On Saturday, August 4, I was with
the St. Louis Cardinals on the road in Washington, as they prepared to face the
Nationals. It was hot and dreary as the club was in the midst of a dreadful
stretch of losing baseball played against losing teams – what would turn out to
be five straight losses to
the perennial bottom-feeders from Pittsburgh and
Washington.
The aggregate 41-11 score in favor
of the home clubs in those five losses represent arguably the worst stretch of
Cardinals baseball up to that point in a season during which plenty of bad
baseball has been played by the defending world champions.
With the trade deadline past and
no significant offensive help added to his struggling club, Cardinals manager
Tony La Russa, realizing his gun was about out of bullets, knew he needed to do
something. With Albert Pujols as his only dependable hitter, how might he get
more runners on base ahead of his first baseman?
As in many endeavors, there are
few new ideas, but many recycled ones from the past. To address this particular
need, La Russa turned back the clock to 1998, when Mark McGwire was baseball’s
most admired and feared hitter.
During that season, La Russa
batted
his pitcher eighth in 76 games starting on July
9, 1998
through September 27. It ultimately was viewed by the
manager as a positive factor in his 1998 team improving from a minus six games
to a plus four by season’s end, yet he abandoned the idea in
1999.
Almost
20 years had passed since it had been done before. Specifically, the Phillies’
Steve Carlton batted eighth on June
1, 1979.
It has been tried infrequently since 1998, with the most recent example in 2005,
when the Florida Marlins’ Dontrelle Willis hit seventh twice and eighth twice in
his final four starts that season.
The general idea is to have
essentially a second leadoff hitter in the ninth spot of the batting order. With
Pujols consistently hitting in the third spot in the line-up, this plan
increases the likelihood that runners will be on base when Albert comes to the
plate, so the logic goes. (Of course, this does not apply to the first time
through the order, but in subsequent passes it surely
could.)
After consulting with baseball men
he respects, including long-time Cardinals coaches Red Schoendienst and George
Kissell, on August 4th, La Russa announced his pitcher would hit
eighth.
That day, Joel Pineiro went 0-for-1 with a walk, and number nine hitter
Adam Kennedy went 2-for-4, including a solo home run - but it was the only run
for the Cardinals as they were slaughtered by the Nats,
12-1.
As they did in 1998, many baseball
watchers scoffed. Those who have enjoyed riding La Russa for years claim this is
just another ruse designed to highlight his “genius”, with the latter term used
derisively. Others point out that if it is such a great idea, why aren’t all the
other managers in the game doing it?
It is a wonder that with thinking
like that any changes are ever made to the grand old game of baseball. Folks
probably thumbed their noses in the 1980’s when La Russa popularized the ninth-inning
relief specialist, too.
Anyway, there are those who have a
far deeper mathematical interest in this subject than I who will undoubtedly
undergo a scientific analysis of the pitcher-hitting-eighth phenomena. In fact,
several already have.
"The Book: Playing the Percentages
in Baseball" by Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman, and Andrew Dolphin showed that it
is slightly better to have the
pitcher batting eighth to increase the odds of the lead-off hitter having a
runner on base to advance. Whether that conclusion was dependent on the
particular lineup surrounding McGwire in 1998, I don’t recall.
But, rather than theory here, I am
going to look at recent results.
There is no doubt the 2007
Cardinals have experienced trouble scoring runs all season long. Their run
differential on the season is currently minus 81, which is fourth from the
bottom of the 16 teams in the National League.
Here is another way to look at it.
The great slugger Pujols has averaged 126 RBIs per season in the first six
seasons of his career. Here in 2007, while still batting a most respectable .318
and only slightly worse with runners in scoring position at .308, Pujols just
isn’t getting the same return for his hits as in the past.
Through 143 games in 2007, Albert
has just 89 RBI and is on pace to end the year with 98 if he plays every game
the rest of the way (160 games total). That would, of course, be the lowest
season total in his career by a considerable margin. In 2005, Pujols plated
“just” 117.
But, is La Russa’s grand
experiment working? How can we tell?
I thought about looking at Pujols’
RBI stats or runs scored by the club both before and after the change. But,
those numbers are certainly dependent on other factors. Instead, I decided
to start with what is not as debatable, the batting average and on-base
percentage of the hitters in the number eight and nine spots in the Cardinals
batting order.
The numbers themselves do tell a
story. With roughly six weeks of baseball played since the change, there are
enough games in the books, 37, to take notice.
|
Dates |
Games |
BA #8 |
BA #9 |
OBP #8 |
OBP #9 |
BA 8+9 |
OBP 8+9 |
|
4/1-8/3 |
G1-106 |
0.263 |
0.240 |
0.316 |
0.285 |
0.252 |
0.302 |
|
8/4-9/13 |
G107-143 |
0.254 |
0.305 |
0.313 |
0.345 |
0.281 |
0.330 |
| Numbers for the pitchers spot
are in bold |
|
|
|
As you can see, in every case,
both the position player at the bottom of the order (in the number eight then
number nine spot) and the pitcher’s spot improved substantially in both batting
average and on-base percentage since the change was made.
| Improvement |
|
|
| Since 8/4 |
BA |
OBP |
| Pitchers spot |
0.014 |
0.028 |
| #8/9 Position Player |
0.042 |
0.029 |
| Combined |
0.029 |
0.028 |
I did go ahead and add Pujols’ RBI
rate, the Cardinals rate of scoring (runs per game) and even their won-loss
percentage before and after, more as a reference than as any assertion that they
were significantly affected by the change in batting order.
|
Dates |
Games |
Pujols RBI/G |
Tm BA |
Tm OBP |
Tm R/G |
Tm W/L% |
|
4/1-8/3 |
G1-106 |
0.68 |
0.270 |
0.334 |
4.14 |
0.472 |
|
8/4-9/13 |
G107-143 |
0.53 |
0.278 |
0.342 |
4.73 |
0.514 |
Are there other factors that could
have affected this? Sure. As the numbers immediately above demonstrate, the
entire team seemed to have been playing better during the recent weeks (though
not good enough, but that is another story for another day).
Another consideration is the fact
that the new number nine hitter (the “second leadoff man”) may just be a better
hitter than the previous inhabitant of the number eight spot. Maybe not in 2007 though, as the former number eight was often
catcher Yadier Molina, who in actuality is having his best career year
in both batting average (.277) and OBP (.347).
And finally, it is worth noting
that Pujols’ RBI rate has actually dropped since August 3rd. In
fairness to him, the first baseman has been battling a series of nagging injuries.
Bottom line, as in any experiment,
the jury is still out until a larger sample is secured. But to this writer, the
early returns on the pitcher-hitting-eighth experiment, 2007-style, are clearly
positive.
(A major tip of the cap is in
order to David Pinto’s Day by Day database for some of the statistics used in
this article.)
Brian Walton can be reached via
email at brwalton@earthlink.net.
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