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.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
“Unfortunately, the Giants still don’t really have an alternative at third base”
Matt Duffy says hi.
Exactly
How about batting McGehee 9th and having the pitcher bat 8th?
This was my first thought. Seems like you accomplish the same goal with less PA’s going to a crappy hitter.
Was just coming here to post the same thing. Seems like a no brainer to me.
Beat me to the punch as well. Either he leads off an inning, or he bats after a pitcher has sacrificed him over. Seems like the best of both worlds, keeping Aoki at leadoff and limiting McGehee’s PA until he rebounds, and minimizing DP opportunities.
Too bad this makes too much sense for Bochy to apply and would be such and insult to McGehee, so we aren’t going to see it.
Absolutely a better idea. Kinda shocked that Dave didn’t think of this.
I don’t think taking away Aoki’s excellent OBP from the leadoff spot and giving extra plate appearances to their worst regular hitter is worth cutting down on his DPs. This is a much better idea.
Could Arias or Duffy be any worse?
I’d rather have Arias or Duffy at 3B. Shoot, I’d give Adam Duvall a shot.
McGehee sounds like a nice guy, but I don’t understand why the Giants signed him. He doesn’t have a lot of upside. (Arias doesn’t have a lot of upside, either.)
This year is a great opportunity to see if Duffy or Duvall could be a viable starter for the Giants. Let them play, and let’s see. If it doesn’t work out, the Giants can sign or trade for a third baseman after this season.
Am I the only one who would rather see the GIDP opportunities, instead of GIDPs that happened?
It seems like even if a leadoff hitter were to put a lot of GIDP-ish balls in play, their legs can run them out of it.
If there are fewer instances where GIDP is possible batting in the 1-hole, then this idea makes some sense. And I can see how that might be the case. But saying leadoff hitters GIDP a lot less than other spots in the order seems to me to be overlooking that the vast majority of leadoff guys have a very similarly fast profile.
It dawns on me, that those numbers are probably a lot harder to track down. But my skepticism that we’re definitely seeing anything significant remains.
There are a number of reasons why leadoff hitters hit into fewer DPs, you hit on one of them and that is speed. The obvious one is that leading off the game there is no one on base, so no DP opportunity, but particularly in the NL pitchers are 9th in the batting order and often make outs, when they make the second and third outs they allow the leadoff hitter to avoid being in a DP situation, plus they often bunt and that makes some of those remaining first outs eliminate the GBDP.
Brilliant idea need to bench him, but only place to play him is in the lead off position
I meant 9 hole
If I read the article right, the author isn’t just talking about what to do with McGehee while he’s hitting poorly – he’s saying leadoff would be the best place for McGehee even at his projected production level (or, say, assuming he will hit for the rest of the year at last year’s production level). I never understood why the Marlins had him hitting 4th so much last year. He basically supplied average and OBP and nothing else.
Nice idea, though provocative. Per the comments above, batting him 9th is the ideal solution, but you probably didn’t mention it because Bochy has only done that maybe a handful of times in his career, so while that might be a better idea per your suggestion, it is not likely to happen.
Per the other comment above, Duffy is an internal alternative, but at that time of the trade, he was still a big unknown, and Sabean wants a floor set for any position to start the season, rather than wait to see if someone develops or not. I view McGehee in the tradition of other guys like Wellemeyer, Bautista, Roberts, DeRosa, and others who Sabean got to hold the position warm to get a minimum production out of it so that the team is competitive, but not so good that if a prospect shocks and awes at some point, the vet can be easily replaced. Hence when Bumgarner did well, he replaced Wellemeyer in the rotation (conveniently enough, Todd was injured, and was DFAed once he recovered).
Both Duffy and Duvall are the prospects in question who might do well enough to force their way onto the roster, and into the lineup. Duffy did that in spring training, but hasn’t been that good thus far in the season, and that’s probably the reason why McGehee has stayed in the lineup for the most part. Had Duffy been hitting better, he probably would have seen more starts at 3B thus far, and as it was, he got a lot of starts at 3B once McGehee was hurt, and hasn’t hit that well starting (though at least better than McGehee has hit). I think if Duffy were forcing the issue right now, the conversation would be probably be more about McGehee getting Wally Pipped or not instead of how to limit his DP.
Not that this makes what he’s doing any better, but it appears that he’s been affected by his earlier leg injury more than he has let on, as there were two grounders last night that he would have been safe on last season (per media reports), the way he ran back then, vs. now. Hopefully once he heals, his DP-ness will subside to merely NL bad vs. historically bad. But with Posey, a slow runner himself, often on 1B ahead of him batting (especially with Posey not hitting for much power so far), DPs seem more likely than not at this point.
9 Hole. I’m not one to argue with people smarter than me but I really don’t feel he needs to see that many at bats and also recieve that many chances to fail getting on base for the heart of an already anemic order. Without in depth number crunching I’d put him 9th and pitchers 8th.
That being said Dave, I LOVE the unorthodox thinking! In many cases I would agree, I just don’t think this is one.
Relevant: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/casey-mcgehee-fake-speedster/
You could also bat McGehee second. If Aoki gets on first, it opens up a hole on the right side. Then Aoki can run early in the count some of the time, and some other times the Giants can hit and run. The latter strategy would make use of McGehee’s contact abilities and make it harder for opposing teams to turn two.
The only way this idea makes sense is if McGehee starts getting on base like he did a year ago, when his OBP was .355. If he starts doing that, then leading him off makes perfect sense anyway.
Otherwise, playing someone else or batting him 9th, behind the pitcher, are the best answers. But Bochy has to do something. GIDP’s are a killer, and this guy churns them out like Ryan Howard churns out strikeouts.
He has a very sick child and no doubt this is an added pressure. Duffy is the only answer right now, Have some sympathy for the man.1