Who should be the Pittsburgh Pirates cleanup hitter in 2016?

The Pittsburgh Pirates still must find an answer to this looming question: Who will bat behind Andrew McCutchen?

The Pirates haven’t had the flashiest of off-seasons. They’ve added John Jaso, Ryan Vogelsong, Jason Rogers, and Jon Niese. Their most notable departures are Neil Walker and Pedro Alvarez.

Perhaps the biggest area impacted by the departures of Alvarez and Walker is the cleanup spot of the batting order. Most people have predicted a huge decrease in power for the 2016 Pirates and a big reason why is they lack a prototypical cleanup hitter.

This isn’t really a recent problem for the Pirates as they have consistently struggled to find a regular cleanup hitter the past few seasons. Despite his outrageous power, Pedro Alvarez never really took off as a cleanup hitter. In his career, Alvarez has slugged only .362 with an Isolated Power of .171 from the cleanup spot. These are substantially lower than his career averages of a .441 slugging percentage and a .205 ISO. So despite the loss of Alvarez, the Pirates did not really lose a cleanup hitter in him.

Neil Walker spent much more time at cleanup in his Pirates’ career, appearing in the spot in 172 games, slugging .399 with an Isolated Power of .148 from that spot. So once again, with the loss of Walker, the Pirates aren’t losing a cleanup hitter.

Who should be the Pirates’ cleanup hitter in 2016? There really isn’t an obvious candidate based on 2015 numbers. I decided to dig a little deeper than just home run totals. You may have noticed I mentioned Isolated Power in the previous two paragraphs and to me that is an intriguing stat to judge power hitters on. What is Isolated Power, or ISO? Fangraphs describes it as such:

You now know the definition of ISO, but what is a good number to have? To put in simply, .250 or higher is excellent, .200 is great, .170 is above average, .140 is average, .120 is below average, .100 is poor, and anything under that is awful. It’s fairly simple overall and a pretty good way to look at a hitter’s power without needing too much extra context.

This brings us back to the 2016 Pittsburgh Pirates and who they should use as their regular cleanup hitter based on 2015 ISO and slugging percentage. The Pirates use a lot of platoons and it seems like their cleanup hitter will be a platoon as well and the players seemingly best suited for the job are Jung Ho Kang and John Jaso. Kang had a .173 ISO (above average) and a .461 slugging percentage in 2015.

This probably isn’t a surprise to a lot of people as Kang got almost 100 at-bats as the cleanup hitter in 2015 and did fairly well in the role until his late-season injury. He obviously isn’t a hulking slugger, but he’s a good gap-to-gap hitter and that plays well for a cleanup batter, especially in PNC Park.

Jaso, despite not being a home run hitter, has remarkably similar power numbers as Kang. He slugged .459 in 2015 and had an ISO of .173. You could interchange either player but it obviously wouldn’t be a regular platoon because Kang had a lot of struggles against left-handed pitching in 2015. He only slugged .381 and had an ISO of .143 (average) against lefties last year. If Kang improves against left-handed pitching, he could make for a very interesting cleanup-hitting platoon opposite Jaso. Jaso does not hit lefties well either and would only play against right-handed pitching, which would benefit the Pirates as for his career Jaso has a slugging percentage of .429 and an ISO of .155 against righties.

Just to be clear, I am not saying Kang and Jaso are a positional platoon, as Kang is a third baseman and Jaso is a first baseman. The platoon is specifically where I would put them in the batting order in terms of ISO and overall slugging.

You may remember that I previously had Jaso batting second in the order vs. RHP because of his on-base ability and while I still love his plate discipline, his ISO intrigues me in certain situations. If Kang can start regularly hitting lefties for power, you could comfortably place him as your number-four hitter against LHP and let Jaso bat fourth against RHP. This also creates a situation where when facing a lefty. Michael Morse can bat fifth, where he has a career .204 ISO and a .481 slugging percentage.

Obviously this situation only works if Kang shows you he can hit left-handed pitching more regularly in 2016. If not, then you could still go with Kang as your cleanup hitter vs. RHP and Morse vs. LHP and not lose too much of a beat.

The Pittsburgh Pirates haven’t had a prototypical cleanup hitter in a long time and I don’t think that changes in 2016, but if Clint Hurdle is creative with his lineup optimization, he could still have a very productive collection of cleanup hitters. We’re in an era where home runs are generally down league-wide, so you don’t need a 40 home run masher as your cleanup hitter to be productive, you just need a guy with some solid isolated power and people on-base in front of him to get the job done.

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