Who’s up first? It should be Biggio
Springer is used to leading off, but it makes more sense to move him down a notch
Blue Jays pitchers and catchers have been on the scene in Dunedin for a few days now, but with the full squad reporting for duty Monday, it’s a good time to look beyond the rotation and see how the starting lineup might look on a regular basis, as the team looks for a return to a post-season that’s likely not to be expanded this year.
Eight teams from each league qualified for the playoffs in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, but barring a late change the field will be back to five per league this year. The Jays were the eighth seed last year, albeit with a better record than the sixth-seeded Houston Astros, so they wouldn’t have made it in under normal rules. They did only miss out on the fifth spot by three games, though.
The Jays’ success last year came mostly from the offence, and the group that finished third in the league in runs scored has been augmented by the arrivals of George Springer and Marcus Semien.
So how will Charlie Montoyo and the front office fit their new toys in with the rest of the crew? They’ve got plenty of options.
What they don’t need to do is worry about lefty-righty balance, because a lot of the time the lineup is likely to have only one left-handed hitter in it: Cavan Biggio. There’s no way to “break up the righties.” No matter how it’s stacked, there will be eight right-handed hitters in a row.
“I feel like our lineup is so good, almost like a Yankee lineup with all the right-handers,” said Montoyo, referring to big, scary Bronx Bombers such as Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Luke Voit, Gleyber Torres and Gio Urshela (not a typo). “They’re gonna hit, I believe. I think we all know they’re gonna hit. Having that many right-handers in a row, it doesn’t bother me anymore.”
It’s a good thing it doesn’t bother him, because there really isn’t much he can do about it. Rowdy Tellez will definitely get some time, but outside of his red-hot last two weeks of last season (before going down with a knee injury) he’s a career .239 hitter with an on-base percentage under .300, so he’s still got a lot of room to improve and shouldn’t be handed an everyday job.
Having Tellez in the lineup on a regular basis would force Teoscar Hernandez into the outfield from the DH spot and Randal Grichuk to the bench, which is a big hit on the defensive side for not much gain, if any, on the offensive side.
Even when Tellez plays, the optimal lineup still has five or six right-handed hitters in a row.
That optimal lineup shouldn’t start with Springer, even though he didn’t hit anywhere but the leadoff spot for pretty much the past five seasons in Houston. He’s the biggest proven bat on the team — though one hopes he’ll be pushed by several of his new teammates — and the Jays have the luxury of Biggio’s elite on-base skills to set the table for him.
Biggio’s career on-base percentage of .368 is the highest on the team, and after being moved to the leadoff spot last season he reached base a whopping 39 per cent of the time. Biggio finished 12th in the league in pitches per plate appearance in 2020, after being fourth among hitters with at least 300 plate appearances the year before.
Having Biggio in the top spot and Springer hitting second doesn’t guarantee there will be a runner on base whenever Springer comes to the plate, of course, but it does guarantee that Springer won’t have one plate appearance every game where there definitely won’t be anybody on.
Yes, there will be eight righthanded hitters in a row behind Biggio, but no matter where Biggio hits there will be eight right-handed hitters in a row behind him.
Bo Bichette has only hit outside one of the top two spots in the order once — he batted sixth in his major-league debut — but Biggio and Springer hitting one-two would mean he bats third, a solid spot for someone with a career OPS of .896 and 44 extra-base hits in 75 career games.
Hernandez, the Jays’ best bat since the 2019 all-star break, landed in the cleanup spot a couple of weeks into last season and, with a couple of exceptions, stayed there until an oblique strain landed him on the injured list a month later. He should be back there this year, with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. batting fifth.
The sixth spot ideally goes to Lourdes Gurriel, Jr., followed by Semien, Grichuk and Danny Jansen. When Tellez is in the lineup, he’d likely bump Gurriel down a spot, pushing Grichuk to the bench.
It really is an embarrassment of riches for the Jays as far as the offence is concerned. If Hernandez continues his metamorphosis into the Edwin Encarnacion of the ’20s, then they’ll have five straight big scary bats of their own after Biggio, and that group will be followed Semien, who finished third in MVP voting the last time there was a full season.
This is a team that will once again hit with the best in the business. What will determine their fate, of course, is just how good they’ll be at keeping the other guys from scoring.