JABO: Casey McGehee, Leadoff Hitter

When the Giants watched Pablo Sandoval leave as a free agent this off-season, they didn’t really have any internal replacements ready to take his place at third base. With most of their money allocated towards re-signing pitchers Jake Peavy, Ryan Vogelsong, and Sergio Romo, the team ended up bargain-hunting for a new third baseman. They found their man in Miami, importing Casey McGehee from the Marlins, as they continue to be a franchise that emphasizes hitting for contact; McGehee’s primary calling card as a big leaguer.

Preferring this skill has worked out well for the Giants over the years, leading them to underrated players like Angel Pagan, Marco Scutaro, Joe Panik, and Nori Aoki. While other teams have chased power in an environment where it has become ever more scarce, the Giants have been content to single their way to three World Series titles. So while McGehee is an unconventional third baseman — he hit just four home runs last year — the Giants targeting an underpowered contact hitter shouldn’t have been a huge surprise.

Unfortunately for the Giants, the beginning of McGehee’s career in San Francisco has been a disaster. After an 0-3 performance on Tuesday night, he’s now hitting .160/.207/.255, and if you can believe it, he’s actually been even worse than that line would suggest, because BA/OBP/SLG don’t account for the extra harm that comes from hitting into double plays. And nobody in baseball hits into double plays like Casey McGehee.

McGehee has already hit into eight twin killings this year; no one else has done more than five times, so he leads the league in GIDPs even though he hasn’t actually played enough games to qualify for the batting title yet. That McGehee is leading the double play charge shouldn’t be a huge surprise, however, as he hit into a whopping 31 double plays last year, tied for the eighth highest single season total in Major League history.

McGehee is basically the perfect storm of a double play candidate. He specializes in making contact and hitting ground balls, only unlike most guys who pound the ball into the ground, he’s remarkably slow. McGehee has the batted profile of a leadoff hitter and the foot-speed of a designated hitter; if he comes up with a man on first base and less than two outs, there’s a pretty good chance that two outs are on their way.

So when you take into account the negative value of the extra outs McGehee is making by hitting into double plays — and at FanGraphs, we have a metric called RE24 that does just that — we find that he’s been the very worst offensive player in baseball to date, some 12 runs below a league average performer. That’s kind of remarkable, considering he’s only played in 16 games. While the Giants early-season struggles are not solely McGehee’s fault, no one has done more to single-handedly bring down their team’s ability to score runs than the Giants third baseman.

Unfortunately, the Giants still don’t really have an alternative at third base; that’s why they had to trade for McGehee in the first place. So, the team is probably just going to have to keep running him out there and hope he turns it around, but since he’s going to be in the line-up, they should think about doing something to reduce the likelihood of McGehee threatening Jim Rice’s single-season double play record (36), set back in 1984. Since there’s no real good alternative if they benched him, I’d instead like to suggest something even more radical; make him the leadoff hitter.

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