Contributor: Wally
It looks like the Chicago White Sox will go into the season with Dewayne Wise hitting leadoff. Which begs the question, what in sweet chocolate fuck is Ozzie thinking? Dewayne Wise is a 31 year-old outfielder with a career .254 OBP. Career!!! Two things can be gleaned from that last sentence: (1) Dewayne Wise is not a major league caliber hitter. Not in the leadoff spot, not in the nine-hole, not off the bench for the 2009 Padres. Nowhere. (2) He has zero upside. You know what they call a 31 year-old prospect? Exactly, they don't. Late-bloomers blossom at 24-27, maybe a few years older during the steroid ear (which I'm going to continue to refer to as if it's completely over). Regardless, 31 and 27. Zero upside.
It looks like the Chicago White Sox will go into the season with Dewayne Wise hitting leadoff. Which begs the question, what in sweet chocolate fuck is Ozzie thinking? Dewayne Wise is a 31 year-old outfielder with a career .254 OBP. Career!!! Two things can be gleaned from that last sentence: (1) Dewayne Wise is not a major league caliber hitter. Not in the leadoff spot, not in the nine-hole, not off the bench for the 2009 Padres. Nowhere. (2) He has zero upside. You know what they call a 31 year-old prospect? Exactly, they don't. Late-bloomers blossom at 24-27, maybe a few years older during the steroid ear (which I'm going to continue to refer to as if it's completely over). Regardless, 31 and 27. Zero upside.
But fear not, there must be a backup plan, right? Enter Chris Getz. He of a .381 career SLG in the minors; that probably translates to a good .310 slugging in the bigs. But on the bright side, he did get on base at a .361 clip, 40 pts higher than recently optioned Jerry Owens (27) managed in his major league career (past tense intentional...it's over Jer).
The painful thing isn't just that Ozzie's actually going to run this lineup out there, at least until the offense goes up in a spectacular fireball around mid-April. It's that the solution is obvious, and it doesn't even require a personnel move. The important thing to remember is that lineups aren't linear entities, that's a just a mental schema, nothing more. A more accurate way of visualizing them is as circular and continuous. After the first inning, who occupies in the leadoff spot is largely irrelevant; the relationships that matter are defined by proximity, a player's position relative to other players in the batting continuum. This is absolutely not the same thing as one's position relative to the arbitrary "top" of the order, because the order turns over every nine hitters. Consider the following...
1. Ramirez
2. Quentin
3. Dye
4. Thome
5. Konerko
6. Pierzynski
7. Fields
8. Getz
9. Wise
After inning number one, batting Wise ninth and slotting everyone else up one spot has no effect on the order. It's exactly the same, except, over the course of the 162 game season, a whole lot of Wise/Getz AB's are now going to Alexei Ramirez (or Josh Fields, whoever ends up slotting into the conventional 2-hole), Carlos Quentin, JD, Jim Thome and even Paul Konerko and A.j. Pierzynski.
As for Alexei or Josh hitting leadoff: they're obviously not ideal options. Consider, however, if Ramirez merely duplicates his .317 OBP from his rookie season of 2008, that's still 63 points higher than Wise's career OBP. And after the frigid April/early-May last year (Alexei was hitting only .143 through May 15), it is not unreasonable to expect a 15-25 point improvement in this number; still, that puts him in the ~.330-345 OBP-range, not exactly "Moneyball" stuff, but more-or-less in line with frequent comp Alfonso Soriano, and thus sufficient in lieu of a better leadoff option. (Fields, by the way, had a .305 OBP in his breakout 23 HR partial-season (2007), and a career .359 OBP in the minors.)
I'm not alone in the belief that a team's best hitter should be in the two-hole, the great Keith Law has pointed it out on numerous occasions. Granted, it doesn't work for every team, but consider the NY Mets, MN Twins and TX Rangers.
1. Reyes, ss Span, cf Young, 3b
2. Wright, 3b Mauer, c Kinsler, 2b
3. Beltran, cf Morneau, 1b Hamilton, rf
4. Delgado, 1b Cuddyer, rf Blalock, dh
5. Sheffield, lf Kubel, dh Cruz, lf
6. Murphy, rf Crede, 3b Byrd, cf
7. Santos, c Young, lf Davis, 1b
8. Castillo, 2b Harris, 2b Salty, c
9. (Pitcher...) Casilla, ss Andrus, ss
Do these teams really need the extra PA's (+120/year over the #9 hitter) going to the likes of Dewayne Wise/Chris Getz (CHW), Luis Castillo/Daniel Murphy (NYM), Alexi Casilla/Brendan Harris (MIN) or Elvis Andrus/Omar Visquel (TEX)? That's a rhetorical question. To you and I, that is...apparently not to Oz, Jer, Gardy and Wash. Traditional thinking has again hamstrung conclusions that can be reached through simple arithmetic. Spread the word.
