Should Christian Vázquez Be the Twins' Leadoff Hitter?

[Eric Blonigen]

As the Twins navigate the dog days of summer, they have been beset by injuries, and Rocco Baldelli has needed to get creative with roster management. With just over 40 games to play, it's important to find strategic tweaks that can increase the odds of winning even slightly.  With this in mind, I present to you: Christian Vázquez, leadoff hitter.

Image courtesy of © Jordan Johnson-USA TODAY Sports

Overall, Christian Vázquez has not been the hitter the Twins hoped for when signing him to a three-year, $30 million deal prior to the 2023 season. In 2023, he was 35% worse than league-average as a hitter. This season, he has been marginally better, just 31% worse than average. This has led to bitterness among the fanbase, and there have been calls to trade or DFA him for a season and a half. These calls may be premature, however, as in one key situation, Vázquez has been an above-average hitter. The key? Leading off an inning.

So far this season, Vázquez has come to the dish with the bases empty 119 times. During those plate appearances, he has a .728 OPS. He has struck out just 18% of the time, walked 4%, and has a .257 batting average, even with a tepid .279 BABIP. All of that is good for a 104 wRC+. So, Christian Vázquez has been a better-than-average hitter, with the bases empty. Are you surprised?

In low-leverage situations, even beyond hitting leadoff, 33% of Vázquez’s contact is classified as hard-hit. Some 44% of the time, he hits the ball up the middle. When he hits the ball well, he uses the whole field.

Let’s compare this to other situations. When Vázquez bats with at least one runner on, his OPS craters to .475, with a batting average of just .190. He strikes out more frequently, 22% of the time. With a wRC+ of just 30, he’s been basically unusable with men on base. With runners in scoring position, his results are even worse, to the tune of a .153 batting average, a 25% strikeout rate, and a wRC+ of 4. Just terrible.

In medium-leverage situations, his hard-hit rate falls slightly, to 28%, and in high-leverage spots, this drops to just 13.6%. Looking at his spray charts by leverage, in high leverage, he’s going the other way 41% of the time. The quality of this oppo contact has been quite poor - when he goes the other way, he either tops the ball or hits it softly.

So, something about the pressure of the moment alters his timing, approach, and results--or it changes how opposing pitchers approach him, and he's not able to succeed against the different set of things he sees in those spots. Basically, when it matters most, he loses the ability to make valuable contact with the ball.

Before you play the small-sample-size card, there are two things to consider. Last season, his batting average with runners on was .192 and his OPS was .539 — good for a 52 wRC+, and similar results to this year. So, this is at least a two-season problem. Over this span, his cumulative WPA is -4.1. Second, yes, his BABIP is lower when runners are on, at .234 and lower still with runners in scoring position at .191, suggesting that some positive regression is in order. However, due to his approach with men on, he won’t regress as much as one would expect.

Overall, the story this data tells is that Christian Vázquez is likely trying to do too much when it matters most, and the problem may be mental. The solution? Take the pressure off. Let him hit leadoff, against lefties. Late in games, if they're trailing and need offense, they can always pinch-hit for Vázquez. Ryan Jeffers, to name the obvious candidate for such duty, is hitting .245/.318/.42 with runners on base, and he owns an .812 OPS in high-leverage situations.

If Vázquez is capable of being a solid hitter in at least some situations, the Twins would be well-served to maximize his (limited) hitting prowess. Slotting him in atop the order needn't mean that he gets the most plate appearances on a given night; it can just mean putting him in the best possible position to succeed. They (and you) just might be surprised at the results.

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What do you think? Will hitting Vázquez leadoff maximize his hitting ability? Will it lead to positive outcomes for the Twins? Comment below to start the discussion!

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[Doctor Gast]

Leave him alone. His true value is his defense. Both Vazquez & Martin don't strike out much.

[JD-TWINS]

Looking for the SATIRE heading on this one.

Only leads-off ONCE for sure. Slowest guy on the Team.

Gotta ride him in the 9 spot and maybe he’ll get lucky and end up leading off an inning.

He’s up to .225 on August 12 after being mired in the mid-.100’s for a big chunk of first 3 months. He’s actually been hitting pretty well since mid-June. Hit the very top of the wall on Sunday and another one off the base of the fence. Not completely missing fastballs anymore.

[Otaknam]

Well, No! There is no reason to guarantee this rally killer to have the most guaranteed at bats in a game. End of this silly notion. 

[Trov]

33 minutes ago, JD-TWINS said:

Looking for the SATIRE heading on this one.

Only leads-off ONCE for sure. Slowest guy on the Team.

Gotta ride him in the 9 spot and maybe he’ll get lucky and end up leading off an inning.

He’s up to .225 on August 12 after being mired in the mid-.100’s for a big chunk of first 3 months. He’s actually been hitting pretty well since mid-June. Hit the very top of the wall on Sunday and another one off the base of the fence. Not completely missing fastballs anymore.

Since July hit, he has an OPS over .1000 and OPS+ in high 100s.  He has been one of the better hitting catchers over that time.  Yes, it is only 19 games, but he clearly has been making the most out of those chances. Jeffers on other hand has 24 games and hitting much worse. Agreed Vasquez was so bad the first half it will take a lot to get fans to believe in him, but his defense is why he plays and what you get from bat is bonus and he has been doing well over last month in half. 

[Trov]

The numbers stated in article is not surprising.  Guys that are known to not be good hitters will get mostly fastballs when no one is on base.  Even more so when they are slow.  Pitchers do not want to waste pitches trying to get out a bad hitter so they just challenge them.  When you have guys on base that is when they will see less fastballs in the zone but more breaking pitches on the edges and fastballs on the edges. Trevor Plouffe did this over his career.  He hit 24 HR one year with only 55 RBI.  He would hit solo HR when games were out of hand, normally we were losing, and no one was on base.  But he would get up with runners on and would strike out or hit weak fly ball. 

[JD-TWINS]

3 minutes ago, Trov said:

Since July hit, he has an OPS over .1000 and OPS+ in high 100s.  He has been one of the better hitting catchers over that time.  Yes, it is only 19 games, but he clearly has been making the most out of those chances. Jeffers on other hand has 24 games and hitting much worse. Agreed Vasquez was so bad the first half it will take a lot to get fans to believe in him, but his defense is why he plays and what you get from bat is bonus and he has been doing well over last month in half. 

Over 1.000 on the OPS - I thought you were making fun of him at first.👍 He’s much more tolerable at the plate with 2-3 hits per week!

[tarheeltwinsfan]

Vazquez needs to have his defensive time maximized and his offensive time minimized. Jeffers cannot play in every game as either a starter one day and then a late inning offensive/defensive substitute for Vazquez the next day. 

[Tibs]

no

[LambchoP]

Uh, no. Sure, he's been a better hitter the last month or so. You don't have the slowest guy on the team hit leadoff. I like Castro as our leadoff guy. Basically our only stolen base threat on the team. Although speedy chubby Vasquez has what, 3 stolen bases this year?!

[Eric Blonigen]

4 minutes ago, LambchoP said:

Uh, no. Sure, he's been a better hitter the last month or so. You don't have the slowest guy on the team hit leadoff. I like Castro as our leadoff guy. Basically our only stolen base threat on the team. Although speedy chubby Vasquez has what, 3 stolen bases this year?!

See? He’s a burner!

[LambchoP]

Just now, Eric Blonigen said:

See? He’s a burner!

His nickname is "Wheels"!

[Craig Arko]

You mean, instead of Kyle Farmer?

[saviking]

Sure, if you want to clog up the base paths. On the bright side he only hits a bit over 200 so you can't do too much clogging 😄

[LambchoP]

Imagine, our two leadoff hitters being either Vasquez or Margot. Now that will strike fear into opposing pitchers!

[Rufus]

I don't agree that he should lead off, but he should be the primary catcher.  He is hitting better, is better defensively and I have always liked to watch the way he handles pitchers. With the Twins now having three rookie starters a stabilizer behind the plate is important. 

[LyleCole]

Only a satirist would propose a hitter with a .257 OBP for the season and .303 for his career as the leadoff hitter.

As Bill James, the father of all of the modern analytics demonstrated, the critical thing to scoring runs is to get runners on base, particularly the person who leads off the inning.  THe best OBP players should be the leadoff hitter and the clean up hitter.  The concept of having your best hitter bat 3rd I think is wrong even though most managers do it.  James thought it should actually be the power hitter in the lineup that has a lot of strikeouts batting before your best hitter in the cleanup spot,  That could generate a lot more good pitches to hit because they would not want to put runners on ahead of your best hitter.  

Also, your worst hitter should hit 8th, rather than 9th.  The 9th hitter should be in position to set up the top of the order if they reach base.

I think if I was doing a lineup for the Twins  it would be 

Correa-MIranda-Buxton-Lewis-Wallner-Jeffers-Kepler-Larnach-Castro

[LA Vikes Fan]

Interesting concept, but I think the "second leadoff" position - otherwise known as the 9 hole in the lineup - is perfect for a player of Vasquez' abilities. 

[mnfireman]

11 minutes ago, LyleCole said:

 

I think if I was doing a lineup for the Twins  it would be 

Correa-MIranda-Buxton-Lewis-Wallner-Jeffers-Kepler-Larnach-Castro

There's a lot of IL time in that line-up....

[rationalfan]

The specific idea of Vazquez leadoff doesn't deserve serious discussion, but it does create the opportunity to talk about the over-importance of the lineup and the over-complicating of setting it.  The best offensive players go in the early spots of the order to get more PAs.  After that, you can squeeze out a win or two out of a 162 game season by where you put the top 5 guys (OBP and speed early, aggressive bad-ball hitting ability and power later).  The hardest part is weighting recent performance (a good player in a slump vs a not so good player on a hot streak) and lefty-right splits. 

That being said, my intention isn't to take away one of the most fun things about baseball: thinking about and arguing about batting order and thanks to our manager being Rocco, the man of a thousand lineups, we get to do it routinely.  

[gil4]

It's nice to have a leadoff hitter with speed, and we saw him score from first on a single a few games back.  So, absolutely - look out Rickey Henderson, Christian Vázquez is the new ideal leadoff hitter.  😎

 

My serious answer is the main benefit of hitting leadoff is having that person get more plate appearances.   That's not something we want for a player whose main selling point for the role is he improves from  horrible to adequate when the bases are empty.  

[Fire Dan Gladden]

If there was ever a click-bait title on an article, this is it.  I can see it now.,, Future articles to come include:

Jorge Alcala has a career Fielding % of 1.000.  Should he move to shortstop?

Matt Wallner has a career ERA of 0.00.  Is he the Twins future SP1?

Manuel Margot is a career .287 hitter on Mondays (true!).  Why aren't the Twins capitalizing?

[Aggies7]

Yes and he should also be the game 2 ALDS starting pitcher behind ober 

[mrcharlie]

2 hours ago, JD-TWINS said:

Looking for the SATIRE heading on this one.

Only leads-off ONCE for sure. Slowest guy on the Team.

Gotta ride him in the 9 spot and maybe he’ll get lucky and end up leading off an inning.

He’s up to .225 on August 12 after being mired in the mid-.100’s for a big chunk of first 3 months. He’s actually been hitting pretty well since mid-June. Hit the very top of the wall on Sunday and another one off the base of the fence. Not completely missing fastballs anymore.

Good points.  I prefer Martin in the 9 hole for his speed.

[Schmoeman5]

If Eddie Gaedel can hit lead-off, then Christian Vazquez surely can. 

[CRF]

Sure...and let's put the bat boy in the #2 spot, the trainer 3rd, and Rocco's dog hitting cleanup!

[insagt1]

Wow. This crew can be brutally mean spirited when new ideas are brought up. You can simply disagree with the premise without making the one who did the analysis feel like a moron. Right? Well guess not here. My biggest complaint about this forum.

For me as a real old timer I can't understand all the alphabet soup that is sprinkled all about. I guess most of you know what it all means and why it's so important..but maybe there are still a few of us who need a bit more explanations? ,(cue: more snarky comments) 

I also lived in an era where there wasn't as much over-managing..such as how Hyde futzes with his pitchers. .since his tea leaves and horoscopes and reams of stats direct him. The game has become so mechanical now. Maybe that's what today's fan craves. I won't judge. 

So while Vazquez may not be the ideal leadoff hitter at least the poster did the analysis to back up his position. Props for that.

 

I

[gman]

I don't mind him batting lead off from the 8th spot in the lineup. I'm glad he is having some batting success lately. He has one of the highest salaries on this money challenge teams.

[Eric Blonigen]

3 hours ago, Fire Dan Gladden said:

If there was ever a click-bait title on an article, this is it.  I can see it now.,, Future articles to come include:

Jorge Alcala has a career Fielding % of 1.000.  Should he move to shortstop?

Matt Wallner has a career ERA of 0.00.  Is he the Twins future SP1?

Manuel Margot is a career .287 hitter on Mondays (true!).  Why aren't the Twins capitalizing?

FDG - you have given me some great ideas to work with!

[ashbury]

3 hours ago, Schmoeman5 said:

If Eddie Gaedel can hit lead-off, then Christian Vazquez surely can. 

It's not nice to make fun of Vazquez's stature. Gaedel was not that much taller.