankees promptly went on a 12-3 tear in his absence with Nick Swisher, Brett Gardner and Curtis Granderson sharing duties in the one and two spots of the lineup. For Red Sox fans like myself, it certainly seemed like Number Two couldn't return to that lineup fast enough.

Fast forward a month and suddenly Jeter's looking once more like the guy whose bat once won him five Gold Gloves. So what happened? Anyone can have a quick look at Jeter's August BABIP and see that his mark of .469 is good for 2^nd overall in the majors, behind Alex Avila's otherworldly

.512. But is there more to this than batted balls simply just falling in for hits?

Sure, a lot of this resurgence can be put down to luck and there's almost zero chance that Jeter will be able to maintain that BABIP.

However, taking a look at his break down of batted balls, it certainly does seem like Jeter is doing something right. His line drive percentage for August is sitting at an impressive 36.3%, good for third in the majors behind Cliff Pennington and Todd Helton and also Jeter's best ever percentage for a month since the statistic was first introduced. A .469 BABIP is unmaintainable for even the best hitter (Ty Cobb holds the all-time career record of .390 for players with 5000 or more plate appearances) but when you're hitting more than a third of balls on a line, you can expect a lot of hits.

I haven't got access to Jeter's monthly splits when it comes to which part of the field he's been hitting towards but looking at his LD% of 27.4% on balls hit to the opposite field, I would hazard a guess that he's been hitting a lot more balls the other way this month. Jeter's wOBA is at least 41 points higher on balls hit to right field than those to left, which coupled with his recent spike in offensive statistics, suggests that he's recently changed his hitting approach and is staying on the ball longer and poking it into right field, rather than trying to pull it to left.

It's a well known fact that as players not named Barry Bonds get older, their bat speed slows. So it would make perfect sense for a player of Jeter's age and skill-set to make a concerted effort to try and stay back on the ball and caress it the other way or back up the middle, rather than try and get out in front of it. As I said earlier, Jeter's .469 BABIP this month is not going to last, and you've got to think his career high (at least since 2002) LD% for this month won't either. However, at least for the moment, as long as Jetes keeps pushing that ball back the way it came, it looks like he's figured out a way to turn life's first real batch of lemons (life doesn't have a long history of giving Derek Jeter lemons) into lemonade.

So this is it, huh? Let the blogging begin!

Dear readers (so far there are none, but let's see how we go anyway, eh?),

Welcome to my blog. As you may have guessed, it's mostly going to be about baseball. Occasionally the baseball will be among other things. You can see how the name already works, can't you! I can't yet make any promises or predictions on what those other things may be, but they will definitely be things which can be placed in the genre of 'other than baseball' and my posts about baseball will definitely be among them. I am a man of my word. This I assure you of.
I have purged this blog of the only post it already had, which I wrote in 2007 and ended with the claim that Derek Jeter is a 'public puller' of the highest order. I think this was a move made in my best interest, as I strongly doubt that 2007 me was referring to Jeter's prowess when turning on a pitch. I will say though, that the post was a spirited one person debate that it would be no worse to have a cheat (Barry Bonds) at the top of the all-time home run chart than a 21st century Yankee (Alex Rodriguez). Lets call this one settled, shall we?
So once again, welcome to my blog. I get the feeling that this is the start of a beautiful relationship. And I don't lie...

Tristan