{"id":909,"date":"2011-03-26T10:53:39","date_gmt":"2011-03-26T14:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=909"},"modified":"2013-05-29T15:07:07","modified_gmt":"2013-05-29T19:07:07","slug":"werth-batting-2nd-it-doesnt-solve-our-main-l-r-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=909","title":{"rendered":"Werth Batting 2nd?  It doesn&#8217;t solve our main L-R problem"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_913\" style=\"width: 209px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/WerthJaysonPhiladelphia+Phillies+Introduce+Jayson+Werth+R_LpsNZMUpQl.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-913\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-913\" title=\"WerthJaysonPhiladelphia+Phillies+Introduce+Jayson+Werth+R_LpsNZMUpQl\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/WerthJaysonPhiladelphia+Phillies+Introduce+Jayson+Werth+R_LpsNZMUpQl-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/WerthJaysonPhiladelphia+Phillies+Introduce+Jayson+Werth+R_LpsNZMUpQl-199x300.jpg 199w, https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/WerthJaysonPhiladelphia+Phillies+Introduce+Jayson+Werth+R_LpsNZMUpQl.jpg 395w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-913\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Best #2 hitter in the league.  Photo by Mitchell Layton\/Getty Images North America) <\/p><\/div>\n<p>The Nats <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/nationals-journal\/post\/todays_lineup_an_opening_day_preview_sort_of\/2011\/03\/26\/AFfg5jbB_blog.html?wprss=nationals-journal\">apparently want to bat <strong>Werth<\/strong> 2nd<\/a>.\u00a0 At the beginning of Spring Training the plan seemed to be a lineup like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Morgan-Desmond-Zimmerman-Werth-LaRoche-Morse-Espinosa-Catcher-Pitcher<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>which would be<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>L-R-R-R-L-R-S-R-Pitcher.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This lineup was very righty heavy and with the problem of putting 3 straight right handed hitters at 2-3-4.<\/p>\n<p>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 <strong>LaRoche<\/strong>).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Desmond-Werth-Zimmerman-LaRoche-Morse-Ankiel-Espinosa-Catcher-Pitcher<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>which would be<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> R-R-R-L-R-L-S-R-Pitcher.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Well, how exactly does this help?\u00a0 You still have three straight right-handed guys in your lineup.\u00a0 And 5 of 8 hitters to boot.\u00a0 We&#8217;d allow loogy matchups to eat us up in games and would still be susceptible against lefty starters.\u00a0 What we need is to go with something like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> Desmond-Espinosa-Zimmerman-LaRoche-Werth-Ankiel-Morse-Catcher-Pitcher<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>which would be<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>R-S-R-L-R-L-R-R-Pitcher.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>or perhaps this lineup:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bernadina-Desmond-Zimmermann-LaRoche-Werth-Morse-Espinosa-Catcher-Pitcher<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>which would be<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>L-R-R-L-R-R-S-R-Pitcher.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Both these later lineups are more balanced and split up the lefty-righty combos.\u00a0 Of course, <strong>Espinosa <\/strong>isn&#8217;t ready for the #2 spot and <strong>Bernadina <\/strong>isn&#8217;t the ideal leadoff hitter.\u00a0 So we really can&#8217;t go with these lineups from the onset.<\/p>\n<p>The Nats really needed <strong>Morgan <\/strong>to own the leadoff and center field position this year.\u00a0 By losing him we have no natural leadoff hitter any longer.\u00a0 <strong>Desmond <\/strong>really is a #2 hitter.\u00a0 It is one of the reasons I advocated for an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=455\">attempted trade<\/a> for someone like <strong>Jacoby Ellsbury<\/strong> back in the middle of the off-season.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the solution is one <strong>Corey Brown<\/strong>, slated to start in AAA.\u00a0 He plays center field, shows pretty <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/minors\/player.cgi?id=brown-002cor\">good 20-20<\/a> like numbers career in the minors, and has a great OBP.\u00a0 His slash line between AA and AAA for 2010 was .283\/.370\/.466 with 15 homers and 22 Sbs.\u00a0 That sounds like a fantastic CF\/leadoff options.\u00a0 Oh, and he bats lefty too.\u00a0 Maybe that <strong>Willingham <\/strong>trade <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=886\">wasn&#8217;t so bad after all<\/a> if Brown can show some MLB value.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Nats apparently want to bat Werth 2nd.\u00a0 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[184,143,135,114,281,115,580,122,167],"class_list":["post-909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","tag-adam-laroche","tag-corey-brown","tag-danny-espinosa","tag-ian-desmond","tag-jacoby-ellsbury","tag-jayson-werth","tag-josh-willingham","tag-nyjer-morgan","tag-roger-bernadina"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=909"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6809,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions\/6809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}