Low-Power DHing: The Very Idea
I think I’m like most baseball fans in that when I think of a designated hitter, I think of home runs. The DH spot has usually been filled by power hitters since its inception in 1973, and that makes sense. If a player is playing a position with no defensive value, he needs to produce on offense. Home runs are the most valuable offensive event. The most valuable hitters in any given year usually have plenty of home runs and extra base hits. One often hears that a player who doesn’t hit for power doesn’t have the bat to play on the “easy end” of the defensive spectrum, and and even moreso in the case of a player who is primarily a DH. Billy Butler is a current example of a player who mostly fills the DH spot, but since he hasn’t hit for much power (yet), you will sometimes hear people say that he doesn’t fit the profile of a DH. Without focusing specifically on Butler, I’d like to write briefly about what it means to “hit well enough to be DH,” and then to see how often that actually happens with a relatively low amount of power.
Of course, a player doesn’t have to be that great of a hitter to have some value, even as a full-time designated hitter. He just has to be above replacement level. In the model of Wins Above Replacement (WAR) used here at FanGraphs, among position players there is no such thing as a “replacement level hitter” or “replacement level fielder,” just a “replacement level player.” All of the varoius components of a player’s value — hitting, fielding, baserunning, position, etc. — are baselined against the league average. Replacement level for positions players is defined here at Fangraphs as being 20 runs (about two wins) below average, so if all those components add up to greater than minus 20 runs per 600 plate appearances, the player is above replacement level.
What we are interested in here is the positional adjustment for the DH. When a player DHs, by definition he has no defensive value. Without getting into the issue of the “DH penalty” for the difficulty of DHing, the basic conclusion drawn by Tangotiger (he uses 2.25 wins per 700 plate appearances, which is pretty close to 20 runs per 600) is that a league average hitter with no position is a replacement level player. In other words (without concerning ourselves with the difficulty of DHing), to be “good enough” to be a replacement level DH, the player needs to be a league-average hitter. If we (somewhat arbitrarily, given that below-average-but-above-replacement-level players have value) say that a player is “good enough” to start regularly if he is league average, then a player hits well enough to DH if he is 20 runs above average per 600 plate appearances on offense.
Getting back to the original point, when someone says that a player has to hit for power to be valuable to be a DH, assuming they mean at least average by “valuable,” they might be taken to imply that a player can’t (or is not likely to) be 20 runs above average (which we can measure using wRAA and it’s park-adjusted variant “Batting”). How can we check this out? The nice thing about linear weights-based metrics like wOBA is that they get away from confusions about the relative value of batting average, on-base percentage, slugging, power, speed, and so forth, and properly value each event. What this lets us do is to take a pool of hitters and see how often they manage at least 20 Batting (park-adjusted wRAA) runs above average prorated 600 plate appearances without hitting for a ton of power.
Since we’ve already mentioned Billy Butler, let’s take his .151 ISO (he had 15 home runs in 678 plate appearances) as our cut off point. Since the 1973 introduction of the DH, there have been 5,115 player seasons of at least 500 plate appearances. Of those 5,115, 1,541 have been player-seasons where their prorated batting runs per 600 plate appearances have been 20 runs above average or more — good enough to be an average DH (for the sake of simplicity, I’m leaving aside changes in replacement level over time). Of those 1,541, 215 have been seasons with an ISO of .151 or less. Now, 215 is only about 4 percent of 5,115, or about 14% of 1,541, but it clearly does happen.
Among the players who managed multiple seasons of offense worth (well) over +20 runs per 600 plate appearances: Wade Boggs (eight times — he had over a .225 ISO only once in his career, his next highest was .148, and his next highest was .129), Tony Gwynn (six), Rod Carew (six), Rickey Henderson (six), Tim Raines (five), and Paul Molitor (seven). Those are all obvious (at least to me) Hall of Famers. There are some lesser lights as well who make appearances: Julio Franco (three), Willie McGee (twice), and even good John Kruk (once, in 1992, when he hit .323/.324/.458 for a 151 wRC+ with only 10 home runs).
Of course, most of these players had positions, but that isn’t the point. Even if Wade Boggs was a DH-only player, do you really think he would have hurt the Red Sox with his 60 runs above average in 1988, even though he had only 5 home runs in 719 plate appearance? Would Rod Carew’s 42 Batting runs above average in 1974 have not been valuable at DH since he only hit 3 home runs that season? Sure, both those players were more valuable than they would have been as mere DHs, but those seasons obviously would have been valuable even if they hadn’t played the field. A lot of these players (such as Henderson and Raines) had a lot of speed, which, to go back to our earlier example, Billy Butler doesn’t. But: a) stolen bases, even for a great basestealer, only add a few runs a year, and Henderson and Raines probably would still been on the list at least a few times without steals, and b) it obviously isn’t the case for players like Boggs and Kruk. One might be inclined to say that many of those seasons had a more restricted offensive environment, but the truth is that only a few had a league average wOBA lower than 2011′s current .315, and those aren’t by much.
Most full-time DHs are likely to be power hitters because that is the most common source of above-average offense players. But with linear-weights based statistics now commonly available in various forms, it’s time to stop saying that a player has to have power (or some other offensive profile) in order to be a full-time DH. A simple application of linear weights to history shows that to be a false assumption.
John Kruk (once, in 1992, when he hit .323/.324/.458)
should be OB% of 424
Klassen is lazy.
i was gonna say, a 151 wRC+ with no walks? that would be pretty impressive
Isn’t part of the reason that DHs tend to big power guys that more athletic, less powerful guys are more likely to be good a defense? Wade Boggs could have been a fine DH but that would have been a waste of his defense (admittedly not as much of a positive in ’88, at least from my cursory glance on the player page, but i doubt even his worst year defensively made him a good option to DH). You certainly could get value from a non-power hitter at DH, but if you choose to use someone who could play solid defense you’re probably paying him more for no additional value.
Yeah, I would think this should be obvious. Not only do DH’s have to be good offensively to be of any value, they are naturally awful defenders. In other words, they’re usually non-athletic big slow lugs.
The reason you don’t see Ichiro Suzuki, or Denard Span, or Brett Gardner, or Jacoby Ellsbury, or Chone Figgins at DH is because the same skillset that makes them valuable offensively also makes them valuable defensively.
Edgar Martinez was a solid defender, but was moved to DH because of his bad knees and likelihood of injury. If you do not believe me then go check out his UZR/150 for when he played 3rd early in his career. Pretty good. The same is usually said of Mike Sweeney (former royals DH). That he was a solid defender moved to DH to reduce the likelihood of injury.
UZR/150 didn’t exist then.
Bilyl Butler reminds me of a poor mans Edgar Martinez. He’s not going to hit a ton of homers, but he hits for average, can take a walk, and has gap power. Billy Butler isn’t the prototypical DH, but hes still going to provide value at his position
I like the comparison, but I think its too early to qualify the comparison with “poor man’s”.
Edgar through his age-25 season: 84 PA, 25 H, 0 HR
Butler through his age-25 season 2388 PA, 640 H, 58 HR
Edgar become full-time player at age 27, but didn’t clear 20 HR until age 32.
I think Butler’s ceiling could be Edgar-like.
A bigger question is: which type of player do the models think have bigger upside?
Age 25-player with Edgar’s to-age numbers
or
Age 25-player with Billy’s to-age numbers.
Is league average really good enough? I mean, there are pitchers in that league average, right? There are guys that can’t hit at all, but are super defenders, right? Wouldn’t you need your DH to be better than them, to be worth anything? I mean, if your DH is as good as a pitcher, you can just hit your pitcher, so pitcher hitting should be taken out of your calculation of average, shouldn’t it?
I don’t care if a DH has power, I care if a DH doesn’t make outs, and has some power (nope, can’t quantify “some” right now, sorry).
FYI – Leagues with the DH don’t have their pitchers hit.
Except during interleague play, and in that meaningless world series thingy.
I think the reality that a DH is usually a power hitter has to do with the type of players who profile as someone who doesn’t play defense well, and this causes people to get confused when they see a non power-hitting DH. DH’s are usually the same kind of guys who are 1st basemen, large, lumbering characters who don’t have the mobility to effectively man a defensive position that requires even average mobility, actually lots of time DHs are aging 1st basemen like Jim Thome. The misconstrued perception that a DH can ONLY be effective by hitting for lots of power flows from that, though obviously a player can be a good enough hitter to be effective in that role without hitting for a ton of power, like Butler or the current version of Travis Hafner. It’s just extremely rare to be a good enough hitter to be effective in that way while also being a slow dude. Both Butler and Hafner have career BABIP’s above .320, when he’s been healthy Hafner’s been more like .340, to do that while running with the speed of a donkey, you have to hit a really abnormally high number of line drives.
You know, maybe I was misunderstanding the calculation for “replacement level” but I was under the impression it had to do with “readily available” talent…
Isn’t replacement level different for different positions? I’m pretty sure it is. The positional adjustment for WAR is above what a replacement player would produce at that position compared to league average wOBA. What you look at is the backups who play if a starter is injured (or given an off day) and consider that level of production as readily available talent. Then, you add that value to those playing that position.
So, realistically, a replacement DH might or might not be better than league average. But he had better hit more robustly than a “replacement” level hitter because you’re factoring in those crappy second basemen and catchers into that league average. Not someone you’d use to replace your DH. The point of the article is legitimate, but replacement, I think, is poorly defined here. Replacement DHs are not the same as replacement shortstops. You can’t just say that replacement level is 20 runs below a league average player especially for the DH.
One other point on the profile of a DH: teams usually reserve the position for an aging player. It’s very, very rare for a team to call up a top hitting prospect just to be a designated hitter, even when the prospect has no defensive value (look at the Yankees’ handling of Jesus Montero, for example.) Power tends to be the last of a player’s offensive tools to develop, and often older players hit for more power than younger players. So it makes sense that the kind of players who end up DHing are also sluggers.
Butler breaks the mold in a few ways, since he’s a 25-year-old designated hitter. And I say, good for the Royals. They’ve given the man a role that fits his talents perfectly.
Might want to check the Kruk stats.
This feels like a straw man. Thinking of the DH most often as a hulking slugger is not tantamount to assuming a low HR hitter can’t get the job done. Then using Boggs, Raines, Gwynn, Carew to prove your point is like saying that some of the best hitters in the history of the game would have been fine at DH despite limited HRs – does that even need to be stated?
Kind of in agreement with this comment. I was wondering what prompted this article, or to whom it’s directed. Most fans who are familiar with wOBA recognize offensive value can come in a few forms. As it’s been mentioned, players who are good enough to play in the majors but do not field well tend to not field well because they are larger, and more likely able to hit for power.