Nationals Arm Race

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Werth Batting 2nd? It doesn’t solve our main L-R problem

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The Best #2 hitter in the league. Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images North America)

The Nats apparently want to bat Werth 2nd.  At the beginning of Spring Training the plan seemed to be a lineup like this:

  • Morgan-Desmond-Zimmerman-Werth-LaRoche-Morse-Espinosa-Catcher-Pitcher

which would be

  • L-R-R-R-L-R-S-R-Pitcher.

This lineup was very righty heavy and with the problem of putting 3 straight right handed hitters at 2-3-4.

If Werth bats 2nd, I suppose our lineup now goes (in fact, this is more or less the lineup going today 3/26/11, with injury substitutions for Werth and LaRoche).

  • Desmond-Werth-Zimmerman-LaRoche-Morse-Ankiel-Espinosa-Catcher-Pitcher

which would be

  • R-R-R-L-R-L-S-R-Pitcher.

Well, how exactly does this help?  You still have three straight right-handed guys in your lineup.  And 5 of 8 hitters to boot.  We’d allow loogy matchups to eat us up in games and would still be susceptible against lefty starters.  What we need is to go with something like this:

  • Desmond-Espinosa-Zimmerman-LaRoche-Werth-Ankiel-Morse-Catcher-Pitcher

which would be

  • R-S-R-L-R-L-R-R-Pitcher.

or perhaps this lineup:

  • Bernadina-Desmond-Zimmermann-LaRoche-Werth-Morse-Espinosa-Catcher-Pitcher

which would be

  • L-R-R-L-R-R-S-R-Pitcher.

Both these later lineups are more balanced and split up the lefty-righty combos.  Of course, Espinosa isn’t ready for the #2 spot and Bernadina isn’t the ideal leadoff hitter.  So we really can’t go with these lineups from the onset.

The Nats really needed Morgan to own the leadoff and center field position this year.  By losing him we have no natural leadoff hitter any longer.  Desmond really is a #2 hitter.  It is one of the reasons I advocated for an attempted trade for someone like Jacoby Ellsbury back in the middle of the off-season.

Perhaps the solution is one Corey Brown, slated to start in AAA.  He plays center field, shows pretty good 20-20 like numbers career in the minors, and has a great OBP.  His slash line between AA and AAA for 2010 was .283/.370/.466 with 15 homers and 22 Sbs.  That sounds like a fantastic CF/leadoff options.  Oh, and he bats lefty too.  Maybe that Willingham trade wasn’t so bad after all if Brown can show some MLB value.

Written by Todd Boss

March 26th, 2011 at 10:53 am

One Response to 'Werth Batting 2nd? It doesn’t solve our main L-R problem'

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  1. Yes, this is a transition year with the parent club. It could be worse, we could be the Phillies who have almost NO righthanded bats and were shut down a lot by Loogy’s toward the end of last season.
    Good stuff.

    Mark L

    27 Mar 11 at 8:26 am

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