Why Joey Votto Should Probably Hit Second

Joey Votto takes YET ANOTHER pitch.
Image Courtesy of David Slaughter

Somehow, despite posting yet another truly magnificent season that saw him rank second in the league in wRC+, and topping 6 WAR for the third time in the last four years, Joey Votto became a lightning rod for controvery last season.  One of the things that has emerged from all of this is that many of his critics are arguing that he should hit second in 2014, rather than third.  Their reasoning, I think, is that since he "doesn't drive in runs," and insists on getting on base at a league-leading pace, he should hit higher in the lineup and let others drive him in.

While I hate the sentiment that's driving it (Votto is a brilliant player that we should be very thankful to have right now), I think it's actually a good idea to bat him second.  The thing is, even during his MVP season with those magical 111 RBI's, I think Joey Votto should probably have hit 2nd.  The reason?  From a lineup optimality standpoint, the #3 hole usually NOT a very good place to put your best hitter.  One of the biggest reasons is that, typically, the #3 slot in the lineup comes up with the bases empty and two outs more than any other slot.  That's because they bat two spots after the leadoff guy, who (true to their name) will lead off innings an average of two times per game.  That's the highest of any other slot, and thus, by definition, the #3 hitter will have more chances to bat with none on, two outs, than anyone else.  This limits #3 hitter's ability to positively impact the game.

Most of that comes from The Book, which I have a tendency to parrot back as Truth.  Guilty.  But how should we make lineups?  At the risk of misrepresenting their arguments, here are the takeaways that I got from The Book's lineup chapter:

• Your best three hitters should hit 1st, 2nd, and 4th.  Of those, the #2 hitter should be the best combination of on-base and power skills.  The #1 hitter should have the best OBP.  The #4 hitter should have the best power.
• Your next two best hitters should hit 3rd and 5th.  Power is desirable from the #3 hitter, because he often will come up with two outs.  All things being equal, the #5 hitter should be a bit better than the #3 hitter.
• Your remaining hitters should hit in decreasing order of quality.
• If you have a pitcher, it is often desirable to hit him 8th so that a quality hitter who can get on base hits in front of the top of your order.  Similarly, with a DH, try to get a high OBP, low power hitter in the 9th slot.

Let's run through the Reds 2014 lineup and do some lineup optimization with those principles in mind.  I'll going to use my favorite Markov chain lineup tool that John Beamer released in the 2008 THT annual  (hopefully used properly, unlike that other time) to calculate lineup effectiveness.  And we'll use ZIPS projections, in part because they're pretty bullish on Billy Hamilton (comparatively...).  And we'll do all of this with the caveat that it's pretty unlikely that the Reds will do any of these things this year.

The "Default" Lineup

This is the lineup that is reported on MLBDepthcharts, and it seems like a reasonable take on an opening day lineup based on what we've seen from Bryan Price in spring training.  Let's plug it into our model and see what happens:

Now, let's start optimizing, based on those rules of thumb above.  The Reds' three best hitters are clearly Votto, Bruce, and then one of Phillips, Ludwick, or Frazier, depending on your biases and preferred projection system (and hey, Mesoraco might also be in that group).  Bruce is clearly the guy with the most pure power, so he fits as the cleanup guy.  

That leaves Votto in either the #1 or #2 slot.  He could work very well in leadoff, but then you have a huge gap between he and Bruce.  I like to cluster good hitters together so one is on base for the other to drive in.  Furthermore, Votto's power is such that I'd prefer to hit him lower than leadoff.  That pegs him into the #2 hole.

So...without worrying about leadoff for now, let's try him in the #2 slot:

Joey Votto Hitting 2nd

According to the Markov, we gain 7 runs on the season by shifting him up a slot.  Note that the Markov has no idea about his RBI totals; it's based on average production, period.  

This also has the side effect of splitting up the two lefthanders, Votto and Bruce, in the batting order.  While I wouldn't chain myself to that, I think that's often a good idea to reduce the effectiveness of lefty bullpen specialists.  This also pushes Phillips to #3, which is not a bad spot for him.  He (historically) has had better power than on base skills (despite the projection), so I like him as a #3...

But more on that later.  For now, let's do the other obvious thing from The Book and bat our pitcher 8th.  This gets Zack Cozart in front of the top of our order, rather than our 0.139 wOBAing pitcher (the NL pitcher average last season):

Pitcher Batting 8th

Ok, so not much of an increase, but it's a slight improvement.  

Let's keep playing.  Hamilton, while OBP-heavy, has the 2nd-worst projected wOBA among the Reds' starting eight, so he is not among our top-3 hitters.  Let's move him down to 9th (his projected OBP 3rd-best, so he fits beautifully down there as a secondary leadoff guy) and get our best OBP guy among the Phillips-Ludwick-Frazier-Mesoraco group at the top of the lineup.  While it's very close between them, but Phillips gets the call.  It's a pretty defensible choice, really, and one that could work well given the hopeful return of his baserunning skills.

Phillips to leadoff, Hamilton to 9th

And we picked up 4 more runs.  Nice.  Interestingly, Hamilton's projected OBP is better than Phillips'.  Brandon's advantage is his power.  Leadoff guys can hit homers too, sometimes even with men on base.  And they get more at bats to do so than guys hitting lower in the lineup.

Above, I promoted Ludwick to the 3-hole given that he was batting 5th before.  I'm actually a little optimistic that Ludwick might have a nice little season for the Reds this year.  That said, his projection is below Frazier's and Mesoraco's.  Let's promote Frazier to 3rd with a nod to his power projection, and I'll bump Mesoraco up too:

A final rearrangement

Very incremental.  If you make even the slightest change to the projections of Frazier, Mesoraco, and Ludwick, a different lineup suddenly becomes more optimal than this one.  ::shrug::

Each step above was incremental.  But overall, based on the Markov and these projections, we've improved the offense by ~13 runs (~1.4 wins, using 9.264 runs/win) on the season by simply rearranging the batting order.  The biggest improvements came from getting our best hitter out of the #3 slot (7 runs) and then replacing a below-average hitter in the leadoff slot with an average hitter, albeit one who has a slightly worse OBP (4 runs).  Teams paid ~$6 million per win this offseason, so overall, we're talking about an adjustment worth ~$8.4 million in free agent dollars.

A 1-2 win improvement isn't a lot.  That's why folks say that lineups don't matter much.  But when you're a marginal team like the Reds, a 1-win improvement can be the difference between a playoff berth and going home at the end of September.

The New Manny Parra

Back in December, Redleg Nation released a fantastic interview with Mack Jenkins, the Reds' Bullpen Coach last season.  It's a great listen--Jenkins really impressed me, and provided a great, practical insight into what it is to be a pitching coach.  I listened to it at the time, but never had a chance to follow up on it.

One of the things I found most interesting was the discussion of what happened with Manny Parra last season.  He described Bryan Price giving him a project to look into Manny Parra's pitches and mechanics, and try to find a way to help him improve.  One of the things he reported back was that Parra's curveball was really inconsistent, and that really hurt his performance.  So, they encouraged him to drop it in favor of a slider.

Not that I doubted it, but I wanted to look at his pitchf/x profiles.  Here are Parra's 2009-2012 pitches:

You can see him grade out as having a fastball, a split finger, and that curveball.  Note that each dot above is an individual month during that time period, not an individual pitch.

Here are his 2013 pitches:

And there's the slider!  Note that the y-axis changed here.  The curveball came in around 77mph and had a spin axis over 300 degrees, whereas the new slider comes in at 83 or so with a sub-300 degree spin, so it's clearly a new pitch.  Just to show this more clearly, here are his 2012-2013 pitches:

All of the sliders were thrown in 2013, and all of the curveballs were thrown in 2012.

Another interesting thing: it wasn't an occasional-use pitch for him.  In 2013, he threw his slider 41% of the time, compared to just 18% for his curve in 2012.  

Looking at his stats:

The biggest change of substance in his record looks to be a dramatic improvement in his walk rate.  He also posted a career-best BABIP, though it was still above league-average (last year that was 0.297).  I think that both of those things could potentially be attributed to swapping his curve for a controllable, effective slider.  Now he has a pitch that he can throw for strikes, and can induce strikes (45% of swings at the slider were whiffs last year).  And if hitters are whiffing at the pitch, they're going to be making weaker contact with it when they do strike true.  Finally, if they have to beware of his breaking ball, they can't sit on his fastball and sinker.  

Kudos to Parra, Mark Jenkins, and Bryan Price for figuring this out!  I love seeing pitchers making real, measurable changes in their approach that result in such dramatic performance improvements.  Here's hoping he can do it again this year!

Trying Google Plus comments

In an effort to reduce the random spam here, and perhaps facilitate conversation(?), I've enabled Google Plus comments on the blog (and thus disabled the more open version).  Please let me know if this causes any problems for you.

My major concern is that folks won't have google accounts, and will just decide not to comment.  But I'm hoping it actually makes it easier for folks to join in on any conversations that might take place...not that I'm exactly driving a lot of traffic right now. :)  Thanks! -j

Edit: looks like the one annoying thing is that, since I have it set to automatically share, every post will automatically get one comment (from me!).  Oh well, we'll see how it goes.

Something Dusty Did Right

Saw this bit this morning buried at the bottom of a daily news brief by John Fay.  I thought it was a good example of the kinds of things that Dusty Baker did really well...like handle a clubhouse full of twenty- and thirty-something athletes through the ups and downs of a major league season:

ALMOST GOT AWAY: The Reds blew an 8-0 lead in the split-squad game with Seattle that Price managed but came away with a 10-9 win. 

“It doesn’t matter what it is,” Price said. “Spring training or not, you know these games happen. You hate to lose them when you have that type of a lead. Those happen. It stinks. You can’t let it stay with you." 

The game reminded Price of a walk-off loss in Atlanta in 2010. The game ended with Brooks Conrad’s grand slam off Francisco Cordero that Laynce Nix nearly caught. The Reds lost 10-9 after blowing a 9-3 lead in the ninth. 

When the club arrived in Cleveland later that night, manager Dusty Baker had a mandatory meeting in the hotel bar. 

“Everyone had to get a drink,” Price said. “We had to say: ‘OK, that one’s over with, we go back to work.’ We beat Cleveland the next day. That kind of got the bad taste out of our mouth. ... It was a really good idea by Dusty.”

I remember that game, as I'm sure many Reds fans do.  Just brutal.
Source: FanGraphs

Migrating back to jinaz-reds.blogspot.com

Folks,

Given my lack of activity here, I'm going to be cancelling my basement-dwellers.com domain registration when it comes up for renewal in May.  At that time, or perhaps before, I will migrate the blog back to my original domain of jinaz-reds.blogspot.com.  I'm hopeful that this will not result in any lost files, but I'm sure it will screw up a bunch of links; as far as I can tell, there is no easy to way automatically redirect people to the original domain.  Sorry in advance!  The blog has been a lot of fun over the years, but interests change and life becomes steadily more busy.

This is not a goodbye, as I'm sure that I will post occasionally in the future.  This site doesn't get much traffic anymore, but I want to keep it as a place where I can publish my thoughts on baseball.  I have a few half-finished posts already in the hopper, and they may yet see the light of day!

Justin

Bryan Price

Bryan Price (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Reds named Bryan Price the manager yesterday.  By all accounts, Price has been a fantastic pitching coach.  I remember the buzz when he was hired as a pitching coach, and the general feeling of how lucky the Reds were to get him.  Pitchers have had nothing but positive things to say about him since he started here, and the results have been superb.  I'm not convinced that you can really judge a coach by his results; you have no control group, after all.  But it's at least consistent with the idea that he's been a very successful coach.

I've been pretty excited to read the quotes from players about Price.  Probably the best, which everyone has seen but I'll repost it because I like it so much, is from Bronson Arroyo.

"I think he'd be unbelievable," Bronson Arroyo said when asked about Price as manager. "He's as organized as anyone in the game, he holds people as accountable as well as anyone I've seen. He doesn't buy into stereotypical things in the game, things that other people buy into that I don't feel are relevant. Price looks at evidence. He's a freaking smart guy, he makes his decision on reasonable evidence. Sometimes in baseball we go by hunches, what someone else said or they way things have gone in the past. He doesn't do that."

As a guy who watches baseball from a sabermetric angle most of the time, that's music to my ears.  I don't expect Price to be a sabermetric guy.  But if the principle way that he makes decisions is based on evidence--I don't care of its sabermetric evidence or scouting-based evidence--I'm happy.  It implies someone who has a scientific approach to the game, and someone who can make adjustments when the evidence is compelling.  Really, that's all I can ask for.

In any case, I have one short Bryan Price story.  This year, and I don't remember when, I was watching one of Homer Bailey's starts.  It was one of those games when he was just spectacular.  He was pumping good heat exactly where he wanted it, and had both his breaking ball and splitter fooling hitters all night.  When Homer was finally removed from the game, they showed a shot of Homer talking to Bryan Price in the dugout.  Price had his hand on Homer's shoulder, eyes locked on Homer's, and they were just talking.  Price had an enormous, proud smile on his face, and I imagined that he was basically asking Homer what it's like to have all of his hard work pay off.  Homer just looked so happy to get that kind of sincere praise.

I remember thinking about how remarkable that little interaction was.  I can't remember the last time I had an interaction like that.  It's not just that he was telling Homer that he'd been great.  It seemed clear that he and Price had developed an extremely close, working relationship.  It was one that allowed a kind of quiet, but sincere, effective, and personal praise.  How much better is that than the standard slap on the butt?  I remember thinking how lucky the Reds were to have him as their pitching coach.

That's what I keep thinking about when I think about Price as the Reds' manager.  I'm hoping he can develop that kind of relationship with all of the Reds' players.  It would go a long way toward satisfying that important part of managing: getting your players to buy into you as the manager, and allowing the manager to unify the club on a common path toward the ultimate goal.  If he can do that as well as Dusty did, at least in Dusty's earlier years with the club, and also be a sound tactical manager, the Reds could have someone pretty special here.

It's a time for optimism.  And I'm sure by next year, people will be frustrated with Price, just as they are with any manager.  But I can't help but feel like the Reds are pretty lucky to have Price, this time as their manager.

My 2013 All-Star Teams

Presented without much in the way of comments, here are my personal picks for the 2013 All-Star team.  I think the actual team rosters are 34 players or thereabouts, but I'm just going to do a starter and reserve at each position.  For pitchers, I'll do a full 5-man rotation and a 5-man bullpen.  That's 26 players.  And then I'll add in a team representative for any team that doesn't get a guy on the team.

I'm generally making use of past 365-day splits.  I still think that looking at 3-month splits is silly and uninteresting, no matter what Dave Cameron (and pretty much everyone else) says.  In the past I've used projections, but calendar-year splits still allow for me to highlight surprise performances while still getting decentish true-talent measures.  I think it's a good compromise.  On top of that, I also allow my personal biases and whims bump players around...'cause it's my list.

National League

C: Buster Posey, Yadier Molina
1B: Joey Votto, Paul Goldschmidt
2B: Chase Utley (for old times' sake, plus he's deserving), Matt effing Carpenter
3B: David Wright, Chase Headley
SS: Ian Desmond, Everth Cabrera (nod to J-Rol and Troy-Tul)
OF: Carlos Gomez (CF), Andrew McCutcheon (RF), Ryan Braun (LF), with reserves Starling Marte, Bryce Harper, Carlos Gonzelez

Starting Pitchers
Adam Wainwright, Clayton Kershaw, Matt Harvey, Cliff Lee, Homer Bailey (with a nod to Mat Latos)

Relievers
Craig Kimbrel, Aroldis Chapman, Jason Grilli, Mark Melancon, Jonathan Papelbon

Pats on the Head (token team representative that didn't make the real cut)
Jeff Samardzija (CHC)
Giancarlo Stanton (MIA) (nod to Jose Fernandez)

 

American League

C: Joe Mauer, Carlos Santana
1B: Chris Davis, Edwin Encarnacion
2B: Robinson Cano, Dustin Pedroia
3B: Miguel Cabrera, Josh Donaldson (nod to Adrian Beltre)
SS: Jose Reyes, Jhonny Peralta
OF: Mike Trout (CF), Alex Gordon (LF), Ben Zobrist (RF), with reserves Jacoby Ellsbury, Desmond Jennings, Torii Hunter

Starting Pitchers
Max Scherzer, King Felix, Yu Darvish, Justin Verlander, Anibal Sanchez

Relievers
Greg Holland, Jesse Crain, Koji Uehara, Joe Nathan, Grant Balfour

Pats on the Head
Jason Castro (HOU)

Holy crap, Detroit!