Batting second will be beneficial to Andrew McCutchen

Batting Andrew McCutchen second in the order will be as beneficial to McCutchen as it will be to the team this season.

Over the past week of spring training, Pittsburgh Pirates manager Clint Hurdle has been placing center fielder Andrew McCutchen in the two hole, while having John Jaso leading off.

This change seems to have been paying off for McCutchen. The 2013 NL MVP has been productive since being inserted into the two hole on March 17th against the Yankees. In the games since, McCutchen has had 12 at-bats in the second spot and has accumulated a .250 batting average with three impressive home runs.

Prior to the switch, McCutchen was already having a productive spring training that compares very closely to his 2013 Grapefruit League exploits. That spring ultimately led to postseason hardware. In 2013, McCutchen recorded a .240 batting average with three home runs and 10 runs batted in while accumulating 50 at-bats in the spring.

This year’s camp sees a .250 batting average with five home runs and 10 runs batted in for the center fielder.

Numbers don’t always translate to success out of the gates in the regular season, and that’s especially true for McCutchen. In 2015, he recorded a .375 batting average in Florida only to bat under .200 for the month of April.

Of course, it’s hard to put much stock in 2015 numbers as the knee injury clearly put the Pirates’ best hitter at a disadvantage.

What matters for players during spring training is the amount of reps they get at their desired position. McCutchen recorded 32 at-bats in spring training in 2015. In the other spring training sessions since McCutchen became a major league regular, he has averaged 56 at-bats.

Players aren’t worried about putting up amazing numbers in spring when they are already established with an organization. It’s all about getting their timing down and getting ready for the regular season. If this pace continues, McCutchen will record 45 at-bats in spring training.

With Hurdle clearly subscribing to the burgeoning theory that a team’s best hitter might flourish in the second spot, McCutchen will end up with just over 64 percent of his spring at-bats at that position. Will that be enough for the team’s unquestioned MVP to fully adjust to his new surroundings?

This leads to another experiment that Hurdle has been trying in the past week with batting Jaso as his leadoff hitter. Jaso, while not your typical leadoff hitter, can flat out get on base.

Jaso has a career .361 on-base percentage with his career high coming in 2012 with Seattle when he recorded a .394 on-base percentage. Jaso is the type of hitter that gets everything out of his at-bats while at the plate. He has the ability to see a lot of pitches, which helps the batters in the on-deck circle and in the dugout. The more pitches a pitcher has to throw, the better feel for the pitcher the players can get.

This bodes even better for McCutchen. If Jaso continues to get on base before him, that means more RBI chances for him. When a team’s best hitter has more chances to help manufacture runs, the team will thrive. Also, since the two-hole hitter typically comes up the least with two outs, this provides the players batting behind him more chances to capitalize on his speed and drive him home.

While this lineup is not a guarantee for the entire 2016 season, it seems to be worth a look due to the fact that the Pirates are looking to have a better April than they have had in the past. There will have to be many more factors that come into play for the Pirates have April success, but it all starts with McCutchen.

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