thebuzzardman wrote:levendis wrote:Gegorious and his .318 OBP shouldn't be anywhere near the top of the lineup in front of guys like Judge/Stanton/Sanchez/Bird.
Yet they had him batting 3rd at some point.
I was thinking mostly about bat control, some speed, but I really don't like him at the top of the order. Was more thinking out loud. I'll state it again. I don't think the Yanks have an old fashioned quality leadoff hitter or # 2 hitter. They have guys who can fill the roles "ok", but Gardner doesn't really tear it up in batting average and walks and his base stealing hasn't been great for about 5 years - but I'd guess that more a function of approach. Gardner is a classic leadoff hitter, he just isn't really a great one. He could just as soon be batting 7-9 on a team that had a really good lead off hitter. It's hard to say what Hicks is, because he's had one good half season, but he did draw a good number of walks. Conversely, he's strike out 100+ times if he ever played a full year, but that's not as big a deal as it used to be, so I guess that's ok now for a guy who hits 2nd. It certainly wouldn't have been for most of the history of baseball, but the attitude towards strikeouts is way different than it used to be and baseball FO people know analytics, so I'd assume they'd be ok with it.
Yeah that wasn't ideal, had a crap load of injuries at some point last year. I remember Romine batting 5/6 for a couple games. Girardi also had an obsession with wanting to split up R and L so he hit him in front of Sanchez to split those two up... which is stupid.
He's probably our best contact hitter. He's actually sneaky slow. Don't steal any bags.
Ultimately what teams are doing is batting their best hitters higher in the lineup to get more ABs. Dont have the numbers in front of me but those extra ABs add up as the season progresses. I'd rather have Judge getting that extra AB the 1-2 spots usually get than Didi.
I mean Ks matter but all outs matter. That's all new analytics are saying. Putting the ball in play doesn't mean much if it's not very productive. Ultimately Ks are worse than ground outs, singles better than walks. Rather have the chance of an error occuring, moving a runner over from 1st to 3rd on a single etc. But thats not nearly as important as getting on base more and making less outs.