The Mike Moustakas Half Miracle

After KC’s World Series appearance in 2014, it is natural that there would be high expectations for the team and the Manager in 2015. In a move that confounded pundits, experts, and fans, Manager Ned Yost decided to open the season with Third Basemen Mike Moustakas batting 2^nd in the lineup.

Yost has not been known as a Manager who favors making decisions based on recent statistics.  In this new era of baseball, this places him firmly in the “Old School” camp. It has been reported that Yost has given his perspective on the value of sabermetrics during a number of interviews on the KC Royals Web Site.  I am simply paraphrasing what others have reported including Grant Brisbee in SB Nation on 9/15/14, ” There is no possible way that recorded information about how players have performed recently can help me do my job better.” OK. We get it.

Just for the fun of it, here are the Steamer projections for KC hitters coming into the 2015 season.

Players	AVG	OBA	SLG
Eric Hosmer	.278	.339	.440
Alex Gordon	.269	.344	.431
Kendrys Morales	.264	.321	.424
Salvador Perez	.276	.311	.428
Mike Moustakas	.248	.306	.413
Lorenzo Cain	.268	.318	.379
Alex Rios	.260	.298	.394
Omar Infante	.274	.312	.377
Alcides Escobar	.260	.295	.347

Given this data, let’s take a look at current thinking versus traditional thinking for a # 2 hitter in the lineup. My reference source is the landmark work, The Book: Playing the Percentages In Baseball by Tango, Lichtman, and Dolphin.  On the importance of the #2 hitter, The Book says categorically, “If nothing else, we will consider this book a true success if all thirty teams were to never put a below-average hitter in the second spot. While the proper strategy will only gain you a few runs, why do something that is otherwise clearly wrong?”  The Book also outlines traditional thinking on the #2 hitter….“You want the #2 hitter to move the runner over into scoring position, even if it means getting an out; therefore he should be a proficient bunter with excellent bat control”.

The Book goes on to explain why they believe that traditional thinking is faulty. Essentially, the #2 hitter comes to bat more often in situations that are about as important as the #3 hitter. This implies that the #2 hitter should be better than the #3 guy and one of the three best hitters in your lineup. And looking at a batting order as a continuous loop, the #2 hitter will come up to bat with the bases empty more often than the hitters behind him. It would have the highest impact for run production if the #2 hitter was a high OBP player.

Fast forward to April 2015.  Below is the starting lineup for the KC Royals on opening day.  It was a stunner.

KC Royals Lineup- 4/6/15

Hitters	AB	R	H	RBI	BB	SO	#P
Escobar SS	4	3	2	0	1	0	21
Moustakas 3B	3	2	2	1	1	1	20
Cain CF	4	1	1	1	0	0	11
Hosmer 1B	5	0	1	1	0	1	17
K. Morales DH	2	2	1	0	3	0	20
Gordon LF	4	1	1	2	0	1	17
Rios RF	4	1	3	3	0	0	18
Pérez C	4	0	2	1	0	0	8
Infante 2B	4	0	0	0	0	0	10
Totals	34	10	13	9	5	3	142

Courtesy of ESPN

Current thinking on lineup construction would have suggested that a quality hitter like Alex Gordon would be a good choice for the #2 spot. Traditional theory might have selected a hitter like Omar Infante.  He lacked power and was not much of a run producer but he could hit to the opposite field especially earlier in his career. Infante had bunted a total of 120 times and had a 361 game track record batting 2^nd. Yost instead selected Mike Moustakas to bat 2^nd.

Traditional theory would point to the fact that Moustakas had batted 2^nd just once in his entire 4 year career with the Royals, had bunted a total of 5 times, and was a dead pull hitter. Certainly choosing Moustakas would also run contrary to new thinking on lineup construction based upon his overall lack of performance as a hitter. In his career, Moustakas had the following line:

PA	Average	OBP	wOBA	wRC+
1998	.237	.291	.295	83

This lineup move didn’t seem to align with new or traditional thinking. But guess what… it worked. The Royals won their first 7 games with this lineup and Moustakas was on an early roll as well. In retrospect, this inspired “gut move” appeared to be a stroke of genius by Manager Yost.  Moustakas showed the primary attribute of the “traditional” #2 hitter in that he proved he could advance the runner by adjusting his tendency to just pull the ball. The percentage of balls that he hit to the opposite field increased by 7%. In the 91 games that Moustakas has batted 2^nd in the lineup for the Royals, he produced the following very respectable numbers….

Season Batting BB% K% OBP SLG OPS ISO wOBA wRC+ 2015 #2 6.3 10.8 .344 .423 767 .138 .336 114

 

Season	Batting	Games	PA	D&T	HR	R	RBI	SB	Ave
2015	#2	91	398	18	10	46	40	1	.285

Clearly, this was the best stretch of production of his career, although it did come with the generous help of a .328 BABIP in the first three months of the season which was way above his career .265 mark.

When recently asked to discuss his decision to bat Moustakas 2^nd in the lineup, Yost was quoted on the KC Royals Web Site explaining, “When we broke Spring Training, we didn’t really have a No. 2 hitter. So we put Moose there and, up until this point, he has been great there — .285 with a .340 on-base. But you can envision Moose being more of a run-producer, especially with the top-of-the-order guys getting on base and him driving them in.” Yost went on to say, “I never envisioned Moose as a No. 2 hitter. He’s a run-producer type of offensive player to me. So when we got Ben, we had him hit there once at No. 2 and it looked good, so we left him there.”

The reference to Ben was the acquisition of Ben Zobrist in a 7/28 trade.

Really, Ned?  Moustakas is a run-producer. He had a career wRC+ of 83 going into the 2015 season and now an updated mark of 87. Not much of a run producer if you look at how FanGraphs rates his performance:

Ratings	wRC+
Excellent	160
Great	140
Above Average	115
Average	100
Below Average	80
Poor	75
Awful	60

Similar to OPS+, Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+) measures how a player’s wRC compares with league average after controlling for park effects.  League average for position players is 100, and every point above 100 is a percentage point above league average. For example, a 125 wRC+ means a player created 25% more runs than a league average hitter would have in the same number of plate appearances. Similarly, every point below 100 is a percentage point below league average, so an 80 wRC+ means a player created 20% fewer runs than league average.

Look, you have to give Yost significant credit for seeing something in Moustakas that led him to this decision. And it’s not like a post hype prospect has never come into his own and started to realize their potential as they approach their prime hitting years. In fact, my colleague Mike Podhorzer was also prescient about Moustakas in his 2/3/15 Article in FanGraphs entitled, “The Mike Moustakas Breakout is Upon Us”.

Regardless of how Yost arrived at his decision, the experiment now appears to be over with Ben Zobrist joining the club. Zobrist is experienced in the #2 spot and has a career wRC+ of 125 in this slot. More from Yost, “So when we got Ben, we had him hit there once at No. 2 and it looked good, so we left him there.”

In August, Moustakas was dropped down to the #6 spot in the order. The timing of this change is not a particularly good one for Moustakas. He has been in the midst of a very poor July and August as outlined below—partially fueled by a .156 BABIP adjustment and a particular susceptibility to the cutter and change.  He has even begun to lose some playing time at 3B to Cuthbert.

PA’s	D&T	HR	Runs	RBI	ISO	AVE	OBP	OPS	wRC+
127	2	3	10	9	.100	.164	.254	.518	46

So it remains to be seen how well Moustakas will do in his new “run producer” role. We can only hope that Yost has this one figured out as well.