Should the Pittsburgh Pirates consider batting the pitcher eighth?

Would batting the pitcher eighth be worthwhile for the Pittsburgh Pirates and their new run creation approach?

The Pittsburgh Pirates made news this spring when they began experimenting with moving Andrew McCutchen out of his usual third spot in the lineup and shifted him to second in the lineup. Now, it’s nothing new for a manager to play around with his lineup during spring training, or even during the regular season. What is notable here is that it is being done to one of the very best players in the game who has spent almost his entire career residing in the third spot of the order.

The idea here is that by moving McCutchen up one spot in the lineup, he’ll receive more plate appearances over the course of the season. Right away it stands out that by moving up one spot in the lineup, McCutchen’s RBI chances will drop. For a player who has been for years one of the most consistent players in the Pittsburgh lineup and has had at least 84 RBI in each season since 2011, this could cause some head scratching. There is a potential corresponding move to the lineup that could still give McCutchen plenty of RBI opportunities throughout the season, and that would be to bat the pitcher eighth and put a position player at the bottom.

Just hear me out.

Batting the pitcher eighth, while not common, has been done before. In this piece from just last summer, Jayson Stark details how Cubs manager Joe Maddon batted his pitcher eighth during the 2015 season and before that Tony La Russa also experimented with it. Both of these managers have a reputation of thinking outside of the traditional baseball box, so it should come to no surprise that both have tried this exercise.

Russell Carleton also wrote about this subject last summer, where he discussed the history of moving the pitcher from the bottom spot but also provided some numbers for us to compare.  He ran 100,000 simulations with the pitcher batting eighth and then another set of simulations with the pitcher moved back to ninth, and he found that runs scored went from 3.7118 to 3.7079.

If there is another team out there that should try this, it’s the Pirates. They were one of the first teams to embrace the defensive shifts and use them aggressively, so they certainly aren’t afraid to take an unconventional approach to try and gain an edge during a game. The simulations that Carleton ran showed a slight advantage to moving the pitcher up, so that Pirates could potentially score some extra early runs in a game.

I say that the runs that could be scored using this method would come early rather than late is because of the multiple changes to a lineup during a typical National League game. Because the managers of the senior circuit are faced with situations where they have to decide to leave a pitcher in or pinch hit for him, the lineup is not going to look the same at the beginning and end of a game anyway. Double switches and defensive replacements will be made, also further jumbling the lineup. So why not try to score an extra run or two when you still have your optimal lineup for the day in tact?

While the idea on it’s face can seem strange, especially because the pitcher is typically the worst hitter in the lineup and by moving him up he’ll be seeing more plate appearances than his teammate now hitting behind him, it’s helps to not look at the lineup as a strict one through nine order. The lead off hitter is only guaranteed to actually lead off an inning once, and that’s in the first. Depending on the course of events during the game, the lead off hitter may start an inning two more times, one more time or never again in any given game.

If viewed more as a constantly moving rotation, you can see why some managers have elected to try this. But putting a better hitter in the ninth spot, the top of the batting order will have a better chance of coming to the plate with a runner on. In this hypothetical situation where the Pirates do this, the team could put someone like Josh Harrison or Gregory Polanco in the ninth spot and have them followed by Jaso and then McCutchen. Doesn’t seem so crazy now, does it?

In the end, there is a small chance that the Pittsburgh Pirates would actually try this, and there is an even smaller chance that it would lead to anything significant. But if they did, it would still give McCutchen plenty of RBI opportunities while at the same time give him more at-bats. More importantly, it could lead to a few extra runs here and there, which could lead to a few extra wins on the season. It seems like a worthy endeavor to at least try.