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“Kyle Schwarber, leadoff hitter,” might seem like a paradoxical arrangement, given that the young slugger’s most visible strength (extra-base hits) and weakness (strikeouts) don’t mesh with the traditional leadoff profile.
“Some of the stereotypes that come with ‘Is the leadoff hitter a small, scrappy, on-base machine?’ versus me sending up a 6-foot-3, 225-pound George Springer, it might look different,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch says. “But what we’re after is scoring the most runs and putting your most dangerous hitters to get the most at-bats is an effective way to do that.”
The prototypical leadoff hitter is older than batting helmets, Wrigley Field, and the World Series. In his book A Game of Inches, baseball historian Peter Morris cites an 1898 Sporting Life article that explained, “It is customary to have a small, active fellow who can hit, run and steal bases, and also worry a pitcher into a preliminary base on balls, as a leader in the list.” For more than a century, that vision of the leadoff hitter persisted; three-quarters of small, active fellow David Eckstein’s career plate appearances came from the 1-hole, for instance, despite him posting a career batting line 8 percent worse than average, by wRC+.
Speed was once the connective tissue between generations of leadoff men: Of the 20 players with the most stolen bases since lineup data has been recorded (since 1913), 15 spent the majority of their careers in the leadoff spot. But as sabermetric analyses revealed about a decade ago, on-base skill, not speed, is the most vital asset for a no. 1 hitter, for a pair of self-affirming reasons.
First, it’s less important that a leadoff man be able to steal a base than that he be able to reach base at all. As Cleveland manager Terry Francona summarizes when explaining his decision to hit Santana, who holds a career .365 OBP, first last season, “On-base percentage for your guys up in the order is important because you’re going to have your best run producers behind them.”
Second, the higher a player appears in the order, the more plate appearances he will collect, and those extra chances should distribute to the best hitters in a lineup, not just the fastest ones. “You know, the computer will tell you that your best hitter should hit first, and your second-best hitter should hit second, your third-best hitter should hit third,” Showalter says. “The whole idea is to get them to the plate as many times as possible, and … sometimes I think that might be correct. If you led off your best player, hit him first instead of third or fourth, you’d probably get him 40 or 50 more at-bats in a year.” Showalter’s math is correct. Analyst Mitchel Lichtman estimates that each jump up the batting order increases total plate appearances by 2.5 percent, which, over the course of a 650-PA season, yields a 49-PA increase between the cleanup and leadoff spots.
https://theringer.com/2017-mlb-prev...n-george-springer-kyle-schwarber-2e49f6ff7c58
“Some of the stereotypes that come with ‘Is the leadoff hitter a small, scrappy, on-base machine?’ versus me sending up a 6-foot-3, 225-pound George Springer, it might look different,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch says. “But what we’re after is scoring the most runs and putting your most dangerous hitters to get the most at-bats is an effective way to do that.”
The prototypical leadoff hitter is older than batting helmets, Wrigley Field, and the World Series. In his book A Game of Inches, baseball historian Peter Morris cites an 1898 Sporting Life article that explained, “It is customary to have a small, active fellow who can hit, run and steal bases, and also worry a pitcher into a preliminary base on balls, as a leader in the list.” For more than a century, that vision of the leadoff hitter persisted; three-quarters of small, active fellow David Eckstein’s career plate appearances came from the 1-hole, for instance, despite him posting a career batting line 8 percent worse than average, by wRC+.
Speed was once the connective tissue between generations of leadoff men: Of the 20 players with the most stolen bases since lineup data has been recorded (since 1913), 15 spent the majority of their careers in the leadoff spot. But as sabermetric analyses revealed about a decade ago, on-base skill, not speed, is the most vital asset for a no. 1 hitter, for a pair of self-affirming reasons.
First, it’s less important that a leadoff man be able to steal a base than that he be able to reach base at all. As Cleveland manager Terry Francona summarizes when explaining his decision to hit Santana, who holds a career .365 OBP, first last season, “On-base percentage for your guys up in the order is important because you’re going to have your best run producers behind them.”
Second, the higher a player appears in the order, the more plate appearances he will collect, and those extra chances should distribute to the best hitters in a lineup, not just the fastest ones. “You know, the computer will tell you that your best hitter should hit first, and your second-best hitter should hit second, your third-best hitter should hit third,” Showalter says. “The whole idea is to get them to the plate as many times as possible, and … sometimes I think that might be correct. If you led off your best player, hit him first instead of third or fourth, you’d probably get him 40 or 50 more at-bats in a year.” Showalter’s math is correct. Analyst Mitchel Lichtman estimates that each jump up the batting order increases total plate appearances by 2.5 percent, which, over the course of a 650-PA season, yields a 49-PA increase between the cleanup and leadoff spots.
https://theringer.com/2017-mlb-prev...n-george-springer-kyle-schwarber-2e49f6ff7c58
