Six out of eight playoff teams–Boston, Tampa Bay, Detroit, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Los Angeles–all featured a top-10 OBP leadoff hitter and all made the playoffs. A 7th team represented on this list, Texas, missed the playoffs on game 163.
The non-contending teams with strong leadoff hitters were Toronto, Milwaukee, and Colorado.
The two teams who made the playoffs without a top-10 OBP leadoff hitter were Pittsburgh and Atlanta. Atlanta positioned Andrelton Simmons and Jordan Schafer in the lead off spot gaining spotty OBP production from both, while Pittsburgh regularly employed Starling Marte who, in return, got on base 33.6% of the time, narrowly missing this list.
Peter Gammons featured the above graph, generated by BaseballAnalystics, on his website while asking fans whom their favorite choice to lead off a game was in 2013. I would like to pose the same question but tweak it a bit.
Given the current Mets lineup and no other roster changes other than adding this player, who would you most want leading off games?
Answer in the comments below or Tweet them to me @guilbs88.
I guess that means if the Mets employ Lucas Duda they’ll be a playoff team. On a serious note, there are probably much better variables that have better correlation with winning percentage than leadoff OBP.
Sticking with a serious note, i’d really like Lucas Duda to lead off.
1) it keeps Davis out of the lineup.
2) I think his patience/high OBP really works well in that spot. Let’s his teammates take a look at the SP’s pitches.
3) And for those who say non-SB guys can’t leadoff, look at the Cardinals with Matt Carpenter last year.
Editor’s Note – Post removed for violating our Comment Policy on capitalizing words.
Dice-K and Lannan both look awful today. Good for the Mejia camp.
There hasn’t been much good of anything to look at this spring for the Mets.
You can click on the chart and get a bigger, easier to read version.
R Tejada did not run hard to first on the double play ball that ended up dropped. Knowing that the Mets brass were watching him, his lack of hustle is concerning.
His sluggishness in the field was more concerning to me, but it is still early. We need to give these guys a little slack to get into game shape.(I’m talking more to myself with that quote)
I advocated for Choo and Ellsbury at the beginning of the offseason but at those prices and years I can’t find fault with Sandy’s decision making.
I always liked DeJesus and he was a free agent and maybe he would have changed his name to deJesus to fit in with the Mets. Sandy never made a play for him though.
Aoki was mentioned and Davis was mentioned so at one point I see a conversation but nothing materialized.
Aoki or DeJesus may not be glamourous but it would have filled two holes; a high % lead off batter and a rightfielder.
This is why I was not impressed with the offseason and why I scratch my head and wonder what the Met plan was this offseason.
Also DeJesus is a Jersey native who went to Rutgers for school. I’m sure he would be warm to the idea of coming home to play. I agree. He’s not a sexy pick and never has been but he has been a consistent and consistently good player for a lot of years now. Aoki is one of my favorite non-Mets to watch. He plays the game the way I like seeing it played.