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Well said Mike. Most recent, especially this month, and this season, are most relevent.
With Noot at leadoff the manager can slot Donny in the lineup appropriately, by the handedness of the opposing starter. But, when the roster has a problem it’s now on Donny to go fix it. We sure ask a lot of him.
I hope Bloom buys two FA seasons of Mr. “Fix-it”, this offseason.
jj, if they are not going to buy out a couple of FA years, they may as well maximize his trade value. He will be 29 in January and only have 2 more seasons after this one until free agency.
So this offseason offer an extension because the following offseason he’s a trade chip looking at free agency. Unless the FO is looking past Noot and Donny’s service class, as part of our core. Two FA seasons for both is 4 more seasons of control, each. How far the FO is looking down the road, may be answered by what they do with these two.
“But to counter my own comment, perhaps some guys press a little when hitting first, thinking about the pressure to get on base. Still you only truly ‘lead off’ once a game. After that it can be anyone.”
Well said, that first part. Plenty of players, past and present, have expressed a strong personal preference for certain lineup slots, based on the role — real or perceived — that they are being asked to fill at that particular place. It’s human nature. Human baseball nature anyway.
At any rate, I’ll just add this, then leave this thread to kinder voices than my own.
Hitter #1 has a .256 average, a .733 OPS, and a mediocre BB/K ratio of .53 across 653 plate appearances.
Hitter #2 has a .298 average, an .800 OPS, and an excellent BB/K rate of .73 in 1,179 trips to the plate.Batter #1 is Donovan, career, at leadoff. And as you’ve probably guessed, #2 is Brendan everywhere else in the batting order. No matter what anyone’s personal feeling are re the Redbird skipper, isn’t it clear by now, that Brendan Donovan is just not the same when he’s slotted at the top of the lineup?
(By the way, when Donovan leads off a game, he’s walked 8 times in 141 trips to the plate. With 33 whiffs. He’s simply not himself in that role.)
I think he continues to be ideally suited for the 2 slot and I’ll never be able to forget or overlook the genuine lunacy displayed by the whiz-kid when he swapped out Albert Pujols with Donovan in the order by placing Donovan in the 5 slot and moving Albert up to the 2nd position in the batting order for both games of the ill-fated ’22 NLWC. That was the first indication that afforded notice that the Redbird manager was prone to erratic and unsound behavior. I clearly recall thinking it had to be a typo when I first glanced at the game 1 line-up. Then, he did it again for game 2.
Definitely going by past results Donovan has hit better outside the #1 slot. But I hesitate to conclude that hitting in a particular spot in the order drives success or failure.
You could look at a guy’s numbers by month, and undoubtedly find a good player that for some reason performs well below his career norms in a particular month. Should a manager then go into that month, let’s say it’s August, and bench that player for most of the month because he seems to slump at that time?
As I mentioned, there could be something about hitting lead off that bothers some guys. And maybe there are guys that wear down some in August, or have trouble early in the year when the weather is cooler. So I will concede that there could be some legitimate reason for a portion of a player’s different production that is not inherently tied to his ability. But I think most of the variance is randomness and if you leave a guy in a lineup slot for a long enough time, he will perform up to his career norms.
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