2017 Pittsburgh Pirates Are In Search of a Leadoff Hitter

The Pittsburgh Pirates have been experimenting with various leadoff hitters for the last two seasons.  Given the current roster, who can we expect Clint Hurdle to pencil into the lineup for 2017 and will they stick?

Revolving Door

In 2016, the Pirates tried seven different players in the leadoff spot.

John Jaso got the most starts at 79, but his protracted slump in June and July eventually pushed him out of the lineup.  After that, Josh Harrison and Adam Frazier largely took over leadoff responsibilities, logging 37 and 16 starts respectively.  Scattered into the mix was Jordy Mercer, who got 24 starts, mainly against left-handed starters.  This was rounded out by Matt Joyce (2), David Freese (2), Gregory Polanco (1) and Josh Bell (1).  These last four were typically inserted into the leadoff spot due to injuries or the need to shake things up after an offensive cold spell.  Compare this to the Chicago Cubs, who started their prototypical leadoff man Dexter Fowler in 118 games.  This number surely would have been higher had he not been injured for a month in the middle of the season.  The Pirates clearly do not have a Dexter Fowler type player to hit in the first spot – so what should they do instead?

Qualities of a Leadoff Hitter

Much has been made of on-base percentage (OBP) as the defining statistic when choosing a leadoff hitter.  Of course, getting to first base is very important, but ask a coach at any level what they want from their leadoff hitter and they will quickly tell you they want someone who can get into scoring position.  Therefore, the qualities you want in a leadoff hitter are a combination of OBP, a nice eye at the plate to maximize walks and minimize strikeouts, the ability to hit doubles, the ability to steal bases and the ability to intelligently run the bases.  Since players who can do all these things are few and far between, most teams end up sacrificing one or more of these traits in their leadoff hitters.  This has been especially true for the Pirates.

Choices

When the current roster of the Pirates is examined closely, there are 10 players that could be considered for leadoff duty.  These are players that have some combination of the above qualities.  Their relevant 2016 statistics are assembled in the table below.

Player	OBP	AB	2B+3B	BBs	Ks	SB	CS	Rbaser*	BsR**
Francisco Cervelli	.377	326	15	56	72	0	4	-2	-5.5
Josh Bell	.368	128	8	21	19	0	1	-1	-1.8
Starling Marte	.362	489	39	23	104	47	12	5	7.0
Adam Frazier	.356	146	9	12	26	4	1	1	1.3
John Jaso	.353	380	28	45	74	0	4	-2	-5.5
David Freese	.352	437	23	45	142	0	0	-2	-4.2
Andrew McCutchen	.336	598	29	69	143	6	7	-4	-3.0
Jordy Mercer	.328	519	25	51	83	1	1	-1	3.6
Gregory Polanco	.323	527	38	53	119	17	6	-2	0.4
Josh Harrison	.311	487	32	18	76	19	4	0	3.2

*Rbaser courtesy of Sean Smith, www.baseballprojections.com **BsR courtesy of FanGraphs

Most of these columns are self-evident, but the last two require some explanation.  Rbaser is a metric that calculates runs created mainly through stolen bases.  BsR includes baserunning, avoiding double plays, and other factors.  Both are normalized versus the average player so zero equates to average and a negative number is worse than average.

Reading the Stats

If the only thing that mattered was OBP, then Cervelli is the man for the leadoff job.  However, consider the fact that he only had 15 extra base hits all season and had only 6 stolen bases in 8 attempts.  Cervelli also has the some of the worst base running metrics of the entire bunch.  So when he does get to first, it will likely take two hits or a sacrifice and a hit to get him around to score.  In contrast, a player like Starling Marte will get to first base less often than Cervelli, but once he is there, there is a much higher probability of him getting to second and eventually scoring.

[perfectpullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]If the only thing that mattered was OBP, then Cervelli is the man for the leadoff job. [/perfectpullquote]

Once at first base, a leadoff hitter can get into scoring position in a number of ways.  Some of the more probable are taking second on a hit, stealing second and being sacrificed to second.  With a slow player like Cervelli, the second option is not viable and the third option requires a well-executed sacrifice bunt (or really deep fly ball).  If we look beyond OBP to a player’s chances of moving into scoring position on his own merit, we need to take a closer look at the number of bases they steal and the total doubles (and triples) they hit.  If we re-rank the list by the sum of these two numbers, we get a very different order (the number of doubles, triples and stolen bases normalized to at-bats is listed in the far right column which helps compare call-up players like Josh Bell and Adam Frazier to the starting lineup).

Player	OBP	AB	2B+3B	SB	CS	2B+3B+SB	(2B+3B+SB) / AB
Starling Marte	.362	489	39	47	12	86	.176
Gregory Polanco	.323	527	38	17	6	55	.104
Josh Harrison	.311	487	32	19	4	51	.104
Adam Frazier	.356	146	9	4	1	13	.089
John Jaso	.353	380	28	0	4	28	.074
Josh Bell	.368	128	8	0	1	9	.070
Andrew McCutchen	.336	598	29	6	7	35	.059
Francisco Cervelli	.377	326	15	0	4	19	.058
David Freese	.352	437	23	0	0	23	.053
Jordy Mercer	.328	519	25	1	1	26	.050

 

Walks and Strikeouts are More than a Ratio

Often a hitter will be looked at favorably if they can maintain a good walk to strikeout ratio.  There were only two qualified hitters last season who walked more than they whiffed – Ben Zobrist and Joe Panik – and the next three names on this list are Buster Posey, Bryce Harper and Joey Votto.  So it is understandable that many make a big deal out of this ratio.  The best Pirates in this regard are Bell, Cervelli, Mercer and Jaso.  One of the drawbacks of the walk to strikeout ratio is it doesn’t tell us much about how often the hitter puts the ball in play.  A good way to measure contact is to look at strikeouts per at-bat.  When this is combined with good speed, infield hits occur and singles turn into doubles.  The top four players with the lowest strikeout to at-bat ratios are Josh Bell, Josh Harrison, Jordy Mercer and Adam Frazier.  All four could be called contact hitters and all but Bell have spent significant time batting first.

Narrowing the Field

If there was a player on the Pirates roster that had a .400 OBP, hit a lot of doubles and stole 25 bases a year, then there would be no need for this article.  Since that is not the case, we need a way to narrow the choices.  The first factor to consider is the previously discussed strikeout per at-bat ratio.  Some players just strikeout way too often to hit in the leadoff position, no matter how often they walk.  This would eliminate Freese, McCutchen and Polanco.  All strikeout in more than 22% of their at-bats and do not have a favorable BB/K ratio.  Cervelli just makes this cut at 22%.

The next factor is the running game.  This may be controversial, but I would not want a leadoff hitter who steals less than four bases a year or is caught stealing more often than they swipe a bag.  Taking this into consideration, John Jaso, Jordy Mercer and Josh Bell are eliminated.  One of Josh Bell’s biggest offensive limitations so far in his young career is his lack of speed and base running skills.  If Bell can demonstrate the capability to steal a few bases and keep his base running metrics higher than average, then he can be reconsidered in the future for the leadoff spot.  Even though Mercer’s splits against LHP are good (.275/.378/.451), they are not good enough to overcome a complete lack of threat to steal.  The same is true for Jaso against RHP.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]I would not want a leadoff hitter who steals less than four bases a year or is caught stealing more often than they swipe a bag.[/perfectpullquote]

This leaves Cervelli, Marte, Harrison and Frazier.   Of these four, only Cervelli is not a real threat to steal, even though he did have 6 stolen bases last season.  2016 seems like an aberration in this regard as Cervelli only had 6 stolen bases during the 2011-2015 seasons combined.  Cervelli also struggles to deliver extra-base hits, which means that although he can get on base, it will take a lot of work to move him around to score.  Marte is a solid candidate for leadoff hitter, however, his talents are needed further down in the lineup.  He is eliminated from this list simply because we will assume he is batting third through fifth in the 2017 lineup.

Conclusion:  Jay-Hay All Day

The final decision comes down to Harrison and Frazier.  Frazier is just too green to entrust with this responsibility at this point in his career.  He should be given his chances to bat leadoff and see how he does, especially versus left handed pitching.  Harrison, on the other hand, has significant experience batting leadoff, is a threat to steal in any circumstance, and is widely known as one of the savvier base runners in the game.  He doesn’t need to be platooned, with a career batting average of .282 against RHP and .290 against LHP.

The real concern about Jay Hay as a leadoff hitter is his low OBP (.311 last season) and his low walk rate.  Last season he had the fewest walks of any qualified hitter in the National League (18).   However, he was also one of the top 10 hitters with the fewest strikeouts (76).  Harrison’s offensive numbers look very different when you look only at his stats when batting leadoff.  His career average in the #1 spot is .308 and even in a “down” year in 2016, it was .327.  Not only that, he boasts a .344 career OBP when batting leadoff over 877 plate appearances.  This is almost 30 points higher than his career .316 OBP.  He seems to rise to the occasion when he is the first Pirate batter of the day.  This kind of thing is easy to see but hard to put numbers around.

Harrison is already a premier base runner and a constant threat to steal.  He could certainly bolster his case for the leadoff spot by taking more walks.  His O-swing % (percentage of pitches outside the strike zone at which he swings) is 37.7%, well above the league average of ~30%.  If Harrison could decrease his chase swings, then increasing his walk rate seems possible; whereas somehow increasing Cervelli or Jaso’s ability to steal bases is impossible.  If Harrison could just double his 3.7% walk rate to a reasonable 7.4%, he would not only be the obvious leadoff hitter for the Pirates, but one of the better leadoff men in the National League.

Barring a trade, Josh Harrison will be the leadoff hitter for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2017.