Should Christian Vázquez Be the Twins' Leadoff Hitter?

[Mike Sixel]

His career OBP would pretty clearly indicate no.

[Aggies7]

(Deleted)

[DocBauer]

Taking the idea seriously...NO.

A hot streak doesn't improve his career hitting ability or suddenly add speed to his game to help him advance and score.

He's an outstanding catcher and he's been hot for a month. Jeffers is a good catcher, a generally better hitter, and capable of exploding again at any moment. And Vazquez is capable of going in to a funk at any moment.

The whole idea is a nit laughable, and a borderline insult to Castro.

Just, NO, keep him where he's at and enjoy his hot streak.

[CCHOF5yearstoolate]

22 hours ago, LyleCole said:

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

Since June 1st he's hitting .290/.328/.533, not sure why stats from 3+ months ago are all that relevant. 

[USAFChief]

13 minutes ago, CCHOF5yearstoolate said:

Since June 1st he's hitting .290/.328/.533, not sure why stats from 3+ months ago are all that relevant. 

Since August 13th Kyle Farmer is hitting 1.000/1.000/4.000

 

Not sure why chopping up stats and then cherry picking small sample sizes is all that relevant. 

[insagt1]

hey guys..not to worry! Vazquez will never be the Twins lead-off hitter but the topic did give some a chance to reinforce the mean-ness that is still this forum. For others, the comments were civil and realistic.

Baseball is a very unpredictable game sometimes. For most the season Gunnar Henderson was O's lead-off hitter, despite his power and his propensity to 'k'. Finally after a slump he was replaced at the top by a most unlikely choice..Cowser. This rookie was in a prolonged batting funk with BA hovering between .210-.220 and a ton of k's.  So what happened? Cowser fan off a long hitting streak and raised his average by around .30 points, while doing what a lead-off hitter is supposed to do. Amazed me for sure. Sometimes you just can't figure things out. As for Gunnar, his power has mostly disappeared, but he is hitting again.

Who have been MLB's purest lead-off hitters? Guess I'd start with Ricky Henderson. You fellas add to the list.

[CCHOF5yearstoolate]

8 hours ago, USAFChief said:

Since August 13th Kyle Farmer is hitting 1.000/1.000/4.000

 

Not sure why chopping up stats and then cherry picking small sample sizes is all that relevant. 

There's no way you're trying to compare a 2 month sample size to a 1 day sample size, right?

I'm not defending batting him leadoff, but it's silly to use his full season stats when he changed his swing mechanics in June and has a respectable OBP in a large enough sample size to conclude that he's been much better lately. 

I don't think it's that crazy to say his production from the last 2 months is far more relevant than his stat line from April & May when considering changing his position in the lineup today. 

[LyleCole]

12 hours ago, CCHOF5yearstoolate said:

Since June 1st he's hitting .290/.328/.533, not sure why stats from 3+ months ago are all that relevant. 

LOL.   There is a strong tendency for players to revert to the mean.   Christian Vazquez has been in the major leagues for 10 years.  He has hit over 280 in 2 of those seasons (2017, 2020).  He is a career 255 hitter with a lifetime 303 OBP.   Moving him to the leadoff hitter based on this small in season sample would be foolish.

But then, they led off a guy with a 294 OBP today.

[CCHOF5yearstoolate]

1 hour ago, LyleCole said:

LOL.   There is a strong tendency for players to revert to the mean.   Christian Vazquez has been in the major leagues for 10 years.  He has hit over 280 in 2 of those seasons (2017, 2020).  He is a career 255 hitter with a lifetime 303 OBP.   Moving him to the leadoff hitter based on this small in season sample would be foolish.

But then, they led off a guy with a 294 OBP today.

It would really be nice if y'all read what was written and put words in my comments. I don't want him in the leadoff spot. Is that clear enough? 

What I am saying is that referring to stats from April & May, or the rest of his career, when you can see with your eyes how well he's performed recently is a silly way to evaluate the current lineup. Would you have said that Joey Gallo should have been leading off in late May when he had the highest OBP of any qualified batter on the team? For some reason I doubt it....

Vazquez has been hitting very well for 2 months now. Sorry if that fact offends you. 

[LyleCole]

18 hours ago, CCHOF5yearstoolate said:

It would really be nice if y'all read what was written and put words in my comments. I don't want him in the leadoff spot. Is that clear enough? 

What I am saying is that referring to stats from April & May, or the rest of his career, when you can see with your eyes how well he's performed recently is a silly way to evaluate the current lineup. Would you have said that Joey Gallo should have been leading off in late May when he had the highest OBP of any qualified batter on the team? For some reason I doubt it....

Vazquez has been hitting very well for 2 months now. Sorry if that fact offends you. 

Short term trends in baseball are essentially meaningless.   

[CCHOF5yearstoolate]

6 hours ago, LyleCole said:

Short term trends in baseball are essentially meaningless.   

2 months isn't short term in baseball such that it is unusable. He made a mechanical change and has seen stark improvement in every conceivable stat. Ignoring that is foolish.