Theoretically, Tulo leading off could work. But baseball players are notorious for their routines, and why mess with a guy who's been hitting in the middle order for his entire career? Especially with the production that he's done it with?
Putting Tulowitzki at leadoff would be a dumb decision on many levels. You might get better production than some other options, but you need to put the guy in a position to succeed as his peak is a ******** higher than anybody on the roster not named Donaldson/EE/Bats.
Our best hitter after Tulo/DD/Bats/EE/Martin should lead off.
Theoretically, Tulo leading off could work. But baseball players are notorious for their routines, and why mess with a guy who's been hitting in the middle order for his entire career? Especially with the production that he's done it with?
Putting Tulowitzki at leadoff would be a dumb decision on many levels. You might get better production than some other options, but you need to put the guy in a position to succeed as his peak is a ******** higher than anybody on the roster not named Donaldson/EE/Bats.
Our best hitter after Tulo/DD/Bats/EE/Martin should lead off.
You're assuming that Tulowitzki's production, approach, etc, aren't affected by leading off. It's a big thing. Why mess with a guy who's been doing it for his entire career in the middle order? Comfort is a huge thing.
Better off putting Pillar/Saunders there to lead off. We saw that Tulowitzki didn't really produce leading off in his 200 AB's in Toronto.
No other team in the league would even consider having Tulowitzki lead off. Look at all the recent champions and see who led off for them. It isn't that big of a deal. You get better value out of Tulo at 5 or 6.
You're assuming that Tulowitzki's production, approach, etc, aren't affected by leading off. It's a big thing. Why mess with a guy who's been doing it for his entire career in the middle order? Comfort is a huge thing.
Better off putting Pillar/Saunders there to lead off. We saw that Tulowitzki didn't really produce leading off in his 200 AB's in Toronto.
No other team in the league would even consider having Tulowitzki lead off. Look at all the recent champions and see who led off for them. It isn't that big of a deal. You get better value out of Tulo at 5 or 6.
Come on guys we can't mess with his routine, he's used to not leading off, if we put him leading off that's literally an entirely different sport. Sure he's good at baseball, but when we bat him at leadoff we're taking a big risk that he might be bad at basketball. Like it's entirely different, not even the least bit similar at all. It's something he's never attempted before in his life. Like asking a guy to hit with the bat flipped around, that's what leadoff hitters have to do right? It's in the rules?
It's pretty simple really, what we do it look at our 5 best hitters, and say well we really shouldn't have any of those guys getting the most number of plate appearances for the team. That's not how you win, you win by having your 6th best hitter hitting the most.
Seriously, it's incredible how many people don't realize what being a leadoff hitter entails. I mean, it's not just your hitting that has to be on point, you really need to have a good 3 point shot, as well as the ability to take your man off the bounce and drive to the inside. And when that goes wrong, your any legit leadoff hitter would turn to his puck handling skills, shiftiness on his skates, and ability to get down in the butterfly. And when that goes south, what separates the best, truly elite leadoff hitters, the men, from the amateurs is their ability to contain the running game from the secondary while being able to pass rush and get around those pesky o-liners and straight to the QB as fast as possible, as well as perfect the art of maximizing yards after the catch on catches in checkdown routes.
When Tulo is being the real Tulo, he is a run producer...he is the guy you want up when runners are on.
Why is the discussion about him?
Why not EE or bautista? they make about as much sense..
It's pompey or pilar until Travis is back imo.
"run producer" is a mean-nothing term. Guys get RBIs and "produce runs" as much because they have talent ahead of them who get on base as they do because they're talented themselves.
Tony Batista twice drove in 100 RBIs. he was not a very good player either time. He was an acceptable player who could hit HRs and played in a) a Toronto offence that was crazy, crazy good, and b) an Expos offence that was abjectly terrible and handed him the slot behind the small handful of other good players (and Brad Wilkerson). Those RBI totals do not belong to him. They belong to the teams he played for.
Mike Lowell, Nick Markakis, Dean Palmer, Joe Randa, Jeff Cirillo, and Preston Wilson in the last 15 years have all driven in 100+ runs while also being utterly, utterly mediocre offensive players. But they were apparently "run producers" at least for a year.
You want to stock the top of your lineup with the most talented players you have. This includes the leadoff spot since that guy is going to get the most total plate appearances per game and for the whole season. Devon Travis likely deserves the spot under normal circumstances simply because he profiles best as a high walk rate, OBP guy while also having a decent amount of speed and athleticism. Pompey could be that, but there's the biggest risk with him that he's not ready. Pillar has a good contact bat, but he's allergic to walks and doesn't get on base well enough because of it. Tulowitzki offers you the best mixture of raw hitting ability, OBP/walk prowess, athleticism, and successful track record.
Besides, at worst they're asking for like 2 or 3 months of this out of whomever it is until Travis gets back. It's not like this will lock Tulo into the gig full time.
I still remember the hostility some people had towards moving Tulo down to the 5-hole and Revere to leadoff.
What was the reasoning behind that again?
Tulo didn't produce all that much no matter where he hit in the lineup in Toronto. He hit .240 when he's a career .300 batter. You simply can't draw any conclusions from 183PAs when he's had 4598 career PAs - especially non-quantifiable conclusions like "comfort" or "routine" were the reason for his struggles, and not simply adjusting to a new team and environment after playing for a decade on one team.
The leadoff guy is only guaranteed to leadoff once per game. In 965PAs as the first batter in an inning, he's .305/.363/.566/.929.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=tulowtr01&year=Career&t=b#leado
A career .363 as the first batter in an inning is good enough to leadoff on most teams. He's not your typical speedy, base-stealing leadoff guy, but with that OBP he's more than a capable guy to fill in until Travis comes back.
I wasn't huge on him leading off at first last year, but it became evident he was just struggling in general.
Finally, you're only argument is that Tulo's rhythm is thrown out of whack by leading off -- but yet you want to put Pillar there -- who's never lead off at the MLB level before?
Because Revere is not good enough to be a leadoff hitter at the major league level
He significantly outperformed his career numbers last year over a small sample.
There has to be an order, though, and not selected at random.
And definitely not with the attributes you describe for leadoff.
So people like me who advocated for him to hit in leadoff just got "lucky" in our analysis that he was the most productive option for the Jays to hit in front of the Death Row?
It wasn't entirely obvious?
Do explain.
So people like me who advocated for him to hit in leadoff just got "lucky" in our analysis that he was the most productive option for the Jays to hit in front of the Death Row?
It wasn't entirely obvious?
Do explain.
You're assuming that Tulowitzki's production, approach, etc, aren't affected by leading off. It's a big thing. Why mess with a guy who's been doing it for his entire career in the middle order? Comfort is a huge thing.
Better off putting Pillar/Saunders there to lead off. We saw that Tulowitzki didn't really produce leading off in his 200 AB's in Toronto.
No other team in the league would even consider having Tulowitzki lead off. Look at all the recent champions and see who led off for them. It isn't that big of a deal. You get better value out of Tulo at 5 or 6.