The Black Holes of Baseball: Poor Hitters Suck The Life Out Of A Lineup
Can Josh Hamilton deliver more in 2010?The pendulum has swung and instead of disregarding the effects of defense, teams and fans are beginning to emphasize and embrace exceptional defensive players. While some great defensive players are also very good offensive performers, a lot of teams appear willing to use excellent defensive players even though they are well-below-average hitters.
In the AL West, CHONE projects that the Angels, Athletics, and Rangers will each carry two players who will OPS below .700. The Mariners have six such players! But what is the effect of carrying a player whose offense is so limited?
Using the lineup optimizer at Baseball Musings, one can plug in OBP and SLG for nine individuals and estimate the number of runs the team would be expected to score during the course of a 162-game season. Provided in the table below are a series of columns that begin with a slightly above-average American League lineup which would be expected to score 802 runs in a season (Column 2). Switching from a productive hitter to the ultimate black hole, an average pitcher, produces a more than 100-run drop in production (Column 3). The actual difference in scoring between American and National League teams in 2009 was less than what is projected here (63 runs) due to interleague play and the use of pinch hitters who reduced pitcher plate appearances by approximately one-third.
Column 4 (w/def wiz) reveals that a weak-hitting shortstop, catcher, or outfielder can cost a team more than 20 runs of offense during a season. More detrimental is a middle-of-the-lineup hitter mired in a slump -- or Ken Griffey -- since they can cost a team 35 runs during a season (Column 5). Interestingly, teams that carry a defensive player with impaired offense are particularly susceptible to a slumping power hitter as noted by the 60-run drop in run expectancy shown in the last column.
In 2009, the Rangers received sub-.700 OPS production from three positions -- shortstop, catcher, and first base. As noted in the table below, the team received league-average or better offense from each of the remaining six defensive positions. Particularly egregious were the Rangers' first basemen who posted a cumulative .681 OPS in 2009, which was second worst in all of baseball and more than 150 OPS points behind the league average of .845. The team's catchers posted a cumulative .662 OPS, which ranked 25th among all teams in 2009. Had the team enjoyed league-average performance from its catchers and first basemen in 2009, the team would have been expected to have scored almost 70 additional runs (see Column 4). Those 70 runs would have likely pushed the Rangers' win total close to 95 wins and perhaps a playoff birth.
Looking ahead to 2010, the Rangers' offense would certainly benefit from improvements at first base and catcher. Fortunately, most projection systems expect Chris Davis, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, and Taylor Teagarden to perform much better during the coming season. Provided in the second column in the table below are the CHONE projections for each of the Rangers' starting nine and an estimate for how many runs that offense would be expected to score during the season. Now before you get overly excited about a prediction of 840 runs, it is worth noting that this is almost certainly an over-estimate, since it represents the team’s optimal offensive unit. Replacing the performances of the starters periodically with that of their backups will most assuredly reduce the productivity of the offense.
Now consider the effect that injuries or ineffectiveness might have on the team. Replacing Kinsler with Andres Blanco would be expected to cost the Rangers almost 40 runs (Column 3). Replacing Elvis Andrus with Blanco would actually have very little effect on the offense, though there might be some cost on defense (Column 4). Likewise, replacing Michael Young’s projected offense with that of Esteban German would only slightly reduce the effectiveness of the offense, though the team’s defense could suffer (Column 5). Davis, Saltalamacchia, or Josh Hamilton repeating their 2009 performances for a full season in 2010 would likely cost the team close to fifteen runs of offense (Columns 6, 7, and 8). Having Hamilton and Davis both repeating their 2009 would be almost as devastating as losing Kinsler for the season (Column 9).
Get well soon, Kins!
12 Comments | in Analysis, The Season
Reader Comments (12)
A very nice read.
The only positives I can say about last year's offense is that despite it, they won 87 games.
Look around the league, other teams have worse trouble than Texas, in a lot of areas - including the "darlings" of the ALWest, the Mariners. And no one ever talks about it but the Yankees are OLD MEN.
What happens to your offense when the bottom third of your line up is a black hole?
I'm sorry but I didn't read through all of today's article. I'll try it again later in the day, when my head is a little more clear.
I don't want to be an alarmist after 2 games... but Hamilton's ABs last night were ridiculous. He waved his bat at pitches a foot out of the zone, in the dirt, up high, etc... he really looked desperate and lost.
Chris Davis' ABs weren't much better.
I'm concerned this lineup is going to be feast or faminine... they are going to either hit everything, or hit nothing.
The Rangers only got two guys currently hitting.
Be very happy when they stat UPgressing to the mean!
Nice Jon.
It doesn't look good after two games, but I can't freak out yet. It's just two games. I'll start freaking out after two series, which should probably be more like two months. I'm eager to see how Kinsler's return to the lineup (whenever that may be) will affect the other hitters. Perhaps Josh is just pressing while Kinsler is out. I can't wait to see what the next game brings us.
162 HR for Cruz?
@ Dave - you're right, we need to see what's going on in a month and then draw conclusions. However, this lineup is streaky and I'm concerned we could be looking at a sub-par offense.
Borbon, Hamilton, Vlad, Cruz, Kins, Davis, Salty, TT, and I guess Andrus too... are all capable of multi -K games.
We lack the high OBP guys that need to be sprinkled throughout a line up.
I Realize those type of hitters are hard to come by... but if the Rangers average 9 or 10 K's a game, I'm afraid it will spell doom and JD will ultimately have to figure out a way to revamp the lineup.
But let's not even go there... instead, we will check back on May 8th...
Dave H -
Of course, I fully expect hitting to improve. UPgress was just a play on words since stat heads always caution against "breakout years" (just before FA status typically) REgressing back to the mean.
Well I figure if you can regress back to the mean you should be able to upgress back to the mean. And I honestly expect them to.
What is really cool about the 2010 Rangers is a new concept - depth.
If some of these guys don't start upgressing there are some hungry guys on the bench like Murphy and at AAA like Smoak who will be happy to take their place and give it a shot. No longer do we fans just have to sit around and grin and bear it while some play just flails away for pretty much the entire season.
And I agree strongly with Pabloesque - future drafting and trades should focus on high OBP guys (as well as strong defense).
Last night's game was painful to watch. The offense looked terrible, and the pitchers got killed by walks and homers. These are the old Rangers problems rearing their heads again - let's hope it's just rustiness and not a sign of things to come during the long course of a season.
Josh was terrible again. He looks like he has absolutely no pitch recognition - not only what's coming but where it's going to land in the zone. I know this is a very difficult skill, but what happened to the guy who was described as a "natural" hitter? It's only been 2 games, but if he and Davis have a dismal June, it doesn't bode well for the team.
It's interesting how we will come to view the Hamilton for Volquez deal. If Josh is going to be a .260 20 homer guy, and if Volquez never gets his mojo back, we all could just laugh at what a big to-do we all made over a couple of nobodies.
I'd like to see Garko at 1B against lefties permanently. Josh looked bad, but he's a battler, and I think when Kinsler gets healthy it will be easy to go Borbon-Young-Vlad-Cruz-Kinsler-Josh and take some pressure off of him if need be. It's Chris Davis who scares the hell out of me, If it's going to be another sub-.700 OPS season at 1B, you can almost write off the season. Getting some productivity vsL from Garko would be a nice way to put a floor under the overall 1B productivity.
By the way, why did we pick up Garko? Doesn't he have really good numbers against lefties? I would've thought he would have picked up the start against the soft-tossing lefty. Oh well.
Dave - see that Garko is in there today? You're one step ahead of them :D
Don't everyone forget, that we should be able to trade for the badly needed high OBP guy later in the season THIS YEAR! Even if things don't improve for Josh/CDavis/pick a catcher......, we could still be contending again, and the "help" that we couldn't get last year could still put us over the top. And that's still the bad (if not worse) case senerio :)