For the purposes of this article, lets assume that Flores is the everyday shortstop (therefore answers of “Flores should bat no-where!” in response to this article would not add to the conversation). Before going to the Queens Baseball Convention yesterday, my reaction to this question was, “8th! Why are we even talking about this?”.
Wally Backman though put a bug in my head about where he he hits. He describes Flores as a free swinger, and because of that, he will drive in runs, but needs to be in a place where he can drive in runs and get those pitches to hit. He doesn’t feel that 8th works for Flores because there is no protection behind him to get pitches to hit.
My general feeling about lineups is your best players should hit closer to the top just to get them more AB’s in the game. Unless you have an obvious table-setter / clean-up etc person, the lineup should be constructed by talent. I also am not a fan of having the pitcher batting anywhere but 9th.
That being said, looking at the Mets lineup, the one solution I could see getting Flores protection in the lineup (in lieu of batting with people on) would actually be 9th. Seriously.
First, who else would bat 8th? The only two players I could think of would be Lagares or d’Arnaud. Murphy should bat 2nd (although I’m not always convinced TC knows this), a healthy Wright is 3rd, Duda has earned 4th, Granderson/Cuddyer would control 5th and 6th (they can be flipped). At that point you’re left with Lagares, d’Arnaud and Flores. Lagares makes way more sense first, so he goes there. So then it comes down to d’Arnaud and Flores, and I can’t see d’Arnaud really hitting 8th. If Flores and the pitcher are flipped then Flores gets protection from Lagares. But in this situation, d’Arnaud does not get protection, which isn’t ideal.
The other option would be to really shakeup the lineup:
- Granderson
- Murphy
- Wright
- Duda
- Cuddyer
- d’Arnaud
- Flores
- Lagares
The above might be the only way to Flores more protection, at the cost of Lagares. It also hinges on Granderson bouncing back this year. Granderson’s OBP was 100 points higher than his BA last year. Originally when I wrote this, I had d’Arnaud and Flores flipped, but that didn’t vibe with me either.
