Here’s a cool thought experiment for you: What if tomorrow, Bud Selig decided that since the DH is an offensive substitution for the pitcher and the pitcher (usually) hits ninth, all DHs must bat in the ninth slot in the order–effective immediately? What would most teams do to compensate? The choice, clearly, is between putting the DH in the field or moving him down to the bottom of the order, weighing all that both options entail.
While the choices may be clear, the decision on which is best gets complex rather quickly.
First, a little background. Traditionally, DHs are among the better hitters on a team, that’s why they are asked to hit and not worry about fielding. You typically don’t want your best hitters batting last, rather you want to maximize their trips to the plate and get them into more high leverage offensive opportunities. All this is pretty obvious so far.
My first thought was to think of a guy like Matt Joyce. The Rays use Joyce as their DH from time to time but he is hardly the only guy manager Joe Maddon slots there, and he’s a capable outfielder on days when he’s asked to play the field. If Maddon was forced to bat his DH in the 9 spot, Joyce might see a bit more playing time in left field but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he was forced to hit last every now and then. In fact, most teams with rotation DHs would be in a similar position, inconvenienced but not crippled. Clearly, it’s suboptimal to hit a guy like Joyce–or Nick Swisher of the Indians who plays first, outfield and DH–ninth, but it likely won’t make that much of a difference over all.
This is especially true because the number of ABs lost by guys like Joyce who can play elsewhere wouldn’t be as great as if they had to DH/bat 9th all the time. Keep in mind at this point that for every spot lower in the order a batter hits, they get around 20 fewer AB’s over the course of a season (such that if the leadoff hitter gets 600 ABs in a season, the 2 hitter would get around 580, the 3 hitter 560 and so on).
The real problems surface for teams like the Royals. The Royals have a full time DH, Billy Butler, who doesn’t play any other position, is one of the team’s better hitters, and should always be hitting near the middle of the order. Batting Butler 9th would create all sort of problems for KC because not only would his offensive talents be squandered at the bottom of the order, his total lack of mobility on the bases might cost the guys at the top of the order (coming up behind him) some steals and extra base hits.
The Royals alternative would be to move Butler to the only position he could viably play, first base. That’s problematic too though because incumbent first basemen, Eric Hosmer, is also a middle of the order type bat and is much better defensively than Butler would be. So what do you do? Sacrifice defense to get Butler in the middle of the lineup and create other problems by hitting Hosmer 9th, or deal with the pitfalls of hitting Billy Butler last?
The Tigers would be in a similar situation. Victor Martinez is their full time DH and typically hits behind Miguel Cabrera in the middle of the order. To keep him in that lineup spot, manager Brad Ausmus would have to put VMart in the field. Realistically at this point in his career, that would be at first base with Cabrera shifting to third, but let’s keep things simple and treat Martinez as a catcher. If Ausmus put Martinez behind the plate, chances are that would move current starting catcher Alex Avila to the 9 spot as the DH (he’d still be one of Detroit’s nine best hitters most nights) or open up an opportunity for another of the Tiger good young hitters like Don Kelly, Andy Dirks, or Nick Castellanos. While that offensive flexibility might be nice, it comes at a high price, namely defense. Ausmus would have to weigh putting Martinez in the middle of the order and freeing up the DH spot against the ghastly catching that VMart would likely showcase, and the effect of that on his pitching staff.
Obviously, the equation varies from team to team. Would the Red Sox deal with David Ortiz’ defense at first to keep him third in the order? And what would that do to Mike Napoli? What about the Yankees and Alfonso Soriano, or the White Sox and Adam Dunn/ Paul Konerko? There are a lot of interesting possibilities to ponder.
One mathematical approach would be to compare the expected offensive drop off of moving a guy like David Ortiz from the 3 hole to the 9 hole and weight that against the negative impact of his defense if he were to play the field. But what stat would you use to compare production of the same player in different lineup slots? WAR? Does WAR even vary by batting order?
It’s a lot to consider but the very idea engendered a lengthy text thread between Sean and me, and I think it’s an interesting thought experiment. What do you think?
-Max Frankel
