2/25/13 CACast: Dan Uggla for Leadoff? And Other Disney Musings
February 25, 2013 at 1:03 pm by Franklin Rabon under Atlanta Braves
Franklin, Ben and Ethan talk lineup construction, final bench spots, Teheran/Gilmartin and what we can learn from Spring games among other topics.
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Good commentary on Simmons at leadoff, guys. I would personally put a Heyward/Bossman platoon in the leadoff spot depending on handedness of pitcher, with Justin Upton second. My second choice would be Justin Upton as the every day leadoff hitter with Heyward as the every day #2. Uggla would be 3rd choice. Simmons is 5th choice.
I can’t see Jason batting higher than 2nd and I think Justin has to be our #3 guy. Even without a “true lead-off man” it would be not be wise to have them so high in the batting order.
I know what you mean. However, I think Justin leadoff isn’t so bad when you have so many power hitters. If it were a team of Justin and a bunch of singles hitters, he may waste some RBI opportunities batting leadoff. It’s more of a team with a bunch of 25 HR hitters, and I want to maximize Justin’s AB. I’m not sure that line of thinking is completely valid, but it seems reasonable.
if anyone thinks that Dan Uggla will have a BB% at 15% again, I got some swamp land I gotta get rid of…
his avg is 12%, I will happily take that
Last year I remember thinking that Uggla just wasn’t seeing much he could really hit from the back of the order. Eye test was saying guys were either throwing him heat above the strike zone or junk down and away, in both cases regularly outside the strikezone. I cant remember completely if the heatmap data proved that but I think it might have at least to an extent.
I thought he was smart to just say fine, I’ll take my walks if yall wont throw me anything to mash, which could explain the spike in walk rate. Also seemed like he was seeing so much high crap that he couldnt help but swing sometimes, and predictably got under them a ton, leading to that 17% IFFB rate (twice as high as before 2011).
I think he’d really benefit from some protection in the lineup, but I would not rather have him in any of those 2-6 spots simply because we have better guys there, so from that perspective I like him at leadoff. If my theory is on target, you might see his walk rate decline some, but hopefully the batting average increases as he’s seeing more to hit and more importantly he starts pushing the SLG back above .450.
In this way you’re maximizing his value. Unfortunately you’re maximizing a sluggers value in the leadoff spot and left potentially with a lot of HRs coming with no one on, but with this team, if he hits 27 HRs, he could finish 5-6th on the team anyway.
If Dan Uggla hits 27 home runs and finishes 6th on the team I don’t think we’ll be too worried about optimizing the lineup because we will have probably won 100 games
This is a toss up really. I think Uggla walked as much as he did because he wasn’t really seeing anything to hit, which will most likely be the trend this year as well seeing as if he bats 7th he will have much more protection in front of him than he did last year. I don’t think all those walks came from him being patient and looking for these long extensive at bats, more just from everyone knows he has pop and with a runner(s) on with less than two outs you’re not going to throw him something he can drill (just my guess though). I think Simmons is the best man for the job as of right now; however, it remains to be seen if he can get on base as much as required from the prototypical lead-off man. He has the least amount of power out of any of the hitters, and is most likely one of the faster guys. With Heyward, the Upton boys, Freeman, a healthy BMac, and Uggla behind him, he won’t need to steal many bases just simply get on so speed doesn’t really matter to much with this lineup (not going to be playing a whole lot of small ball). The other solution depends on who starts at 3rd. They are high on the power hitting Fransisco, but if Johnson plays better D and can hit around .300 maybe he’s the right guy and we let Simmons swing away in the 8 hole with runners on. Again, speed isn’t really key with this power lineup, so all we need for leadoff is a guy who gets on base. If Johnson can hit near .300 and draw some walks/long at bats that lets our guys see the pitchers arsenal, than that is more than required for that spot on this team.
I can agree that Uggla isn’t the greatest ideal candidate, but everything you just said were reasons why Simmons isn’t good for leadoff? He isn’t a very good baserunner at this point, he isn’t a high OBP guy. What makes Simmons ‘the best man for the job’?
Uggla hitting leadoff seems like a bad idea due to his contact rate being so lousy last year. True I like his BB%, but will it stay there? or drift down to 11 or 12% . IF it does, and his contact doesn’t improve from 2012, you are looking at him having an OBP of around .320 or so. which I doubt is any better than Simmons and at least Uggla provides back end power for when guys like BJ and Mac leadoff innings.
I don’t think Simmons is a better choice than BJ (who I like there due to his seeing more fastballs leading off and his stolen bases and the hope that he reverts to a higher OBP when he isn’t the ONLY source of runs in the entire lineup like he was in Tampa with Longoria out)
All of this being said, we all know that the difference between an optimized lineup and a random lineup is not very much, and to a near optimized lineup it’s nearly zero.
much ado about nothing IMO
well, sure. Like we said in the podcast, it’s one of those things that gets talked about a lot, but isn’t actually a huge deal. Now, what I don’t get is Simmons at leadoff, at all. I get arguments for other players there, but Simmons will most likely be our 7th or 8th best hitter. One of the few ways you actually can do damage with batting order is to put one of your worst hitters (and its not that simmons is terrible so much as we have 7 really good hitters) in one of the 4 most valuable spots in the order, especially when he has a near opposite skill set of what you want.
Yeah, but I would prefer to have 30% of a power hitters pa’s not come with a guarantee of nobody else on base…. it’s a tough call.
IMO,we don’t really know what we are getting with Simmons yet. and I am cool with letting him try it out in April, if he struggles, pop him back to 8 and move BJ up there.
And Heyward has too much pop/strikes out too much. We need runners on when he hits those deep fly balls to score, not have them happen with no one on base. He definitely has the speed, but he struggles with average as is and his best chance of getting some pitches to hit is with runners on not leading off. Best case scenario, Simmons and Johnson become basically two lead-off men always getting on from the 1 and 9 spot, and Heyward batting 2nd comes up on regular occasion with two runners on. That’s where he’d be the most dangerous.
I appreciate the “out of the box” thinking, but Uggla isn’t quite fast enough on the basepaths to hit leadoff. He is a decent baserunner, but not really a threat to steal, and you need that at the top of the order.
I say hit him 6th or 7th, where at least he has the chance to hit the occasional 3-run homer because he will have more people on base ahead of him. That way you maximize his power, which always was/is Uggla’s biggest plus.
The full season difference between the leadoff spot and the 7 spot is ~100 PA. If we lower that to 85 because Uggla won’t get 100% of a season’s PA, at Uggla’s career HR / PA rate of 4.5%, thats an extra ~4 home runs.
Last year 56% of Uggla’s PAs (generally later in the order) came with bases empty. Last year 67% of Bourn’s PAs (leadoff) came with bases empty.
I’ll assume Uggla hits 24 hrs if hes in the 7th spot, so 28 in the 1 spot. and 56% of the time from the 7th spot its just a solo HR, vs. 67% of the time in the leadoff. Finally, for non-solo HRs, I’ll assume 1.4 runners on base for the 7th spot (made this number up but seems ballpark) and 1.2 runners on base per non-solo HR at leadoff (lower because of who hits before the leadoff batter)
Results? 38.8 rbi from 7th spot, 39.0 rbi from leadoff. Math is clearly way too simplistic but I bet no matter how well you refine this calculation, the results will generally show that the added HRs from more PA largely offset the higher % of PAs w/ runner on base.
Now, where would you rather have a .246 avg / .343 obp hitter (Uggla’s rough last 3-year average)? With home runs already accounted for above, answer is Id rather have the .343 being driven in than the .246 driving people in.
Re: Simba’s “tools,” I believe I saw in an article or chat session where KLaw graded him as an 80 for both glove and arm.
Somewhat related, the phrase “DOB grading curve” elicited a chuckle.
That was more referring to DOB giving Gattis 80 power. I don’t agree that Simmons has an 80 glove, but it’s certainly not laughable. My point is that every scout will tell you that Brendan Ryan has a clearly better glove than Simmons, but that Simmons has a much better arm. So if Simmons has an 80 glove, then what does Ryan have? An 85? That doesn’t exist.
And I don’t know what two scouts told DOB Gattis had 80 power. Ive talked to a few and always get like 65 tops (which is still TREMEMDOUS power, like Pujols grades out at around 65 power).
DOB really said 80? hahaha
I think he said that Gattis and Francisco are both 75 to 80.
What exactly does that measure? I mean, if it’s just simply, “how far can this person possibly hit a baseball,” I’d bet Francisco is up there pretty high (no idea on Gattis). But if it’s intended to measure a person’s likely power output (meaning likely homerun potential), then that’s obviously ridiculous.
It’s basically a measure of when the player makes good contact, how likely is it to go out and how far does it go.
I’m not really familiar with the numerical grading. I just assumed whenever I heard that Simmons has an 80 arm, that it meant 80/100. But if Pujols has 65 power at about 40 HRs a year, then I’ve definitely been getting it wrong.
That being said, even with video game stat ratings, saying Juan and Gattis have 80 power is still hilarious.
80 is 80 out of 80. It’s based around a 50 median. Each 10 ‘points’ represents a standard deviation. 80 means three standard deviations above the median, which is something like the 99.99th percentile.
80 is better than pretty much anybody in this regard, legendary (1 in a thousand)
70 is supremely elite (top 2 percent)
60 is very very good (top 1/3rd)
50 is average
40 is fairly bad (bottom 1/3)
30 is terrible (bottom 2%)
20 is amongst the worst at this skill in all of baseball (you never really see this, because a player with this skill pretty much never, ever makes MLB, unless they’re crazy good at everything else).
Yeah, should have clarified this a bit better, was talking about two separate points.
A. Klaw has Simmons as an 80 for both, for whatever it’s worth
and
B. It is indeed laughable what DOB graded Gattis and Fat Juan’s power, and I enjoyed you guys examining that topic.
Justin Upton a 70 power rating I take it?
I only say that because he is always in the top 3 or 4 in avg HR distance
I’d guess so, but I haven’t talked to scouts about it either. His 475 ft shot a few years ago is still one of the longest homers in a game in the last several years.
est 470 yesterday
When you look at true 75-80′s in the game today, you think…
Albert Pujols’ hit tool
Miguel Cabrera’s power
Michael Bourn’s speed
And then you’ve got DOB throwing out 2 guys that might be on ATL’s bench carrying 80 power haha
I can almost buy Juan at 80 power. I mean there is this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/13/juan-franciscos-home-run-video_n_960479.html I’d probably put him at like 75.
He just has a pretty bad hit tool, which causes his in game power to not show up.
A bit late to the conversation, but really enjoyed listening to the pod last night.
I do think some numbers would’ve better illustrated your points regarding the pros and cons of Simmons leading off. Last year Bourn had a .348 OBP, which was higher than I thought it was. Simmons in limited opportunities had .335 OBP. I think we’d take that this season. And Bill James has him projected at .351! this season (although I think ZIPS is more realistic at .323). Would a .323 OBP from Simmons be acceptable? At what point would it become very damaging to the team. <.320? Is .330 still too low? Oddly enough BJ Upton is projected at 0.320ish and he was suggested to be a better option by the pod crew. Uggla is projected at .335-.340. So I guess I wouldn't be that worried over Simmons hitting leadoff. The other options don't seem that much better, if at all. I know Simmons is young and could have a bad season, in which case I think Freddi would change the line-up and put BJ there (I would go with Dan if Simmons struggles). That would be my guess. Oddly after looking at those numbers I'm quite comfortable with Simmons there and not nearly as worried as the pod crew seem to be.
I think BJ was being mentioned as leadoff against LHP, and it was based on his career .365 OBP against lefties. If BJ doesn’t bounce back OBP wise, yeah, he would be a very bad option.
It’s not so much about a specific number, it’s more about your other options. Though anything below .330 is pretty bad out of the leadoff spot regardless.