A Closer Look at the Already Overdone "Who Should Bat Second?" Argument

After the Johnny Damon drama finally ended and we all (well, most of us) got sick of arguing whether Joba Chamberlain or Phil Hughes belongs in the rotation and why, most of the attention here on Pinstripe Alley has turned to who should bat second. I suppose it is a better argument than the Joba-Hughes argument since some of us aren't quite completely rooted in our own ideals thus it still is just that: an argument.

The popular suggestions so far have been either Curtis Granderson (because of his speed) and Nick Johnson (because of the astronomical on base percentage). Traditional knowledge tells us that the first two hitters should be able to steal bases, but sabermetric knowledge has more or less thrown that out the window in favor of on base percentage. I decided to take a closer look at each player's hitting based on how the first inning would play out.

One of the reasons Derek Jeter was moved from the 2-hole to leadoff in 2009 was that his groundball percentage was higher than Damon's: 55.8% to 44.9%, respectively. The idea being that there will be fewer chances to turn a double play if they man batting second grounds out less often. There is a similarly big gap between the two candidates for 2010: Johnson's 43.6% rate vs. Granderson's 36.3%. If we combine these numbers with Jeter's career OBP of .388, we find that the percentage of time that each player would be hitting grounders while Jeter is on first: Johson 16.9%, Granderson 14.1%. Regardless, we'd expect it to be lower than what Damon did last year as his GB% was higher than both of this year's candidates. 

I took these numbers and multiplied them by their career GIDP/GB% which for Johnson was 8.36% and for Granderson was 2.54%. If we multiply them by how often they would hit ground balls with Jeter on first, we'd find an expected GIDP% of roughly 1.41% by Johnson and 0.36% by Granderson. Over the course of a season, only looking at the first inning, it's essentially 2 GIDPS or less than 1.

Johnson's (.402) has the far superior OBP than Granderson (.344). Comparing these to Damon's mark last year of (.365), it appears we would be downgrading a bit with Granderson and upgrading a good deal with Johnson. If we combine these numbers with the GIPD% and Jeter's career OBP, we'd expect Mark Teixeira to come up with at least one runner on base about 77.6% of the time with Johnson batting second vs. 72.8% of the time with Granderson there. This difference of almost 5% means that in a full season, Teixeira would have nobody on about 8 times more often with Granderson instead of Johnson in the first inning. 

The last thing I wanted to look at was Granderson's speed. Granderson steals a base about 2.3% of the time based on his career plate appearances. Of course with Jeter being on base 38.8% of the time in front of him, the amount of opportunities he would have to take second would be smaller; only about .9% of the time. I don't find that his speed comes into play enough to even come close to outweigh Johnson's OBP. However, the ability of Granderson to score from 1st or 2nd is important to keep in mind. 

Of course this argument can go many different ways, including but not limited to, looking at how Granderson's power might play better in the lineup elsewhere, and how his platoon split might call for him to only bat second against righties. Regardless, Cashman did say that Johnson was an ideal #2 hitter, so for the time being (i.e. until Johnson finds himself on the DL) I'm going with that.

Either way, I think both sides of this argument are exaggerating their points a tad too much; either comparing Johnson's speed to that of a retired person with two broken legs or Granderson's ability to get to first base to that of a 14 year old snot nosed kid going through puberty.