Craig Counsell's Lineups Are Doing A Really Nice Job Covering The Cubs' Weaknesses

[Brian Kelder]

The Chicago Cubs are hammering left-handed pitching, but posting league-average numbers against righties. Is this a concern long-term, or a just an early season aberration?

Image courtesy of © Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images

The Cubs are destroying left-handed pitching this season, even with three of their main hitters batting on the weak platoon side. After Friday’s victory over the Phillies, the team's OPS was .917 versus left-handers. When a right-hander toes the rubber, the OPS slips to .776. Both of these are higher than the league average OPS of .712, but something is awry.

Kyle Tucker is exempt from this, as he’s dropping an OPS over 1.000 against pitchers from both sides. Michael Busch is at a splendid 1.007 OPS against right-handed pitching, but it plummets to .697 against the other side, albeit with only nine plate appearances. Pete Crow-Armstrong also feasts against RHP with a .946 OPS. As you'd expect, the left-handed hitters in the lineup have the classic splits.

Lets look at the culprits who are struggling versus right-handers. Below are each player's OPS numbers against right-handed pitching (OPS versus southpaws is in parentheses).

Dansby Swanson: .503 (1.212)

Nico Hoerner: .652 (.951)

Matt Shaw: .339 (.984)

Ian Happ: .687 (.812)

Seiya Suzuki: .425 (1.754)

Three of these five had over a .600 point difference, with Suzuki at over 1.300 taking the crown. While not a death knell to the lineup, there are a few implications here.

First of all, the right-handed pitching the Cubs have faced this season has been outstanding, from Yomashiba Yamamoto to Nate Eovaldi to Tyler Glasnow and Dylan Cease. It doesn't matter who you are — those pitchers are going to keep your numbers down. The quality of starting pitching has simply been better from the right side so far this season.

But, if you don’t believe me, here’s Bleacher Nation founder Brett Taylor:

"Just noticed that on the list of the top four ERAs in baseball – Tyler Mahle (0.68), Yoshinobu Yamamoto (1.06), Hunter Brown (1.16), and Nick Pivetta (1.20) – the Cubs have faced them FIVE TIMES THIS YEAR. Yet they somehow still have put up huge offensive numbers overall. It almost feels like that shouldn’t be possible. Almost 20% of the time the Cubs have opened a game against a starting pitcher who has given up almost no runs this season. What?!"

Craig Counsell has these splits in mind when he fills out the lineup card. Watch how the preferred lineup plays out with these splits in mind.

Happ (better versus lefties)

Tucker (destroyer of worlds)

Seiya (better versus lefties)

Busch (better versus righties)

Dansby (better versus lefties)

Nico (better versus lefties)

PCA (better versus righties)

See what he did? Given the three batter minimum for pitchers, the lineup alternates at least once each inning between left and right-handed advantages. There’s never a stretch of batters that are all dominant against the same-handed pitcher. Keep that in mind when you ask for PCA to move to fifth; putting him and Busch back-to-back just isn’t good lineup construction. Kudos to Craig Counsell for being ahead of these trends and adapting his lineup in this way, though hopefully he won't have to be so meticulous going forward as certain players find their groove against the side they're weaker against.

In the months ahead, this will likely stabilize, and it hasn’t hindered the win-loss record to this point. It was an interesting study to see how the lineup reflects data and begin to understand the "why" behind Counsell's lineup construction.

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What are your thoughts about Counsell's lineups? Do you want him to change things up, or leave the status quo? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

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[Butter]

I disagree with Craig Counsels lineups. Nico should be hitting second. Best contact hitter on the team and no power. Justin Turner should be released with Moises Ballesteros called up to be backup first baseman. His Average is over .400 today. PCA should be batting before Dansby. Dansby's strikeouts are through the roof!

[Jason Ross]

47 minutes ago, Butter said:

I disagree with Craig Counsels lineups. Nico should be hitting second. Best contact hitter on the team and no power. Justin Turner should be released with Moises Ballesteros called up to be backup first baseman. His Average is over .400 today. PCA should be batting before Dansby. Dansby's strikeouts are through the roof!

Welcome to NSBB!

I'm going to disagree about Ballesteros. First, I don't think Ballesteros is a suitable swap with Turner. It would be very difficult to essentially bring him up to be the short-side-platoon for Busch. Ballesteros hits left handed pitching fine, but he's left handed himself. That's a really tricky situation to be placed into.

Secondly, his development matters at the catching position. Being the backup first baseman who's facing almost exclusively LHP means you're losing his ability to continue to develop in Iowa as a catcher. It's probably not a worthwhile trade off.

We're probably getting to a place where we can't simply platoon Turner with Busch and expect it's doing much; Turner's starting to look a bit cooked. I wouldn't release him yet, but his opportunities probably need to be shrunk until he shows more. But Ballesteros probably isn't the solution.

[G.Krisch]

Right now, Tucker or Seiya should bat second. You want them to get as many at bats as possible. I agree that Turner is toast.