Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 29, 2002
Gordon Edes has a piece

Gordon Edes has a piece about leadoff men this morning, in which he discusses how the position has changed for the worse. He quotes Frank Robinson in the piece.


''Everybody swings from the end of the bat with two strikes,'' he said. ''Nobody shortens up. Nobody sits back a little bit and be less aggressive. All the time you see guys swinging at pitches with strikes, balls bouncing in the dirt, like the count is 3 and 0. They don't know how to hit in those situations.

''But it's very difficult to teach guys, because they don't have to accept it. You can't tell a hitter, `Do this or else,' because there is no `else.' He's going to be in lineup, anyway. That's the way it is today.''


I've thought this for a few years, but for all hitters in general. I remember watching the Yankees vs. Pedro Martinez a couple of years back. They were striking out left and right. Why didn't Torre say to his hitters, "Guys, swinging for the fences isn't working against this guy. Everyone shorten up and try to make contact. They have a pourous defense. Let's get some balls in play and see what happens?"

I don't agree with one thesis of the article, which is that good leadoff hitters are hard to find. They aren't hard to find, it's that managers don't look for the right things. The only thing you really need is a high OBA. How you get on base doesn't matter; being there doesn't matter. Speed is nice, but I think too many managers sacrifice speed for OBA at the top of the order, especially in this high HR era. So I don't think it's that players are incapable of leading off, it's that managers refuse to see what is really important. Here's a quote in the article from the Reds assistant GM:


''I can tell you this,'' said Gary Hughes, special assistant to Reds GM Jim Bowden. ''In 10 years as a scouting director, I never read a report that ever referred to a potential leadoff hitter. Scouts look at tools, but their reports never get as specific as that.

''There's a lot of emphasis of late on on-base percentage, but I've never made it a priority to talk about it.''


Not a member of the Billy Beane school. As long as people like Hughes are making personnel decisions, it will be hard to find leadoff men.


Posted by David Pinto at 09:24 AM | Baseball