2018 Positional Power Rankings: Designated Hitter
The current post is the last of this week’s installments in the positional power rankings. (Pitchers will appear next week.) If you’re the sort of person who’s unfamiliar with what a “positional power ranking” is, you have every right to read the introductory post by Dr. Jeff Sullivan, a real medical doctor who is certified to comment on all manner of physical maladies and whom you should contact with real, pressing, possibly urgent health concerns.
If, on the other hand, you’re acquainted with these particular rankings of power, consider turning your attention immediately to the chart below, which depicts WAR projections for all the American League’s designated-hitter depth charts.
Historically, the offensive burden on designated hitters is high. It probably should be high: the position carries little in the way of other obligations. If a designated hitter isn’t hitting, he doesn’t have much other value to his club. Maybe he’s a proficient interlocutor, one capable of identifying the common ground between himself and those around him. That’s an important skill. How it translates to run-scoring, though, isn’t immediately obvious.
By the numbers, the Yankees probably have the best designated hitters. The White Sox probably have the worst, according to the same numbers. All the other clubs appear between those two. All other commentary on the topic appears below.
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
Jesus Christ, that White Sox paragraph was savage.
Leave poor Davidson alone. XD
I don’t think he’s ever going to make it as a DH…he’s going to have to add something in the field. Unfortunately, he’s currently blocked at third by the immortal Yolmer Sanchez, who was the third most valuable player last year for the White Sox (would have been 4th had they not traded Frazier, and likely 5th had Delmonico had a full year, and will likely finish no better than 6th because of Welington Castilo…ah, forget it).
That grad student comment was savage.
Leave poor ME alone. :/
Is DH where Eloy Jiminez will break in with the White Sox? Or just cause he’s young, he gets to flounder in the OF first?
Unless Garcia and Delmonico turn into long-term building blocks I’d guess they’d try him in the outfield first.
Yeah, probably. He just has such low tool ratings there, I wondered if anyone would try someone so young as a DH without giving them a shake at their fielding spot first.
Willie Calhoun probably represents the most logical case for doing this.
Shin-Soo Choo, or the rotting corpse that used to be Shin-Soo Choo, is by the measure of this exercise, technically an “above average (or median, rather) DH.” Yes, we should probably expand this position to the NL.
It’s less “rotting corpse” and more “rigor mortis” given that it’s mostly just his agility that he’s lost. He still hits about as well as you’d expect.
It’s fair to roast Davidson after last year, but imo he’s about to be a lot better. I’ve got a community research piece on that subject pending, but tl;dr his batted ball profile was very fly-ball-revolution (hit hard, in air, pulled, etc.) last year, but his plate discipline was awful. Now it looks like he’s making pretty big improvements in both walk and strikeout rates.
This is a gem of an article, and Cistulli is a national treasure.
I must say I was pleasantly surprised that Khris Davis was at some point in the past year not essentially zero on the google trends.
Oaklanders are valuable for something, after all.
I feel like I would have described Judge and Stanton as “big and good” if they existed when I was a second grader and then my teacher would have asked me to try to use other, more complex words to describe them. That teacher would have been wrong. “Big and good” are the only correct words for Judge and Stanton.
I am 29 years old and not looking forward to turning 30 this year. This article resonated with me in a way the other 2018 Positional Power Rankings have not.
Inserting a Google trends graph comparing Khris Davis to Stanton is, paradoxically, one of the most essentially Notgraphs delights in this whole compendium of delights.
Under Nelson Cruz’s writeup, you had a link to the worst WAR seasons ever. I noticed that in 1978, Pat Rockett achieved a -2.7 WAR in just 155 plate appearances. That works out to about -10.6 WAR/600 PA.
I believe we’ve just unearthed the true identity of the Anti-Trout.
That is amazing. Though I also love the fact that that season he managed to walk more than he struck out. And managed a -11wRC+.
That’s bad. To put that in perspective, Michael Martinez, easily the worst hitting non-pitcher I’ve ever seen, has only put together -2.4 WAR in his 621 career PAs.
Did anyone else notice that Cistulli left himself designated for the DH rankings, which rankings only contain half the rankings of any other position? Suspicious? Yes. Lazy? Also yes.
The positional power rankings are a compilation album, and this is a Macklemore track.
Kill the DH. Kill the DH today, tomorrow, forevah.
And deprive the world of fourteen years of Big Papi lifting his team, his city and all of Red Sox Nation with his bat and with his heart, nevah, nevah nevah!
I know that it is difficult for baseball people to accept the fact that baseball, at least American League baseball, is not played by a nine man starting lineup but that it is played by a ten man team. For this simple reason it is improper to downgrade the Designated Hitter’s WAR by saying that he doesn’t play in the field. It is also impossible to compare the WAR of the starting lineups of the National and America Leagues because the NL only starts nine players. The DH must be treated completely separately and given his fair value. To say that J.D. Martinez is only a 2.8 WAR player is absurd. It doesn’t take an Ivy League degree to see that Martinez is more valuable , and deserves a larger WAR, when he sits on the bench when the other nine Red Sox players are on the field. Arguing that he only plays half the game doesn’t hold water. It would only be valid if the AL team was forced to leave a hole in their defense.
So you suggest everything be equally weighed regardless of difficulty?
My argument is that the DH is grossly undervalued by WAR. He is penalized for not being on the field. That is absurd. As long as the AL team is allowed to put nine defenders on the field his defense should be ignored completely and only his offense considered. In that regard, I find it hard to believe these great hitters are not given a WAR more commensurate with their value to the team. Martinez, Cruz and Encarnacion are certainly worth something in excess of 4. For example, Judge received an 8.1 bWAR last year of which 7.2 was offensive WAR. Are you telling me that he is 4.4 WAR better than J.D. Martinez on offense? I am not buying that.
It seems like it depends on the rest of the roster. It looks like the effect of Martinez not being good enough defensively to play the field for the Sox is that they will have to ride more with Hanley Ramirez and his -5 defense at first, or compensate for it with Mitch Moreland’s better glove and suspect bat. So Martinez will cost the Red Sox something by not being able to play even average defense at any position. In fact, if the penalty is five runs worse than average defense at first… that’s exactly the DH positional adjustment, isn’t it?
And if you look at a guy like 2017 Victor Martinez, besides being unable to hit, since he was unable to field they had to play J.D. Martinez in the field. And J.D. Martinez wasn’t a good fielder!
As for the comparison of Judge to Martinez, we’re comparing Judge’s actual production last year to the projection for Martinez. Judge had a .430 wOBA last year and Martinez is projected for a .384 wOBA. Also Judge had 678 PA and the above projection is for Martinez to have 525 as a DH. That seems like it should account for most of the 4.4 WAR difference last year–Martinez’s projected wOBA and PA are about what Marwin Gonzalez actually did last year–and the value Judge provided by keeping Matt Holliday out of the outfield might easily make up the rest?
Oops, didn’t notice you already pointed out the PA thing. My bad.
Well, to be fair, Judge put up a 173 wRC+ over 678 PA, while JD had a 166 wRC+ in only 489 PA, almost 200 PA less than Judge. So that’s probably the difference there.
I’m 29 and a White Sox Fan, will be turning 30 when they play the Cubs and that’ll be my first game I watch at Wrigley (Michigan Native); should be fun. Mostly the terror of turning 30 is my friend subjecting me to a Segway Tour prior to the game.
Three thoughts. Gary Sanchez projected for 35 DH at bats seems low. Carson’s writing is awesome- nice work. Finally comment one starts with using our Lord’s name in vain on the eve of Holy Week and gets the most up votes? Were it an offensive to another religious group me thinks I’d see red. In a twisted way that’s a tribute to apple pie, baseball and America.
god damn, this was a bad comment.
lol.
The DH isn’t a position, it’s the absence of a position.
Still, I haven’t heard it called anything else.
I read this article because Carson said I could, but I didn’t have. That kind of ambivelance towards an article, and more specifically an article about the DH, will win me over every time.