Balancing Wins and Value

You make the call –

You are Neal Huntington in your first year as GM of the Pirates and your job is to rebuild the organization. Included in your job responsibilities is a mandate from ownership that fans have to keep flowing through the gates, although they understand there will be some hits.

Your roster includes three potential blue chip players in Jason Bay, Tom Gorzelanny, and Ian Snell, and few other chips like Xavier Nady, Jack Wilson, and Freddy Sanchez.

Bay has had a significant statistical downturn the last two years and other clubs wonder if his best days aren’t already in his past. Silently you wonder too. You pencil Gorzelanny in as the only untouchable blue chip of the group wanting to sign him long-term in a few (say five years). Snell enters 2008 at 26 years of age and you wonder how much more he has in the tank before he reaches his trading peek.

Now the dilemma.. you have to decide how to construct your batting order and pitching rotations for 2008. Questions like where do you bat Bay, Sanchez, and Wilson, or how do you slot Snell and Maholm to maximize their value in-season without appearing that you are doing just that hound you daily. Your now at the point in spring training you have to make a decision.

Do you:

A. Maximize player value regardless of outcome (higher probability fewer wins will be achieved) knowing your ultimate goal is to get value for value down the line?

B. Do your best to maximize player value and obtain wins while still respecting ownership’s desire to be funded with gate proceeds (probability of more wins than in A above)?

C. Construct lineups and slotting orders that put your club in the best position to win every day regardless of how much it may hurt player value down the line (probability of even more wins than in A or B above)?

It’s not as easy a decision as you may think. But the path Neal Huntington and Frank Coonelly decide to take in the next 15-30 days will, in all probability, define much of their success or failure over the next two and one-half years while rebuilding.

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The table below shows how each of our lineup positions have done the last two years against the National League average. The results are one-year differences. Last Out is who made the last out in an inning.

The reasons that caused the deficiencies are not relevant. What is relevant is that they exist.

Take our #4 hitter, for example. He’s getting as many plate appearances as the average #4 batter on a NL club yet makes the final out .7% more often. So who ever is batting in the #5 slot is, of course, leading off more often than average. That’s not good because, typically, that’s the lineup position that holds a power oriented player who strikes out more often than average.

And look at the lack of run production – scoring and producing – from our #3 hitter. That’s obscene. Again, don’t focus on why it might be happening.. just focus on the fact it is happening.

Interestingly, our #8 batter is hitting 12.8% better than the NL average. Think about that a second. On one hand, that sounds good because the pitcher can move him around. On the other hand, why haven’t we concentrated in getting those players more at bats?

Remember this table from Part III of my ‘Are We Really Getting Better’ series?

Hmm.. look at that. We are getting the same number of at bats as the average MLB club, getting on base about the same considering the extra hit batters we have and the near same number of hits, but we aren’t scoring runs. Yes, the lack of home runs are a big part of that, but not even 40 of the 71 runs.

We don’t have any clutch – or - we’re placing the clutch we do have in the wrong lineup slots. It has to be one or the other.

Now, it’s not like we have a lot of choices in where we can bat certain players since the only true middle of the order guys we have are Bay and LaRoche.

Then there’s Nady.. perhaps the most underutilized player on the Pirates roster. Why? Because he’s had the third best percentage of runs batted in on the club the last two years but has been buried in the lineup. Look how few opportunities Nady has had last two compared to one year of LaRoche:

The rbi opportunity stats are from Baseball Prospectus. OBI is others batted in (RBI-HR), ROB is runners on base, R1BI% is the percentage of runs batted in from first base.

Ah.. now it’s starting to come together. For all Freddy Sanchez is doing (19% OBI, 20.8% R2BI%), and knowing he has predominately batted third the last two years and knowing how large our productivity deficit was for our #3 batter, obviously Mr. Sanchez needs to be hitting some where else. He’s spinning his wheels.

But look at Paulino and Nady – very impressive. And despite the opportunities, Jack Wilson just isn’t getting the ‘clutch’ job done.

Ok.. so moving Wilson out of the eight hole to the two hole is a no-brainer but only if we can get an extremely high on base player batting in front of him so his bat control makes sense. A case could be made for either McLouth/Morgan or Bautista, but I’m going to suggest Sanchez and keep my speed behind later OBP for use later in the lineup.

So we have Sanchez leading off, Wilson batting second, and the obvious #3 batter has to be Xavier Nady. That leaves LaRoche batting fourth, Bay batting fifth, Paulino batting sixth, Bautista batting seventh, and then flip a coin if the pitcher should bat before Morgan or McLouth. It wouldn’t hurt with Bautista’s OBP potential and slower foot speed.

So there you go.. one lineup that utilizes ‘clutch’ performance based on runs batted in production, as well as attempts to satisfy meeting lineup slot performance, is:

Sanchez
Wilson
Nady
LaRoche
Bay
Paulino
Bautista
Morgan/McLouth/Pitcher
Pitcher/Morgan/McLouth

That also hopes to keep Paulino from hitting into too many double plays since, hopefully, Nady, LaRoche, and Bay will have cleared the runners by the time he comes to the plate, it puts speed late, and it, hopefully, pushes the third out past the #4 hitter more often than not.

It’s just one idea of probably 100 floating around the Pirates front offices right now. But maybe it isn’t.. batting Sanchez first is a bit unorthodox, but he’s being wasted batting #3. So who knows. Also, many NL managers like speed early but I’m not as high on the value of speed, although our #1 batter has scored at the NL average last two. But I think Sanchez will score even more this way.

Lastly, now consider the implications of this lineup with the first part of this post. How does it affect player value and wins? To me, it attempts to raise values for Sanchez (perhaps debatable), Nady, Bay, and Wilson.

You?

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