It's Time To Fix The Red Sox Lineup

It's been long enough and the pieces are here so let's do this thing already

We see you, Christian

There is no such thing as perfection when it comes to baseball. The very nature of the sport demands imperfection, otherwise the games would never end. That’s true of the batting order as well. Batting orders reflect all sorts of things that we don’t typically think about, such as injury status, egos, player history, player versus player matchups, and over a century of tradition, to name just a few. So a perfect batting order can a difficult thing to achieve.

In that case I suppose it’s fitting that studies have looked at batting orders and determined that over the course of a full season there is little difference, maybe a win or two at best, between the most optimized batting order and a substandard one. That’s probably true and I’m completely willing to believe it, but…

The Red Sox are pushing the limits of “substandard batting order” and it’s frankly silly and it needs to change. All season long Alex Cora has organized the Red Sox batting order thusly:

1. Who Cares

2. Verdugo

3. Martinez

4. Bogaerts

5. Devers

6. It

7. Does

8. Not

9. Matter

The heart, the meatpile if you will, of the Red Sox lineup is that two-through-five grouping. Those are unquestionably the Red Sox best hitters and that’s where an outsized amount of their offense is generated. Cora believes that those are the best spots for those hitters and so he put them there regardless of the other players on the roster and has simply filled in around the stars with whatever he has lying around.

I’d argue as long as those four are hitting together in those spots, two through five, the lead-off hitter becomes rather important, but Cora has consistently stated through his lineup construction that, no, in fact, the leadoff hitter is another ninth hitter, an afterthought in the construction of the lineup. The Red Sox lineup effectively begins in the number two spot and the team is winning so that’s not going to change.

Except it should. It really should.

The Red Sox are getting nothing from their leadoff hitters this season. By wRC+, FanGraphs catch-all offensive stat, the Red Sox have received the worst hitting in the leadoff spot of any team in baseball. Boston has posted a wRC+ of 82, 18 percent below league average. Quite obviously that’s bad.

In this case though, I’d argue it’s especially bad. The Red Sox have four hitters who are well above league average in terms of offensive production. Those four are the guys who are hitting 2-through-5 in the lineup. If you’re not going to hit one of them (any of them, truly!) in the leadoff spot, then fine, ok. In that case there is one criteria for a leadoff man. He does not need to be fast, powerful, an elite base-stealer, have a high batting average, have above average bat control, or anything else. The one skill he needs to possess above and to the exclusion of all else is the ability to get on base. If he gets on base in front of the X/JD/Devers/Verdugo Quadrangle of Death, he’s going to score a lot of runs. A ton, just a ton of runs!

Here’s proof. The Red Sox are getting the worst offensive production from the leadoff spot in baseball. But, despite that, the guys hitting behind the leadoff spot are so good that Boston’s leadoff hitter has scored the 11th most runs of any leadoff hitter in baseball. That’s what the Red Sox leadoff hitter (collectively) has done despite posting an on-base percentage of .287.

.287!

This season a league average hitter has an on-base percentage of .313. The Red Sox just need a lead-off hitter who can get on base. Is that too much to ask? Imagine how many runs the Red Sox are leaving on the cutting room floor because their manager insists on hitting their worst hitters first! It’s legitimately maddening.

And here’s the thing about that: the Red Sox actually have the perfect leadoff hitter on their team right now. Think about what the ingredients of a great leadoff hitter are. On-base ability. A high batting average doesn’t hurt. Some speed. The ability to steal a base. Some power for extra base hits and the occasional leadoff homer. The Red Sox have that exact guy on the roster right now!

Xander Bogaerts.

He’s perfect for the role.

Ah, you say, but Alex Cora likes the 2-through-five of the lineup right now and doesn’t want to disrupt it because the team is winning. That’s true but the team is leaving so many runs on the table that they have to fix this problem. They’re not good enough to not fix it. If this was the 2018 Red Sox and they had a great pitching staff and a great team defense and they were running away with the AL East then fine, bat Marwin Gonzalez leadoff all you want. But that’s not where this team is. This team will have to fight for their playoff lives all season. They’re going to have to maximize what they have and minimize what they don’t or they’re not going to win. They don’t have the luxury of doing silly things like hitting their worst hitters in the leadoff spot because they like it. That’s not good enough, sorry.

There are three possible fixes available here.

1. Bring up Jarren Duran and hit him in the leadoff spot.

2. Make a trade for someone and bat them in the leadoff spot.

3. Put Alex Verdugo in the leadoff spot

4. Listen to the dumb Red Sox newsletter guy and put Bogaerts at leadoff

Clearly they’re not going to do 1 right now. They might later, but not right now, so 1 is out. They’re not going to do 2 right now either. They might later, but not right now, so 2 is out also. Alex Verdugo doesn’t like to hit leadoff, so they’re not doing 3 either, so 3 is out.

The thing about hitting Bogaerts leadoff is it doesn’t have to disrupt the lineup very much. Take Bogaerts out of the three spot and put him at one. That gives you this:

1. Bogaerts

2. Verdugo

3. ???

4. JD Martinez

5. Devers

A number three hitter doesn’t require much in the on-base ability department. I mean sure it would be nice to have Mike Trout batting third, but that’s not where we are. So instead of Mike Trout, how about someone who just looks like Mike Trout? An answer to the above is Hunter Renfroe.

Renfroe’s resurgence at the plate has brought him from a well below average hitter on the season to a league average hitter. That’s about what the Red Sox were hoping for him, though if he wants to keep doing this, then sure, that’s great. But even if he just stays at this level, he’s a good fit for the number three spot. He has lots of power and he strikes out a lot, so if he makes an out he won’t often hit into double plays. The power can serve to drive runners in, like, say, Xander Bogaerts in the leadoff spot.

Managers always talk about lengthening the lineup, which is usually code for finding spots to hide lousy hitters. In this case though Renfroe really does fit in the three spot right now. He’s not perfect, and he could turn back into the guy who got DFA’d by the Rays after last season, but even if he does, he’ll do less damage in the three spot than the collection of DFA candidates Cora has been running out there at leadoff. Those are the guys getting the most at-bats on the team. They’re also killing the Red Sox offensive production at a time when the pitching staff is faltering and the team needs every run they can get. Batting Bogaerts leadoff does lengthen the lineup, but mostly it puts a good hitter in a spot in the lineup where he can get on base and get driven in by other good hitters. The rest is just window dressing.