Checking in on the Bottom of the Cubs’ Lineup

Photo courtesy of Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports

The Cubs have used the pitcher in the eighth slot in each of their first 49 games. This was one of the (minor) innovations new manager Joe Maddon promised when he arrived from Tampa Bay. For Maddon, doing things differently than other managers is a point of pride, and a managerial tactic. He enjoys being the one dot that skews a graph or chart, not only because it provides his team with small advantages at times, but because it creates a mentality throughout the team. A team that uses its personnel in a singular way might have singular potential. Maybe that’s what Maddon wants to impart to his young team, and maybe it isn’t, but that’s the message that shines through.

That’s fine. Batting orders are a small concern; it matters a great deal more who hits for you than in what order they do so. Since the lineup is such a juicy, evergreen conversation piece, though, and since one of the fundamental joys of baseball is having a good old-fashioned debate, let’s take a hard look at the way Maddon has done things so far, and decide whether it’s advisable to keep doing them that way.

First of all, let’s cover our noses with a handkerchief and peek at the numbers for Cubs pitchers at the plate this season. They’re hitting .089/.104/.107, in 115 plate appearances. They don’t even have a sacrifice among them, a fact born both of their poor execution, and of Maddon’s hesitance to give away outs by bunting. The latter problem will, we might hope, solve itself in time. Maddon hasn’t managed pitchers as hitters on a regular basis before. He needs a little time to see just how awful they are at it, in order to finally see the light and start laying down bunts when they come to bat with men on base.

Hey, speaking of coming up with men on, let’s look at how the Cubs’ eighth hitters (mostly, but not solely, the pitchers) have done when batting with runners in scoring position so far: .037/.102/.037. (Oof. Sorry. Forgot to remind you about that handkerchief.) In 59 plate appearances with someone a simple single away from scoring, Cubs eighth hitters have four RBI.

Okay, so the Cubs’ pitchers can’t hit, and the pinch-hitters for their pitchers can’t hit. That is, actually, a real problem. The .267 OPS the team is getting from the eighth slot is not only by far the worst in baseball, but would also be (easily, though not as easily) the worst production from the ninth slot. It’s likely that the path to improvement at the bottom of the Cubs’ order starts not with any shuffling of the cards, but with some serious reinforcement for what is, right now, a very weak bench.

As things stand, are the Cubs benefiting from the unique way Maddon has laid out the lineup? It seems they might be. Russell’s strong work out of the ninth spot in the order has brought the team’s OPS there up to .664, the third-best mark for any team in MLB and far and away the highest in the NL. That same number would be only the 18th-best in the eighth spot, so as long as the pitchers and bench remain this impotent, the Cubs gain something by departing from the norm: they’re setting up the top of their order for success better than almost any other team in baseball.

The hope has to be that the bench gets much stronger in time, though, and when it does, that part of the equation becomes less important. In other words, if and when the eighth spot becomes something other than an ugly scar on the lineup, Russell will be somewhat wasted in that ninth spot. In fact, and we should make note of this, Russell’s skill set is somewhat wasted there, anyway. The second-leadoff role was crafted for a light-hitting guy who can get on base a little and run well, but not hit with much authority. Setting him up to reach base in front of the good hitters at the top of the order accentuates that guy’s strengths and minimizes his weaknesses. Russell, however, is a hitter with a very blended skill set, and if anything, he gets most of his value from his power. If Tommy La Stella were still a starter for this team, he’d be a perfect fit for the role, but he doesn’t have a starting job waiting for him right now, even if and when he gets healthy.

Maddon has said, of course, that batting the pitcher eighth isn’t even really about Russell, La Stella, or any other member of the Cubs’ offense. He says it’s principally a way to get an earlier opportunity to pinch-hit for a tiring starter in the middle innings. That’s a little bit difficult to reconcile with these numbers, though.

Plate Appearances by Inning, 8th and 9th Hitters, NL Parks, 2015

The innings during which a manager might opportunistically make that kind of move are the fifth and sixth, and this season, games played under NL rules have seen more plate appearances for the ninth hitter than for the eighth hitter in each of those frames. The Cubs themselves have seen the ninth slot come up significantly more often in the fifth and seventh innings, and the eighth slot come up only slightly more often in the sixth.

The theory of the second leadoff hitter is a sound one, and it comes from a place of understanding that which is most important and most fundamental to building a good lineup, particularly in the National League: string all of your best hitters together, without interruptions. In the case of the Cubs, though, the ideal guy for the job just isn’t there. Instead of fighting to find such a player, Maddon should embrace the other path to bunching the best bats in the order. He should pile them at the top, ensuring not only that they remain part of a dynamic sequence, but that they get as many plate appearances as possible. Starlin Castro has his good days. Chris Coghlan is an underrated hitter. Miguel Montero can do damage against right-handed pitchers. None of them need to be in the middle of Chicago’s batting order, though, spacing out the core group of sluggers the front office has so assiduously assembled.

My proposed lineup goes:

1. Dexter Fowler – cf
2. Anthony Rizzo – 1b
3. Addison Russell – 2b
4. Kris Bryant – 3b
5. Jorge Soler – rf
6. Miguel Montero – c
7. Starlin Castro – ss
8. Chris Coghlan – lf
9. Pitcher

This is as much about getting Soler back into the meat of the order—which actually appears to have happened as of Monday—as about extricating Russell from the ninth spot, but it should be obvious how much Russell could benefit from that. He would see perhaps 60 more trips to the plate between now and the end of the season under this redrawn lineup. He would also solve my biggest personal problem with Maddon’s lineups to date: too much of Rizzo and Bryant in the third slot. Even on a team with good tablesetters, the number-three guy will come to bat for the first time in a game with two outs and nobody on base a little over 40 percent of the time. That’s too often to have a guy as patient as both Bryant and Rizzo are slotted there, because a walk in that situation has very little value to the team. Power is the only important thing for third hitters, and Russell has enough. He’s not a walk machine, but in that role, he wouldn’t need to be. Meanwhile, Rizzo and Bryant would be in better positions to spark rallies with their patience, instead of merely prolonging lost-cause innings.

None of this accounts for days off or platooning, of course. Those things should still happen, and maybe on days when a good lefty is on the mound for the opponent, Fowler (an exceptional contact hitter and controller of the strike zone from the right side, but not the power threat he is when he bats lefty) or David Ross (whose every offensive skill other than strike-zone judgment has failed him) could slide down to ninth to make everything click and whir to everyone’s satisfaction. Nor do Kyle Schwarber (who would lengthen the heart of the order enough to make bumping someone down to ninth a little more palatable), Javier Baez (who could be every bit as good a third hitter as Russell), or Arismendy Alcantara (one better-suited candidate for a second-leadoff role) figure into the equation, for now.

The most important lesson to take from this conversation, I think, is that the Cubs’ bench has been arrestingly bad. That’s a good reason to hope Schwarber, in particular, matriculates to the majors soon. He would make Coghlan a part of that bench, deepening it considerably. He would allow Montero to rest more, the way he could before the recent Welington Castillo trade. He also has the potential to make the lineup so unbelievably potent at the top—we’re talking Blue Jays potent, from Fowler through Schwarber and Soler—that a black hole or two at the bottom might go unnoticed. Unless and until Schwarber is ready for the parent club, though, Maddon has to find ways to keep his charges fresh without giving undue (read: any) playing time to the likes of Jonathan Herrera and Junior Lake. Good health can’t come soon enough for the Cubs’ depth pieces.

Another important point: lineups are fluid, and ought to be. Maddon is somewhat famous for tinkering with his, and that’s terrific, because it doesn’t give any individual player such a sense of security as to be offended by a day off against a tough, same-handed starter. Rest is important, and too many players resist it. Keeping a player in the habit of checking the lineup card carefully maintains the manager’s right to leave him off of it every now and then.

It also helps guys break free from their perceptions about the team’s expectations. Yesterday, Sahadev Sharma showed us how Starlin Castro struggled during his turn as the cleanup hitter. Part of that is absolutely mental. Guys who hit in the same slot in the order often start to seek certain outcomes, things they associate with that spot in their minds. The thing is, good offense is free-form. Value is value, and guys only get themselves in trouble and become one-dimensional when they start looking to do a specific thing every time they step to the plate. Hitting is adjustment in action, and is not to be approached with physical or mental rigidity. Moving players around in the order is good for them.

Still, there are some lineup machinations that aren’t worth the trouble, and as atrocious as Cubs pitchers have been at the plate of late, batting anyone behind them is one of those machinations. Maddon should drop the pitchers back into their traditional place, the better to minimize their drag on a strong offense.