Adding a Lefty Bat Would Suit One Very Strong Pat Murphy Lineup Preference

[Matthew Trueblood]

Last season, Craig Counsell used back-to-back left-handed hitters at the top of his batting order for long stretches. He lined up his best hitters at the top of the lineup card, worrying relatively little about handedness. The man who has replaced him this season takes a different approach.

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports

Every season and each offense is unique. Managers adjust and flex in response to changing circumstances, be they injuries or shifts in performance and projection. However, they also have tendencies and preferences, and when the vagaries of the season allow it, they tend to emphasize certain things at the expense of others.

Craig Counsell is not afraid to stack hitters of the same handedness in key positions in his batting order--or at least, he wasn't last season. In 2022, with fairly stable production from the likes of Rowdy Tellez; two different switch-hitting catchers; and a limited set of desirable options, Counsell only placed hitters of the same handedness in consecutive spots within the top six slots of the card against right-handed pitchers 45 times. Last year, though, that number exploded, to 117. Christian Yelich and Jesse Winker frequently batted back-to-back. So did Willy Adames and William Contreras. Even the midseason acquisition of Carlos Santana didn't drive Counsell to eliminate clusters of hitters of the same handedness in the lineup.

(Before going any further, a quick note: I'm using instances of consecutive batters with the same handedness in the top six places, against righties, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the bottom third of the card usually contains players who were selected for their glove, not for their bat. Secondly, managers get less worried about alternating handedness as they go down the batting order, because they know they might pinch-hit for the fifth or sixth guy, and certainly for anyone lower than that. Also, on days when a team faces a lefty, skippers tend to stack lineups heavily with right-handed batters. This is not unique to Counsell, Murphy or anyone else. Almost every modern manager will sit a few left-hitting regulars on such days, then bring them off the bench aggressively as soon as a right-handed reliever appears. It's a very different dynamic than the much more frequent days on which a righty starts for the opponent.)

This year, two-thirds of the way through the campaign, Pat Murphy has deployed lineups containing 49 instances of consecutive same-handed batters in his top six against righties. He's already exceeded Counsell's total for 2022, but that was a unique year. He's on pace to have many fewer this year than Counsell had last year, because he's assiduous about avoiding those stacks whenever possible.

Rhys Hoskins has, admittedly, had an up-and-down year, but it's still fairly shocking to see him batting sixth (36) and fifth (27) far more times than he's been in the heart of the order. Hoskins signed a deal guaranteeing him $16 million to play in the smallest market in MLB. His bat is his lone source of real value. Yet, he mostly hits in the lower half of the lineup, and it's all driven by handedness concerns. That's why Sal Frelick has batted fifth 20 times, and Jake Bauers 22, despite being (if anything) worse hitters with much less power than Hoskins has. Against righties, Murphy basically assigns handedness to each spot in his lineup: Nos. 1, 3, and 5 are lefty spots. Nos. 2, 4 and 6 are righty ones. This will sound far more derogatory than it is, because this is a perfectly sound organizing principle, but there's really no way to understand Murphy's lineup construction except by studying handedness.

For that reason, though, the team's offense has sputtered a bit lately. It's not Murphy's fault; there's a lack of depth when injuries strike. There's also quite a bit of youthful learning going on, and in the language of baseball, "youthful learning" rhymes with "failure". Without Yelich, this lineup lacks a quorum of solid left-handed hitters. The right-handed ones, meanwhile, are going through various flavors of struggle or slump, outside of the surging Jackson Chourio and the slowly emerging Hoskins. Murphy has to decide, on a daily basis, whether to bat Contreras and Adames consecutively or force a player like Frelick or Bauers between them, at a spot for which they're underqualified. On Sunday, against righty Kyle Tyler, he gave in and batted two sets of righty batters back-to-back within the top six of his lineup.

There's not much to do about the uneven performances of Contreras, Adames, Hoskins, Chourio, and Joey Ortiz, other than to wait and hope that they achieve more consistent success down the stretch. Because the odds of a breakout from Brice Turang, Frelick, Bauers, or any other incumbent lefty or switch-hitter feel remote, though, trading for help in that department makes a lot of sense. Jesse Winker has already gone by the boards, but there remain some solid hitters who could well be dealt in the next 24 hours. Luis Rengifo makes some sense. So does Tampa Bay's Brandon Lowe, and so, even, could Cubs outfielder Mike Tauchman. Josh Bell is a low-grade, fallback option. LaMonte Wade Jr. is a more aspirational one.

Because Murphy's way of building a lineup is roughly as sound as any one adhered to by the modern baseball world, it's hard to envision pushing him to change it, rather than giving him more talent and depth to work with. It's certainly a suboptimal way to use Hoskins, but then, Hoskins's performance has been suboptimal. If Chourio stays hot, Murphy might need to get more comfortable slotting him in alongside another right-handed batter or two, but right now, the focus should be on adding a left-handed one to the roster, for better balance.

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[Sugarrayray]

Great piece. Good stuff.

I would love Wade or Lowe. It would be nice to see Arnold make an impact trade or two and not just fringe of the roster stuff. And I’m not talking about some huge trade, but they have such a deep, deep farm system that they could easily pry one or both of those guys loose.

Also, why does everyone seem so certain Turang won’t be able to bust out of this slump and hit like he was earlier in the season?

[bensheeps]

Give me Lowe.

He plays DH until Yelich returns and that gives us time to decide if we bring him back next year to play 2B with Turang moving to SS to replace Adames.

[StearnsFTW]

Yeah I'd take Lowe.  He's getting traded somewhere for sure. 

[Brian]

I still think Turang is just burnt out playing in all but 4 games and Adamas the same thing,  This heat isn't helping either while playing every day, so I would have to vote for Brandon Lowe.  Plus he can play outfield in a pinch. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/lowebr01.shtml