What makes a good leadoff hitter

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Error Please enter an email address. Success Thanks for signing up. In this case, we can tell it's a nonessential trait by looking at the total bases produced out of the leadoff spot over the years—again excluding the strike years and Lest you think that trend line has everything to do with expansion and nothing to do with the hitters themselves, an upward trend also shows up among the top leadoff hitters.

It seems odd when you consider the decline in stolen bases out of the leadoff spot noted above, but there are other ways for hitters to make their way around the bases besides getting to first and then showing off the wheels. Indeed, it's a lot easier to just start things off with an extra-base hit. Today's leadoff guys are much, much better at doing that than the leadoff guys of yesteryear.

Here's where I bust out Isolated Power ISO , which is basically slugging percentage that only focuses on extra-base hits no singles allowed. It has some tricky calculations, but FanGraphs notes that it can be easily calculated by subtracting batting average from slugging percentage. Since I like easy, that's what I did to come up with this graph that shows the ISO produced by the leadoff spot over the years:. You'll notice a gigantic spike in , and my advice to you is to just ignore it.

Inexplicably, that was a huge year for offense. Unless you buy into the theory that the ball was juiced , of course, in which case the offensive explosion is quite explicable.

The '87 season aside, leadoff hitters are clearly hitting for more power than they used to. That's a big reason why stolen bases have gone out of style for leadoff hitters, and an equally big reason why total bases have not.

But as you've probably noticed, it's not like leadoff hitters have morphed into power-hitting brutes. Stolen bases may be down among the leadoff breed, but you can still find plenty of players with power and speed hitting out of the leadoff spot. But ever since then, the action has been more spread around. In all, those 41 seasons were produced by 18 different leadoff men. There's going to be more added to the pile this season. A couple of them should be able to get to 15 and Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.

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Some kinds of game will be more entertaining than others, and the specifics vary person to person. Disappointed quite often. My expectation is working towards the ideal. If I pay to go to a sporting event of one of my teams and they lose, I usually feel as if I wasted my money and time. It is predicated on not giving up more than 4 runs in a game at all. Once you give up 5 runs, it feels like a loss.

No need to hit home runs, just nine guys with enough of a batting eye to flawlessly foul off every strike and take every ball. Because strikeouts are useless and groundouts occasionally result in errors, moving guys over, etc.

They also occasionally result in double plays, but in general I am with you. All other things being equal, you have a better chance of a good outcome making bad contact than no contact. Guys who hit lots of grounders also tend to hit into lots of double plays.

A strikeout is at least only one out, barring shenanigans from the baserunner. Driving the guy in is great. Get the run, do that 3 or 4 times in a game and you should win. Working to create a run instead of waiting for the big inning to happen. There end up being a lot of innings with nothing happening as a result of swinging for the fences and hoping for the big inning.

Got to agree with jonah-pride over The Book. It explains the article above, and other things, in more detail. I will have someone who can issue the first order and steal the second instruction. The second blow will be the guy who can definitely take the lead in third place. And in three holes there is one person in the race. A race to run games. Hey man, props for sticking to your aesthetic principles! Should Good Hitters Lead Off? FanGraphs Investigates by Ben Clemens. Two Potential Cleanup Hitters.

Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. You can flag a comment by clicking its flag icon. Website admin will know that you reported it. Admins may or may not choose to remove the comment or block the author. And please don't worry, your report will be anonymous. I want a guy who can hit homeruns in every single spot of the lineup. He pitched, too. Da Bear.