The best batters should bat at the top of the batting order
Being a clean-up hitter in a batting lineup suggests power and majesty. The perfect batting order dream scenario is the leadoff batter, second place and third place hitters all get on base loading the bases for the big kahuna, who hits the grand slam to score ’em all!
Leadoff hitters bat more often overall than any other batter in a lineup. It’s also true that the leadoff hitter may only lead off the game one time, based on what happens in the game. We expect a leadoff hitter to have a good batting eye, and an overall ability to get on base for the RBI hitters that follow. Home runs for leadoff hitters are not a priority, unless your name is Kyle Schwarber. Rickey Henderson is the career leader in leadoff home runs with 81. Blue Jays OF George Springer is next on the all-time list with 57 going into this season.
There’s an argument to be made that the leadoff hitter should be the team’s overall BEST hitter. And that makes sense since why wouldn’t a manager want the best hitter to have the most opportunities to help the team by reaching base or better?
How many more AB’s for a leadoff hitter in a season?
From an interesting article by Dr. Randal S. Olson:
These small differences in At Bat opportunities add up to the point that a Daniel Descalso (.250 hitter) clone #1 will have roughly 142 more At Bats than Daniel Descalso clone #9 over the course of the season — -nearly 1 additional At Bat per game in a season!
Wait, the leadoff hitter will bat 142 more times than the #9 hitter? Doesn’t that seem like a lot? But there are 162 games and it’s easy to imagine that when the game ends the leadoff hitter got his 4th or 5th AB in the final inning or two leaving the lower slotted hitters awaiting their turn to get theirs. 88% of the time apparently, they do not.
Yankees slugger Aaron Judge for his career heading into the 2024 season, has been slotted 528 times out of 835 career games (63%), as the #2 batter by manager Aaron Boone. He has seen 161 starts in the №3 spot, with most of those coming in 2017 (62 starts) and 2021 (90 starts). The question is, would the Yankees be better off if Judge was the actual leadoff hitter? Here’s why that’s not necessarily the case:
Here’s an inning-by-inning breakdown of every home run hit by Aaron Judge: 1st inning (47), 2nd inning (16), 3rd inning (40), 4th inning (25), 5th inning (31), 6th inning (26), 7th inning (27), 8th inning (30), 9th inning (12), extra innings (3).
Aaron Judge has hit 257 home runs during his career, 132 while playing at home, 125 while on the road. Aaron Judge hit 157 solo homers, 69 with a single runner on base, 25 with two men on base, and 6 grand slams. Judge homered off 201 different pitchers during his career, connected most often while batting second in the lineup, and drove in 394 total runs when he went deep.
Those 1st inning home runs stand out. Judge entered 2024 with a batting average of .282. 556 hits, 173 home runs, 381 RBIs and 407 runs scored in 529 games when batting 2nd for his career. Interestingly, Judge’s career batting average is also .282. It does not seem to matter to Judge where he hits in the lineup, although he says he prefers batting third. This year with Juan Soto a Yankee, Judge will be hitting third behind Soto, an on-base and superior hitting machine. Given the Yankees fast start, that is not likely to change anytime soon. There’s still somehow a perception that putting Soto in the leadoff spot and batting Judge second would be some sort of slight to Soto, taking away some of Soto’s RBI opportunities but it would have the team’s two best hitters up at the plate more often.
Now that Shohei Ohtani is a Dodger, his former teammate and future Hall-of-Famer Mike Trout has considerably less protection in the Angels lineup. Trout has hit leadoff in the past but only rarely. Provided he’s healthy having Trout get slightly more AB’s for the Halos this season makes sense, but Trout batting leadoff won’t happen. But would batting leadoff be radical idea or a slight to the great Mike Trout?
Dodgers Mookie Betts didn’t always hit leadoff, but has evolved into a leadoff hitter, (Mookie has 49 leadoff home runs) and with Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman behind him in the batting order Betts will surely see better pitches to hit since walking Mookie ahead of those superstars is a good recipe for a pitching disaster.
Look around MLB and think about the best hitter on each of the teams and chances are that hitter is not batting leadoff. That’s not the case with reigning MVP Ronald Acuna who with Mookie Betts are the two shining examples of what is today’s prototypical leadoff hitter. Not only are they players who can reach base and steal bases, (Acuna steals more bases than Betts) but both possess big-time power which aside from Schwarber, is still not a regular trait of a leadoff hitter.
Mets Brandon Nimmo is a high on-base average leadoff hitter. He’s always been a leadoff hitter. Early in his career he hit few home runs, but as he’s matured, he’s added home run power to his arsenal, and the team is the better for it. Nimmo and the Mets are prepared to sacrifice a higher batting average and on-base average a little (both his BA and OBA have dropped by just under 10% over the past two seasons) but he did hit 16 home runs in 2022 and 24 in 2023.
MLB managers changing batting orders during the season is often seen as not being a good thing. MLB batters like to know where they will hit in the order so they can be better prepared, although that’s a pretty weak reason. Here’s what often isn’t seen, when a #5 hitter is on a hot streak the manager is not inclined to move that player into the leadoff spot since it will affect all the hitters in the lineup.
Pitchers and catchers prepare to face each individual hitter based on their assessment of the hitter’s strengths and weaknesses as well as the pitcher’s strengths and weaknesses. They also weigh pitching to the batters based on the batters that follow in the batting order. The pitcher facing the Dodgers pitches to Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and Shohei Ohtani, not the leadoff hitter, #2 and #3 hitter in the lineup. it seems like those guys are coming up to the plate all the time, and it’s only a little bit true but it is more often than if any batter lower in the order.
The concept of the #9 hitter being a sort of ‘double-leadoff’ hitter is only cosmetic. The idea that a fast running #9 hitter could spark a rally by coming up 1st or 2nd in the inning ahead of the top three is only there to make the hitter feel better since over the season that #9 hitter will get fewer at-bats than everyone else. Aside from top of the order batters getting more opportunities than lower in the order batters, there’s really no reason that managers should avoid messing with the batting order. Batters know to be ready to hit when their turn comes up no matter when that is. The best batters should bat at the top of the order almost all the time. But after the top three changing the lineup positions to take advantage of a recent hot streak is a tactic that teams could use more often than….never.
Here’s what I wrote about the New York Mets this week for www.MLBReport.com
https://mlbreport.com/2024/03/being-on-the-mets-opening-day-roster-means-less-than-it-used-to/
https://mlbreport.com/2024/03/mets-opening-day-nobody-was-blown-away/
https://mlbreport.com/2024/04/mets-owner-steve-cohen-and-pobo-david-stearns-appear-ruthless/
Thanks for reading!
About the Author: Mark Kolier along with his son Gordon co-hosts a baseball podcast called ‘Almost Cooperstown’. He also has written baseball-related articles that can be accessed on Medium.com and now Substack.com.
