It may be Kingery’s time in the leadoff spot
Pitching matchups
OK, so you didn’t really expect the Phillies to spend every day of the rest of the season in first place, did you? Did you?
For the first time almost two months, the Phillies are waking up without at least a share of the top spot in the National League East. They wasted a stellar start from Zach Eflin Wednesday night in a 2-0 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks at Citizens Bank Park. Never mind that the Phillies were facing a 30-year-old starting pitcher who had spent the last four seasons in South Korea. They mustered only three hits in a feeble offensive performance.
The Atlanta Braves meanwhile won their seventh straight game Thursday, 6-5 over the Pirates, to drop the Phillies 1½ games back in the division entering the threegame showdown at SunTrust Park beginning Friday night.
Once Andrew McCutchen went down for the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee, it made sense for the Phillies to give Cesar Hernandez the first crack at moving into the leadoff spot.
Eight games later, though, it’s time for a change.
Hernandez, who batted leadoff for most of the last two seasons, was 0 for 4 again Wednesday night and is 4 for 32 with three walks since taking over for McCutchen at the top of the order. His slump goes back even further, too. Since May 21, Hernandez is 13 for 79 (.165).
The Phillies don’t have the prototypical leadoff type to replace McCutchen. Bryce Harper has the patience to draw a lot of walks, but manager Gabe Kapler prefers that he come to the plate with runners on base. Roman Quinn is slated to be activated this weekend in Atlanta, but the Phillies might want to ease the oft-injured center fielder back by batting him lower in the order.
At this point, the best leadoff bet appears to be Scott Kingery, if for no reason other than to maximize the number of at-bats per game for the Phillies’ hottest hitter. Kingery has batted primarily in the No. 7 spot even though he has 20 hits in his last 68 at-bats. Eleven of those hits have gone for extra bases.
The improvement has been stark. As a rookie last year, Kingery was so badly overmatched that it wasn’t an exaggeration to call him one of the worst hitters in baseball. Today, his .969 on-base plus slugging percentage leads a Phillies offense that features Harper and Rhys Hoskins.
“I think we’ll consider everything,” Kapler said. “At the same time, it’s hard not to keep him right where he is. There’s a lot of value in the comfort he may be feeling right now.”
Maybe so. And there are reasons to question whether Kingery would represent a top-of-the-order fit. He still strikes out a bit too much, at least by leadoff-hitting standards, and has walked only five times in 119 plate appearances.
But Kapler never hesitates to challenge Kingery defensively by moving him among multiple positions, most recently using him as the team’s primary center fielder. The time has come to challenge him at the plate, too.
While Kapler picked Wednesday night to finally rest Harper and play Nick Williams, J.T. Realmuto started his 12th game in a row. The ironman catcher has started 58 of the Phillies’ 68 games and been behind the plate for at least a portion of 60 games, putting him on a pace to start 138 games and play 142.
Randy Hundley holds the record for most games caught in a season with 160, including 156 starts, for the Chicago Cubs in 1968. Bob Boone owns the Phillies’ mark with 148 games caught (142 starts) in 1974.
But that type of workload is rare. Since 2000, Brad Ausmus is the only catcher to reach the 150-game mark, while Ausmus, Jason Kendall, Russell Martin, Yadier Molina, and Salvador Perez are the only catchers with at least 140 starts.