Can a team carry a weak hitter and be successful?

Yes, and no. But perhaps not in ways you might suspect

By way of introduction, I’ll tell a little story and then issue a fair warning.

The story is… I promised someone on the chat board a deeper dive into some line-up construction narratives. I don’t remember who. It’s been a while, so I don’t remember quite what the topic was in detail, so I’m having to reconstruct and ad lib a bit.

The fair warning is … as I take this data dive, the article ends up going down the rabbit hole(s) I found interesting. In ways, my queries yield data people probably already know. I found the dive interesting but worried a little bit that I am re-surfacing already known and established facts. I think (hope?) there might be a morsel or two of interesting new tidbits.

My starting point, given my recollection, was around the narrative that in the world of line-up construction, managers could afford up to one spot to “give away outs” to a low wRC+ player who played a premium defensive position well. I think the debate about playing Siani was the spark. As I do with all narratives, I went “hmmm” and wondered how true it was and what nuances swirled around this narrative that are maybe untold by the high-level story.

So, I formulated some questions:

1. Can/do good teams intentionally choose to allocate a line-up spot to a premium defensive player at a premium defensive position?

2. If so, how does that choice appear to impact their success?

3. Are there thresholds a line-up must meet to be good? Sometimes I hear things like the Cardinals don’t have enough 4-5 WAR players to be really good. So, I poked at this.

I chose to query and evaluate based on the wRC+ metric. I could have gone offensive fWAR, maybe? I figured wRC+ was a straighter line to run scored, which is the ultimate measure of a line-up. I then chose to use only the 2022-2024 seasons, since other years would potentially be polluted with non-DH results on the NL side, and I wanted to make sure I was keeping a modern history look to the analysis. Face it, it’s a different game than in 1969.

I queried each team, each season (2022-2024), reducing the set to players in the top 10 PA for each team. I figured top 10 would incorporate the DH plus that one guy everyone seems to have that plays a lot and would leave out the bit players and guys who weren’t around long enough to really impact the season outcome. I did not want to exclude on the traditional “qualified” selector, because I wanted the top 10 for every team. My thinking, ultimately, these are the 10 guys the manager most wanted in the line-up given who he had. I slotted each of those players into groups by percentile (10 groupings) and I counted by team, by group and displayed that to see what I got.

My first minor surprise was that the percentile groups don’t change from year-to-year. The top 10% of players (by wRC+) are 133 wRC+ or better in all 3 years evaluated. I kind of figured it would yo-yo a bit (offense is up this year, offense is down this year), but no, it’s fairly consistent across the board. I wondered if there is some fixed allocation metric to wRC+ that I’m not aware of, like there is fWAR (each season gets 1,000 WAR, no matter who does what).

Then I embellished the results by adding the modifier to indicate who did (or did not) make the playoffs. I didn’t discriminate between wild card or division winner. It was just … did they make the playoffs or not. I wasn’t intentional about this, but it ended up supporting the decision to narrow to 2022-2024, as earlier years would have a leaner play-off pool.

So, my analysis ended up becoming – what kind of line-ups are most closely associated with teams that make the playoffs. Some may yawn, but I found myself curious. Peculiarly, it ended up helping me understand better some prior roster decisions the Cardinals have made. It doesn’t justify them, but it does illuminate their thinking better (at least for me it did).

The first thing that stood out in the data is kind of obvious but there are some subtle nuances to it. When you look at line-ups and ignore positions, names, pedigrees and just look at wRC+, you see almost immediately that the key differentiator is how many guys a lineup has that fall in the top 20^th percentile of wRC+ and how many guys fall into the bottom 20^th percentile Top 20^th percentile wRC+ (among regular batters) is 119 or higher. Bottom 20^th percentile wRC+ is 83 or lower. Remember the population is “regulars” and excludes non-regulars, pitchers, cameos, etc.

What about the middle 60%? These guys distribute pretty evenly among all teams (except the really, really bad ones). Looking at you, ChiSox. They all fall between 83 and 119 wRC+ and re-distribute a bit each year because of seasonal variations in individual performance. This year’s 107 wRC+ hitter is 60^th percentile. Next year, his 102 wRC+ is 40^th percentile. Not much difference when they are in the middle. So, a team that has one more than typical 30^th percentile player really isn’t that much better than a team with an extra 50^th percentile player. In the sense, their playoff odds don’t change.

Here are some factoids I surfaced:

If a team wants to construct a playoff worthy line-up, they best have at least one hitter in the top 20^th percentile (ie. wRC+ > 119). Shocking, I know. Every single playoff team (36 total) had at least one hitter in the top echelon.

Really, if a team wants to construct a playoff worthy line-up, they really need to have TWO top echelon hitters. Only 3 of 36 playoff teams studied had only 1 top echelon hitter. Those aren’t great odds. Everyone else had two or more.

This begets rule of thumb#1: If they don’t have 2 top echelon hitters, a team should not see themselves as a true playoff contender.

Not all teams that have 2 (or more) top echelon hitters make the playoffs. While they should have 2, the inverse isn’t true, in that having 2 doesn’t guarantee a spot. In fact, 19 teams had 2 top echelon hitters but did not qualify for the playoffs. Think a line-up with Ohtani/Trout as an example.

Sidenote: What I think back to what the Cardinals were doing when they acquired Nolan Arenado to pair with Paul Goldschmidt, I think they were trying to create the necessary pair of top echelon hitters to be considered competitive. What they may have failed to realize is the inverse of the rule of thumb#1 is not valid. Having 2 top hitters does NOT make you a competitive team. It is only NOT having them eliminates you. Turns out, you gotta do the other stuff well, too.

Interestingly, avoiding bottom 20^th percentile hitters (wRC+ < 83) isn’t quite as crucial to creating a playoff roster. 21 of 36 playoff teams had at least one of these lowest echelon hitters. In fact, 11 of 36 playoff teams had more than one bottom echelon hitters. Interestingly, these 11 were not teams that were equally over-loaded with really good hitters, so their overall offensive profile was lackluster.

Lowes echelon hitters (bottom 20th percentile) on playoff teams clustered like crazy. In total, there were 38 lowest echelon hitters spread across 36 playoff teams. You’d think an average of one each makes sense. In fact, 15 teams had no lowest echelon hitters and 10 others had 1 lowest echelon hitter (the average doesn’t have a normal distribution, it turns out). That means 28 of the lowest echelon hitters clustered into 11 playoff teams. More teams with 2 great hitters and 3 and 4 poor hitters made the playoffs than teams with 1 great hitter and 1 or less poor hitters.

This begets rule of thumb#2: You can win with pedestrian, even anemic, offense (other than the two cornerstone hitters) if you have pitching and defense (and probably BsR, too, but I didn’t peak at that). Your odds are lower with this approach, but they aren’t awful.

Here is something that surprised me. Playoff teams do not regularly choose to roster a lowest echelon hitter as a defensive specialist. By far, on playoff teams, the lowest echelon hitters fit into two neat categories: 1) guys that would reasonably have been expected to be better offensively but had awful seasons or 2) young players teams likely viewed as emerging stars, but they struggle. But they had defensive chops to carry them through the offensive growing pains). More on this one a bit later.

This begets rule of thumb#3: Intentionally carrying a defensive specialist (other than catcher) who is a poor hitter is a high risk that rarely pays off (in playoff qualification), because your young stars may not emerge and a veteran or two is going to under-perform unexpectedly. In other words, teams can expect they are going to have multiple lowest echelon hitters even without intentionally choosing to try to carry one.

SIDENOTE: Think Matt Carpenter, circa 2019. In 2018, he put up a top 10^th percentile wRC+ of 140 and in 2019 was expected, on paper, to pair with newly acquired Goldy, but then underran his prior year wRC+ by 45 points and was 40^th percentile instead.

Let’s go back and re-visit some of those teams that carried lowest echelon hitters and still made the playoffs. I think there is a story there.

In 2022, 8 teams had lowest echelon hitters (bottom 20th percentile) and made the playoffs. 67% seems like good odds, huh? Of the eight teams, four had lowest echelon hitters with significantly negative defensive metrics (Didi Gregorious and a -77 OAA over his career stands out here). So, easy to suspect these teams expected more offensively and just didn’t get it. Of the remaining four playoff teams, three carried light-hitting, glove first catchers (Nido, Maldonado, Hedges). Easy to suspect these teams intentionally took a light-hitting catcher for his framing values and other attributes. Note the one team that had a really young prospect who was a high OAA player, too. We will see that theme again.

In 2023, again eight teams had lowest echelon hitters and made the playoffs. Ok, so having bad hitters doesn’t preclude being competitive. Three of the eight teams had poor hitter(s) who were not good defenders. Again, a theme of offensive-first players significantly under-performing. Of the remaining five playoff teams, there are some good to great defensive players. Arizona had 3 of these guys, all with strong OAA numbers and all young prospects expected to improve offensively. The Brewers had 4 poor hitters! And still made the playoffs! Turang, Wiemer, Miller were all very young and had strong defensive chops. Telez is another story. They expected more offensively and didn’t get it. Somehow, they still won. And two teams carried light-hitting, good defensive catchers: Maldonado (again!) and Vazquez. The Dodgers stand out in this group as the only team that appears to have carried a light-hitting player who is NOT a catcher and is NOT a prospect. Miguel Rojas, a strong fielding SS with outstanding OAA numbers. Remember when I mentioned in 2022 to watch for the teams that had light-hitter players with really strong OAA? Starting to notice that the teams that made the playoffs with multiple poor hitters were made up of light-hitters who would likely be considered elite (or close) defensively. Not just good, or above average, but great. The number are numbers are suggesting great defense does overcome poor hitting, but perhaps not good defense.

On to 2024. Only five teams made the playoffs with poor hitters. Still not horrible odds (just under 50%) but lower. Let’s look and see. Kansas City has Garcia and Isbel. Both young prospects who are superior defenders. Isbel was a prospect progressing as a hitter now (at least out of the bottom 20^th percentile) and Garcia is now at 140 wRC+ this year. Both young guys, good defense and a chance to be good hitters. Superior defense keeps them in the majors while the bat develops. Detroit had three poor hitters. If you’ve noticed, Baez would be considered elite defensively, although I suspect they hoped for more offensively than bottom 20th. Two more teams with light-hitting but strong defensive catchers (Rogers, Murphy). Again, I suspect Atlanta expected more offensively from Murphy. Then there is Philadelphia with Johan Rojas and his superior defense. This will shock you. He is a young prospect.

So, near as I can tell, only 2 of 36 playoff teams, Detroit (Baez) and the Dodgers (Rojas), intentionally constructed their line-up to have a lowest echelon position player in their regular line-up that was not a top prospect and not a Catcher. Maybe a way to say this succinctly is … for teams that both want to develop internally AND compete, good to great defense gets a player the runway to develop the offense. Otherwise, they better hit above 85 wRC+ right out of the gate if they want to stick (on a winning team).

Apply these themes to Cardinal players and begin to understand…

Scott plays (superior defense, developing offense).

Siani does not play (no offensive upside) in spite of stellar defense. Can he play catcher?

Gorman does not play, in spite of offensive upside (no superior defense).

Walker? Hmmm. They certainly expect more offensively. Is his defense good enough yet?

Burleson. Who cares? He is in the middle 60% offensively and average defensively (at first base). Inter-changeable.

Pages. He plays. Light-hitting but strong defensive chops at C work on playoff teams.

Herrera. Top 20^th percentile offense plays, always. Good team or bad. They need 2 of these, thank you.

Winn. Back in 2023, he had the defense to play, and that provided time for the offense to develop. And it did.

Let’s apply these themes to players not quite ready to emerge and see.

Wetherholt – is the defense good enough to provide runway for the offense to develop? Or is the bat expected to be top 20^th percentile?

Saggese – is the defense good enough to provide runway for the offense to develop? Or is the bat expected to be top 20^th percentile? Probably NO to both, which might explain why he is still taxiing, not on the runway.

Church – is the defense good enough to provide runway for the offense to develop? The bat is definitely not projected to be top 20^th percentile, but can it get above bottom 20^th?

You could ask the questions over and over…Davis? Crooks? Bernal? Baez? Is the defense good enough to provide runway for the offense to develop? Or, is the bat expected to be top 20^th percentile?

Bottom line is, for those folks who like to opine that it’s workable to intentionally carry a light-hitting position player who is good defensively (such as Siani), understand that very few teams succeed with this recipe, and even more rare if said light-hitter doesn’t project to improve.

I will stop there and entertain questions and debate. Where should I go with this? Thanks for reading.