McCutchen struggling in No. 2 spot
But optimized batting order still might work
Andrew McCutchen is producing the worst numbers of his career, and it’s safe to say this is not how Pittsburgh Pirates manager Clint Hurdle envisioned his great lineup reconstruction of 2016. Before the season, during the long stretch of spring training devoted to retooling the 25-man roster, Hurdle decided to overhaul the front end of the lineup. McCutchen, a perennial No. 3 hitter, was moved up to the No. 2 spot, while on-base wizard John Jaso was promoted to the top of the lineup.
No one has complained about McCutchen’s production levels during his last seven seasons with Pittsburgh, and for good reason. The 29-year-old batted .298 with a .388 on-base percentage and .496 slugging percentage from 2009 to 2015, racking up 38.2 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) while holding down the heart of the order. However, when the results came in from the 2015 season, Hurdle discovered that McCutchen had the second-most plate appearances with two outs and nobody on base.
Not only was McCutchen wasted in a situation where his ability to score and drive in runs was diminished, but he was also getting fewer opportunities at the plate than his teammates. Over the course of a season, a player batting second in the order will see an average of 30 more plate appearances than a player batting third, roughly the equivalent of an extra seven games. The higher a player bats in the order, the more chances he receives to get on base and score, which is why the optimal batting order is front-loaded with players who have the highest on-base percentages (OBP).
In theory, Hurdle’s experiment should have worked. While convention holds that batting order has little to no effect on team success, some sabermetric-mind- ed clubs think optimizing their lineups can squeeze the last vestiges of run production from their hitters. Instead of plugging the heart of the order with their power hitters, they construct lineups that favor on-base percentage.
The two best on-base producers are shifted to the top of the lineup, with the speedier player taking the leadoff spot. Because the No. 4 batter receives the most opportunities to drive in runs, the cleanup hitter remains where he is, and the Nos. 3 and 5 spots are filled by players with high slugging percentage and high average, respectively. Though the bottom of the lineup is typically used to stash struggling hitters, it can also serve as a repository for singles hitters who have the ability to stack the bases before the top of the order comes to bat.
Through Sunday, Jaso was batting .287 with a .358 OBP and .410 slugging percentage. And although his base-stealing rate was well below average, his on- base percentage ranked among the top 30 in the National League.
McCutchen, on the other hand, was batting .241 with a .321 OBP, a .408 slugging percentage and nine home runs. While he’s hitting homers and scoring runs at roughly the same clip that he did last spring, he’s also driving in fewer runs and watching his strikeout rate skyrocket from a career-high 19.4% in 2015 to 24.8% in 2016.
Although the Pirates’ star hitter isn’t racking up the kind of numbers that kept him in the running for MVP last season, his new batting position has enacted one positive change. In 2015, he saw 245 plate appearances from the No. 3 spot through his first 57 games of the season; in 2016, that number had risen to 274 plate appearances from the No. 2 spot during the same stretch.
Not only is he seeing more time at the plate, but he’s coming to bat with more runners on base, too. According to baseball-refer- ence.com, he saw an average of 2.47 runners on base through 157 games in 2015. Over 63 games in 2016, he’s batting with an average of 2.7 runners on base.
If the first hurdle in lineup reconstruction is optimal plate appearance distribution, the second is making sure hitters are capitalizing on additional chances to score. So far in 2016, it appears McCutchen has the first part down pat. His at-bats are more numerous and more valuable than they were in 2015. The problem lies with his production rate. The center fielder the Pirates relied on in 2015 had a .401 onbase percentage, the sixth highest among major league players. If the 2015 version of McCutchen had been subject to the same lineup revision the Pirates are undergoing today, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario where he doesn’t apply those numbers to the extra 30 plate appearances and ascend a few rungs on the leaderboard.
Whether McCutchen’s slump reflects a labored adjustment to the No. 2 spot, the illusion of sample size or another issue entirely remains to be seen. While he’s coming to the plate more often, he’s also balancing a careerhigh soft-contact rate of 19.8% and a near-career-low hard-contact rate of 35%. His increased focus on hitting for power means he’s chasing more pitches outside of the strike zone and missing hittable pitches as a result.
Although it’s possible the shift in batting order has accentuated McCutchen’s struggles at the plate, it might not be the only culprit for his decline.
As long as Hurdle remains committed to an optimized batting order and McCutchen works on improving his plate discipline, however, batting second might be one experiment worth sticking with.
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