He’s certainly much more a table setter than a run producer. The problem is you have one true run producer in the lineup, and another in Diaz who is trying but hardly there yet.
Lots of things punched holes in this lineup, but Chas disappearing from the face of the earth is one of the top ones in my mind.
My research confirms this.
[quote=“HudsonHawk, post:296, topic:2696”]
no way shape or form does hitting 8th on this team put a “big bat” behind him. Who is that big bat? [/quote]
I said, hit him 8th.
9th if you want a big bat hehind him.
And I agree ON THIS TEAM he is at least the 6th and probably 5th best hitter.
But that says much more about the team than it does him.
He is a 100 OPS+ hitter this year and 99 for his career.
A perfectly average offensive player.
Nothing wrong with that, but a contending team should have at least 7 better hitters. There is no reason 1b or LF should have a guy below MLB avg with the bat.
I watched Pena hit 2nd and win 2 post season MVP awards there in 2022.
I enjoyed every minute of it.
But that was a wonderful and opportune hot streak.
Outside of a few 1 to 2 week hot streaks since, he has not shown me that he is that player.
I always hope the Astros #2 hitter is better than that. And this year, he is - marginally.
My 2 cents.
One does not construct a batting order by listing the best hitters in order.
In an ideal world, the Astros would have a healthy Kyle Tucker and that would greatly help the offense. But, Joe Espada has to maximize the hitters he currently has at his disposal. Bregman and Diaz are significantly better five-hole hitters than Peña, while batting Peña second is not a massive drop off from batting Bregman second. Also, sticking a young hitter with known plate discipline issues against hard breaking stuff like Peña between your two best hitters in Altuve and Alvarez means he’s going to see more fastballs and pitches he can hit. That’s why it helps Peña and the team to bat him second right now.
And there’s no reason I shouldn’t have a million dollars and a pony. But you have to build a lineup with the guys you have, not the guys you wish you had. For better or worse, mostly worse, Pena is the fourth best hitter on this team. I wish that weren’t the case, but it is what it is. He has to hit in the top half of the lineup. You can’t put him 8th or 9th just because his OPS (which is a pointless “stat”) has been good in limited at bats there. You build a lineup to score runs, not accrue metrics for your fantasy league.
Hope ain’t a strategy to score runs.
Preach, Preacher!
OPS in this spot or that is pointless and dumb if using it to put guys in certain lineup spots. OPS as a stat is not pointess at all.
You bat Peña second because when he’s swinging at pitches he can actually reach with the bat he is a contact hitter, and as has been mentioned, if he’s hitting second he’ll see fewer pitches 14 inches off the plate to tempt him and he might just see a strike every other at bat. It would certainly require a plan to which he has thus far shown little adherence, but you make it crystal clear that he is going to take a strike every at bat and he’s going to swing only at fastballs or whatever it is.
Alternately, you could bat Jake second and have him bunt. Ruminate on that for a minute and I think you’ll begin to see that Peña is the reasonable choice.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was already the plan. Unfortunately for him he has a real problem recognizing spin in a timely enough fashion to take said pitch that is something other than a fastball.
That stat tells nothing except it is the sum of two useful stats.
It’s a shorthand. And a way to compare value between the power hitter that doesn’t get on base as much and the on base guy with less power.
I can’t think of a stat that by itself is too terribly useful in judging/evaluating a player.
What is this, 2007? We’re still doing this?
OPS is a smashing together of two useful results metrics that shouldn’t make sense, yet while we’ve got better “one number” shorthands offensive performance, OPS holds up (i.e. correlates to run scoring) way better than you’d expect for a seemingly nonsense frankenstat.
The only stat that attempts to do it is WAR and even that requires a ton of context.
OPS has value as a stat if used properly, but we have leaned too far in the direction of valuing all or nothing approaches and swings versus the value of putting the ball in play in certain situations.
Hitters like Luis Arraez should be celebrated, instead some would rather criticize him for his lack of power. A hitter with elite bat to ball skills as your leadoff man or second hitter is still incredibly valuable. They also are valuable in RBI situations or situations where you really need to move a runner.
It’s useful for arranging guys on a list according to OPS, but it has no value in evaluating a player. Which is all I’m really interested in.
Sliders look like fastballs out of the hand. Which is the point of sliders.