Thinking Outside the Box

By Jack Flynn
Posted Wednesday, April 1, 2009

The problem could not be ignored forever.

Once it became clear that Mets general manager Omar Minaya was not going to sign or trade for a position player of note during the off-season, manager Jerry Manuel was left with a perplexing challenge. How could he possibly employ a balanced starting lineup with so few right-handed batters?

Manuel’s projected starters included four left-handed batters (Carlos Delgado, Ryan Church, Brian Schneider and Daniel Murphy) and three switch-hitters (Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran and Luis Castillo). David Wright was the only right-handed bat that was expected to see regular playing time on Manuel’s watch.

Reyes was going to lead off, of course – it wasn’t hard to see through the smokescreen generated by Manuel’s proclamation earlier this spring that he was considering Jose for the #3 spot in the order.

Castillo was apparently going to be given another chance to bat second – the lineup position he seemed destined for when Minaya inked him to a four-year deal after the 2007 season. Wright and Beltran were going to bat third and fourth, as they had done for the majority of the 2008 campaign.

That left some combination of Delgado, Church, Murphy and Schneider – all of whom bat left-handed and all of whom are susceptible to poor performance against left-handed pitching. Suddenly, it wasn’t hard to imagine opposing managers deploying their southpaw specialists against the Mets night in and night out to devastating effect.

This much was clear – the Mets simply could not go into the 2009 season with left-handed position players batting fifth through eighth in their everyday lineup.

But with less than a week to go before the regular season begins, that problem has largely been solved. It has been solved not by a timely signing or an unexpected trade – it has been solved because Manuel has shown a willingness to take risks and to try new ideas. It is a refreshing change from the conservative approach favored by the two previous Met managers – Art Howe and Willie Randolph.

The first step to balancing the lineup was installing Murphy between Reyes and Wright in the everyday batting order. Manuel is putting Murphy in the best position to succeed in his first full season by batting him second, instead of burying him at the bottom of the lineup. Protection is a very real part of lineup construction, and Murphy is now in the best position of any Met to benefit from that protection.

Now, opposing pitchers won’t be able to feed Murphy a steady diet of breaking balls, especially not with a speedster like Reyes on first base and a slugger like Wright on deck. Pitchers are going to have to challenge Murphy with fastballs – and I believe that Murphy will be able to take full advantage of that. If he does, the Met lineup has the potential to be extremely dangerous.

With Murphy entrenched in the top third of the lineup, the only other logical place for Castillo was the eighth spot in the lineup. (One could argue that the most truly logical place for Castillo is actually on another baseball team, but that was never going to happen. Minaya is not one to admit mistakes and there’s no market for a gimpy slap hitter owed $18 million over the next three years.)

Traditionalists like their #2 hitters to be Punch and Judy-types, forever ready to lay down a bunt or to slap the ball to the opposing second baseman in a quest to advance the leadoff batter one base. Castillo, when healthy, would be seen as an ideal #2 hitter by baseball fans from that camp.

Personally, I like #2 hitters with enough plate discipline to take a pitch or two, but with enough ability to smack a line drive into the gap when they get their pitch. Murphy, if he begins to live up to the lofty expectations being set for him, will more likely resemble the latter than the former. In my mind, that makes him much more qualified to bat second than Castillo.

Castillo simply cannot hit for power at the major league level. He cannot be counted on for more than 25 extra-base hits over the course of the season, making him wholly unsuited for any prominent position in the batting order. However, if his ability to draw a walk and slap some singles are properly leveraged, Castillo can still be a surprisingly effective offensive weapon.

I’ve always felt that the eighth-place hitter on a National League team was actually batting in one of the most important spots in the lineup. The very last thing you want to do is put your worst position player in that slot – all that does is line up a couple of easy outs for the opposing pitcher.

Instead, taking a hitter with a good on base percentage but weak Isolated Power numbers and putting him in the eighth spot maximizes the number of times the pitcher will be asked to sacrifice. A player with Castillo’s skill set becomes responsible for those rare occasions during a baseball game that the so-called “productive out” actually has some merit.

It’s no secret that most pitchers cannot hit, so it’s not like a sacrifice attempt is taking the bat out of their hands. Even if Castillo reaches base with two outs, which would of course negate the need to sacrifice, the Mets will nevertheless “clear” the pitcher and have the chance to begin the next inning with their leadoff hitter.

Manuel’s everyday batting order still enjoys a constant platoon advantage against right-handed starters, who will make approximately two-thirds of the opposing starts against the Mets in 2009. Moving around Murphy and Castillo has created a balanced and dangerous lineup, one that is no longer a lefty specialist’s dream once you get past the cleanup hitter.

A batting order that once appeared top-heavy with switch hitters and weighed down by a parade of lefties at the bottom has been evened out nicely. The creativity and the confidence of Jerry Manuel can be thanked for that.

 

(Jack Flynn is back for his second season as a contributor to Flushing University. His columns will appear in this space every Wednesday. You can read more of Jack’s work on his blog, Productive Outs and Crackerjack.)