Longoria Hitting Leadoff Makes Sense

In last night’s 7-3 loss to the Cleveland Indians, the Tampa Bay Rays’ manager, Joe Madden, hit 3B Evan Longoria in the leadoff spot. According to Madden, the move was intended to jump start the struggling Longoria (who came into the game hitting just .209) and it may have done so (he had 2 hits, including a homer). I think it was a really smart move by the Rays and Longoria should stay atop the batting order.  I think that there is some validity to the traditional batting order model, with speed at the top and power in the middle. The idea is that the first guys hit singles and doubles and steal bases in order to get into scoring position for the three, four, and five hitters to drive them in. This is a great system if you have the right pieces, especially in the leadoff spot, but not all teams have guys like Ichiro Suzuki; the Rays, for instance, certainly don’t.

By simple virtue of the nature of baseball and batting orders, the higher in the lineup a batter hits, the more ABs he’ll get.  Over the course of a 162 game season, each position in the order gets about 20 ABs more than the position behind it. For example, if the leadoff spot in the order for a given team gets 600 ABs, the second spot will get around 580, the third spot about 560 and so on.  Evan Longoria, by moving from, say, the 4 spot in the order to the top will, over the course of the season, hit about 60 more times than he otherwise would have. Longoria is clearly the Rays best hitter and it makes to sense to try to get him to the plate as much as possible. For argument’s sake, let’s assume he hits .300 from here on out (he likely won’t as he’s never hit .300 in a season and has struggled in 2011 but for simplicities sake, let’s go with it). If that’s the case, he will get roughly 20 more hits batting leadoff than if he stayed in the 4 hole. 20 hits is not a small thing. That could mean a difference of three or four games over the course of the year, maybe more and, in a division as close as the AL East, that could mean the division crown.

I think, if a team lacks a traditional leadoff hitter, it makes great sense to put your best hitter as high in the order as possible. Why not get your top guy as many chances as you can? This is especially true for guys like Longoria who are young and athletic and won’t clog up the bases going station to station. Other teams that lack true leadoff men but have one or more good players in the heart of the order could benefit from such a strategy, particularly if they are having problems scoring runs like Tampa is. For instance, Hunter Pence, who’s hitting 35 points higher than current leadoff guy Michael Borne, could be a good fit at the top of Houston’s lineup. Mike Stanton and Hanley Ramirez could be effective in the top spots in the Florida Marlin’s order.

Speed is definitely still important and I’m not advocating putting guys 1st that will prevent a team from scoring runs with their lack of foot speed but perhaps it would do teams well to be a little more open with who hits where in the lineup. Is it really worth it to sacrifice 80 or 100 plate appearances a season for Robinson Cano, who hit .319 last year and finished 3rd in the MVP voting, just so he can protect Alex Rodriguez from the 5 spot in the order? I don’t think so.

-Max Frankel