League Championship Series Lineups Are a Reminder That Great Hitters' Value Ripples Out

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Chicago Cubs can only sit at home and watch as the 2024 MLB postseason unfolds. While they're at it, though, they can learn plenty about how to build a juggernaut for 2025 and beyond.

Image courtesy of © Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images

It's not uncommon to hear, in vague terms, that superstars provide a team with extra value beyond their raw production. Often, those truisms are a bit oversold. The ideas, for instance, that an elite hitter or two changes the way an opponent approaches the whole lineup or that those hitters are more likely to come through in clutch situations tend not to hold up under objective scrutiny. After all, unlike in other sports, a team can't electively allocate their offensive opportunities to give their best hitters extra opportunities.

In watching this postseason play out, though, there have been several cases in which the semi-hidden added value of those stars shines through. The hits they collect and the runs they create, in and of themselves, are obvious sources of value, but the very best hitters at the top end of the batting order do two other, subtler things:

1. Stretch the game by getting on base, even if many of the rallies they start don't directly lead to scoring.
2. Make it more dangerous and costly to opponents when they let the players in the bottom half of the lineup get on base.

The Guardians clogged the bases, but were unable to score early in Game 2 of the ALCS against the Yankees. They threatened and strained Gerrit Cole, but didn't break through in the first four innings of that contest. By forcing him to face 18 batters in those four frames, though, the team put New York manager Aaron Boone in a dilemma: lift his ace with a three-run lead and 15 more outs to get, or ask said ace to pitch to the top of the Guardians batting order a third time.

Boone left Cole in the game, and although the visitors weren't able to break through enough to tie things up, they did get to Cole, drawing the deficit down to a lone run. Much is made, every October, of the need for power, because it's so hard to string together enough hits and walks to post a crooked number against the best pitching staffs in baseball. No single or walk is wasted, though, because they each lengthen the game and provide an advantage. They cycle the decision point a skipper faces with the starter's third trip through the lineup forward by a frame, or--and this one is critical--assure that the top of the lineup will get a fifth turn in the late innings.

That's the big way that a lethal top of the order, like Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts, makes everyone around them better. Every hit, walk, hit batsman, or would-be double play beaten out from the likes of Enrique Hernández, Gavin Lux, or Tommy Edman matters, because it makes it incrementally more likely that Ohtani, Betts, and Freddie Freeman come up an extra time--and those guys' excellence makes that extra flip of the lineup card more valuable than, say, Ian Happ, Seiya Suzuki, and Cody Bellinger do.

There are teams with worse top thirds of the order than the one the Cubs have deployed the last year or two, but the spotlight here goes on how much better the likes of the Dodgers' and Yankees' are. Most teams do get the top of their batting order up to bat a fifth time in most games, but often, it's just that top segment that gets its turn. This season, the average team got at least one plate appearance the fifth time through the order within the first nine innings (not counting turns against position players acting as pitchers) in 122.5 games. However, they only averaged 2.6 plate appearances per game under those conditions, despite hitting .253/.328/.415 in those settings. In other words, most of the time, even if you do get your best hitters a fifth turn, they don't have many outs to work with at that point.

The Cubs were fifth in MLB, with 128 contests in which they got to the fifth time through the order. However, they weren't as good at cashing in on those chances as some of their peers. The Dodgers batted .309/.405/.540 the fifth time through. The Diamondbacks, Brewers, and Phillies also excelled. Arizona drove in 92 late-game runs in those situations. The Dodgers drove in 81. The Cubs were at 61.

If your lineup has stars, they'll often do half the work of giving themselves a fifth shot at the other team's pitching staff within a game. But they also deserve credit for the value they create when those fifth chances come; they make the little lineup-lengthening depth pieces more important than they could be on their own.

As Arizona's presence in the conversation indicates, finding value this way doesn't require a team to have a 50-homer slugger like Ohtani or Judge. The Mets have come up with some season-altering rallies over the last month and change on the strength of singles and doubles by the likes of Francisco Lindor, Starling Marte, Mark Vientos, and Pete Alonso. Lengthening the game is important, but becomes more so when players with broad, high-level skill sets lurk at the end of the other team's quest for the 27th out.

If Happ and Suzuki could just be the second- and third-best hitters in the top part of the Cubs lineup next season, rather than the best and second-best, it would alter the character of their offense. The number of players they could acquire this winter who would effect that much change is small, and they might not be able to do it. As the postseason has gone on without them, though, the team has gotten plenty of chances to see exactly why it would be worth doing.

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