In June, Lastings Milledge is hitting .361/.418/.557 with seven doubles, a triple, and a homer. That’s brought his season line towards a nearly-respectable.279/.347/.383. Obviously Milledge, a career .269 hitter, isn’t going to bat .360 over the course of an entire season, but lost beneath his scorching hot June and all of the controversy that follows Milledge whereever he goes is the fact that he’s actually been hitting pretty well since the beginning of May. Since May 1st, his batting line is .309/.385/.439 with 11 doubles and two triples along with that sole home run (that’s pushed by his OBP-driven but completely punchless .268/.360/.346 line in May). That’s a 42-double pace over the course of an entire season, which helps off-set the lack of home runs.
The Pirates could really use that .385 OBP somewhere near the top of their order, where Andrew McCutchen and Garrett Jones’s on-base abilities are often squandered, but the problem is that he’s still Lastings Milledge. That means getting thrown out on the bases, diving after uncatchable balls to turn singles into triples, maybe missing signs, and getting into shouting matches (err, “heated conversations”) with coaches. Which means that Ryan Church and his .279 OPS in June (that’s correct, he’s got a .125 OBP and a .154 SLG this month) still starts in a bunch of games as John Russell and his staff try to get through to Milledge. At least that’s my reading of the situation, other people just assume JR has a man-crush on Church. JR doesn’t really strike me as that sort of manager, though, so I’m going to read between the lines a bit.
Still, this all leaves me with a bunch of questions. What sort of hitter, exactly, is Lastings Milledge? What sort of hitter does he have to be to properly compliment Jose Tabata and Andrew McCutchen? What sort of hitter does he have to be to make up for his other short-comings?
The problem with Milledge’s June numbers is his insane BABIP (glossary!). With just one homer on the month, he’s hitting .489 on balls in play. That’s much higher than his .313 big league career line and even outstrips his more impressive minor league .372 mark by a wide margin. He’s undeniably crushing the ball this month, but he can’t keep reaching base on one out of every two balls he puts in play.
So let’s say the real Milledge is the one that we’ve seen since May; the .385 OBP with a little bit of power. Maybe a couple more homers, maybe a few less doubles, but a useful hitter. His walk rate is up a bit this season over past years and since he is capable of a high BABIP, a .300 batting average over a full season might not be out of his reach. I think this is probably the best case scenario for Milledge right now and in all honesty probably shooting a little high (again, he’s a career .269 hitter in the big leagues so hoping for a .300 average every year to get that OBP up is pretty risky).
The two questions that remain are if that’s good enough to make up for his short-comings in the field and on the bases and if that’s enough power. I do think that he’s much better suited to right field at PNC than left. There’s a lot less ground to cover and he’s got a pretty good arm. He’s obviously not ever going to be a perfect outfielder, but with McCutchen and Tabata in left and center, I think he could be pretty effectively hidden in right field at PNC. The base-running is a problem, but at least most of his mistakes this year are errors of aggression and not laziness. I think that’s what JR and Varsho are on him about the most this year; not the mistakes, but the lack of thinking behind some of them. That is something that is more likely to improve than his fielding, at least.
The power is a bit more complicated to parse through. The Bucs are 15th in the National League in both slugging and OBP, but their .304 OBP is a much bigger problem than their .358 SLG (this is a basic sabermetric principle, but if it doesn’t seem obvious to you consider that Jeff Clement’s slugging percentage is about 50 points below Milledge’s while Ryan Doumit’s is about 50 points below Garrett Jones, then ask yourself which gap qualitatively seems bigger to you — the one between Milledge and Clement or the one between Jones and Doumit). Milledge will likely hit for a bit more power than he has in the first half of this season, but getting a block of players capable of putting up a high OBP is a much more urgent concern for the Pirates right now. That means that Milledge’s potential to put up a .370+ OBP number is worth the risk that he might not hit five home runs this year.
With Starling Marte injury-stalled in the low minors, there aren’t a whole lot of obvious threats to Milledge’s playing time within the organization at the moment. Andy LaRoche could concievably start hitting and start an infield shuffle, Jeff Clement could make a comeback and push Garrett Jones into right field, and now that Alex Presley’s in Triple-A he’s worth at least a reconsideration. There are serious questions about Clement’s swing, LaRoche’s back and his ability to hit in general, and Presley’s ability to keep doing what he’s done this year, so I don’t think any of them are obviously better answers than Milledge. UPDATE: Rudy in the comments asks why I don’t mention Steve Pearce here. It’s because Pearce is a platoon player. I just don’t see any evidence that he can hit righties in the big leagues. Even this year, his solid big league line was built almost entirely on bashing lefties. He’s worth a mention, but I’d rather see Garrett Jones and Steve Pearce become a two-headed platoon monster than putting Pearce out there every day to flail away to the tune of a .600 OPS against righties.
That’s a scary proposition and one of the big questions Neal Huntington has to answer now that his first wave of prospects are up. But it’s also true that LaRoche and Clement played themselves off the field this year and Milledge hasn’t done that yet. That means that the second half of this season is going to be huge for Milledge. He has to prove that June hasn’t been a complete fluke at the plate (possible), and he has to prove that he’s capable of improving on the mental mistakes that he’s prone to (much less likely at this point) to get back into the good graces of the coaching staff. If he can do both of those things, there might be a place for him in the lineup yet. That means that he’s got to keep playing, of course, which is strongly contingent on the second item, but at least he hasn’t completely played his way on to the bench just yet.
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