NEW YORK — The Mets had Matt Harvey bat ninth on Tuesday night, their seventh time in eight games batting their starting pitcher at the bottom of the order.
After causing a stir by hitting Jacob deGrom in the No. 8 spot in the second game of the season, New York has reverted to traditional lineups, but only because circumstances have dictated it. The idea is not dead, far from it.
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“We will continue to try to do something like that,” Mets manager Terry Collins told Sporting News. “We just don’t have the person to do that yet. As I said in the beginning, when we were going to do it in the beginning, Juan (Lagares) came out of spring training swinging the bat so good, I didn’t want to hit him ninth. I wanted to hit him up in the order because he was swinging the bat so good. Well, right now, we’ve got a few guys that aren’t swinging all that good at the bottom of the order, so having them hit eighth or ninth isn’t going to be helping us. So, I’m just going to go with the pitcher hitting ninth until we start swinging the bats better.”
The “something like that” to which Collins referred was putting a position player in the No. 9 spot in the order to possibly get an extra runner on base in front of No. 2 hitter David Wright, whose hamstring injury means further complications to New York’s lineup construction. The Mets are one of many teams that have come around to sabermetric principles of lineup construction, with the best hitter in the order getting the No. 2 spot.
Wright in New York, Joey Votto in Cincinnati, Yasiel Puig and Mike Trout in Los Angeles and George Springer in Houston are players who, in past eras, and even in recent years, would not have hit second in a team’s lineup, but are doing so on a regular basis. Carlos Gonzalez of the Rockies also fits that description, with star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki getting the start in the No. 2 spot in the one game Gonzalez did not. The Rockies, off to a surprisingly good start at 6-2, have twice batted their pitcher in the No. 8 spot.
One other team this year has batted a pitcher eighth: the Cubs, who have done it in every game they have played under Joe Maddon. Chicago has split time in the No. 2 spot between two of its most dynamic hitters, first baseman Anthony Rizzo and right fielder Jorge Soler.
Over the course of the season, each spot in the order comes to the plate about 15-20 fewer times than the spot in front of it. This is the rationale for putting the best hitter on a team in the No. 2 spot — to maximize his plate appearances while still providing opportunities to hit with runners on base, to be provided by a leadoff batter who ideally is a high on-base percentage man.
It would follow logically that this is why the pitcher, ordinarily the very worst hitter in a lineup, would hit ninth, to minimize his at-bats. There are, however, counterarguments to this logic.
One is what Collins was talking about, the idea of having more runners on base when the team’s best hitters come to the plate, thanks to the No. 9 hitter having a bit more capability with the bat. There also is the fact that, in 2015, very few pitchers wind up taking all of their at-bats in a game. The No. 8 spot then gets more at-bats given to pinch-hitters, who presumably would be chosen to maximize efficiency in matchups.
It’s certainly not a strategy based on the No. 8-hitting pitchers being better than their postion-playing counterparts. In the 69 combined plate appearances by pitchers in the No. 8 spot last year, the hurlers hit .113/.154/.129 with 27 strikeouts. This year, there already have been 19 such plate appearances, with pitchers compiling a .190/.190/.238 line, but that comes thanks to a .400 BABIP — they’ve still struck out 11 times.
With Maddon clearly committed to the strategy and Collins vowing to try it again once his team’s offense gets rolling, more teams may be spurred to try, unlike when Tony La Russa was seen as mildly eccentric for trying it a decade ago. With the move of top hitters to the No. 2 spot, the move of pitchers to No. 8 may be here to stay.