As interleague play kicks into high gear, we once again get our annual dose of the great pitcher hitting vs. DH debate. That's a pointless conversation. No one's going to change their opinion, and things aren't going to change one way or the other.
You know where I stand on the DH. That's not what I'm here to talk about. Rather, it's an element of the pitcher hitting that we're starting to see more and more (and not just pitchers wearing single-digit numbers, which is a huge pet peeve of mine). Managers are starting to bat the pitcher eighth with regularity. And it's a trend that I simply don't get.
Going back as far as anyone can remember, pitchers have traditionally batted ninth. Sure, if the Angels are playing an interleague road game and want to bat Ohtani cleanup (which they would if he was DHing), knck yourselves out. But there are a number of teams that put their pitcher in the 8-hole for some sort of strategic reason. Maybe it's because I'm an AL guy, but I don't know what that strategic reason is and/or see any benefit in doing it.
Over the past few seasons, we've seen a massive shift in baseball strategy. As sabermetrics has taken over the game, defensive shifts have become en vogue. There isn't a game where you don't see the second baseman in shallow right field and the third baseman left alone on left side of the infield every time there's a left-handed hitter at the plate (with mid-at bat position changes nearly as frequent).
It was around the same time that the pitcher batting eighth became a regular thing, as well. Joe Maddon began the whole trend in 2016, when he hit the pitcher eighth and Javy Baez ninth for pretty much all of April. Eventually, the Cubs lineup went back to normal. Only for other teams to start batting the pitcher eighth. Suddenly it wasn't a Joe Maddon thing. It was spreading across the entire National League!
That would be bad enough. But we're even seeing American League managers do it in interleague games now. With AL lineups, I can at least somewhat follow the thought process of wanting to leave your regular No. 9 hitter in his normal spot in front of the leadoff guy. But, really, I think this is more about trying to be cute and overmanaging as a result.
Take the Yankees-Nationals game last night. Aaron Boone took a page out of the manual Joe Girardi left in the office and hit Masahiro Tanaka in the eight-spot. And, of course, they had runners on second and third with nobody out when his spot came up for the first time. Which gave Washington an easy out in an RBI situation, and the Nationals ended up getting out of the inning without allowing a run. Now, I'm not saying Gleyber Torres gets a hit there. But your chances of scoring are significantly better with a non-pitcher at the plate. Which would've been the case had Boone gone with a conventional lineup.
There are plenty of scenarios just like that one where managers ended up screwing themselves by putting the pitcher eighth in the lineup. The common rationale is that you're giving the hitters at the top of the lineup more chances to hit with runners on base if you flip-flop your eight and nine hitters. But this isn't the American League. Eight hitters in the National League are, for the most part, weaker than their AL counterparts. And, your pitcher's generally going to bat only twice (maybe three times) before you turn that spot over to pinch hitters, who are usually better than or at least comparable to whoever's hitting eighth.
I'm sure there's data that the pitcher batting eighth crowd uses to validate their position, but I want to look at it from the strategic standpoint on the other side. Let's assume for a second that they go 1-2-3 in both the first and second, then the No. 7 hitter leads off the third with a single. We all know what happens next. The pitcher bunts and they have a runner on second with one out. Next guy walks, so it's first and second with one out. Double play, inning over.
Now, if the pitcher's batting ninth, that No. 8 hitter isn't getting anything to hit, especially with a base open, so he still walks. Now the pitcher's bunt puts runners on second and third with one out and essentially takes the double play out of the equation. In other words, your odds of scoring increase dramatically.
This second scenario was one batter away from actually happening in that Yankees-Nationals game last night. The eight spot is far more likely to come up in an RBI situation than the nine spot. So, if you've got the pitcher batting eighth and he comes up with runners in scoring position in the fifth or sixth inning, you're gonna take him out even if he's pitching well so that you can send a pinch hitter up there instead. So, you're giving up your starter and relying on your bullpen for an extra inning because of it.
Even if the eight hitter makes the final out in that scenario, so what? You get your starter for another inning, then can send up a pinch hitter leading off the next inning (or even let him hit for himself leading off the inning). Sure, the same thing can happen with the nine hitter at the plate. I'm not saying it can't.
But, if you want your best hitters higher in the lineup so that they can get more at-bats, that logic would extend all the way down. Unless his name is Ohtani, your pitcher is likely going to be your weakest hitter. And that includes the "good-hitting" pitchers like Madison Bumgarner and Clayton Kershaw (what can't Kershaw do?). So why are you setting it up so that the pitcher's spot will come up more often?
Hopefully this is just a passing fad. But even if it isn't, I simply don't see the benefit to having the pitcher bat eighth instead of ninth. If there's any benefit at all, it's negligible. Either way, it's certainly not significant enough to spit in the face of decades of baseball tradition. Sometimes when you think you're smarter than the system, you end up outsmarting yourself.
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