Andrew Benintendi could be the X-factor against the Indians
Can he follow in Xander Bogaerts' footsteps?
COMMENTARY
When the Red Sox head to Cleveland this week, they’ll face a tough challenge. While the Indians rotation is a little banged up, they feature all right-handed pitchers. That means for the most part, the Red Sox won’t have the platoon advantage the way they would probably like it. In most games, if the team stays within their normal lineup confines, they won’t field more than five left-handed batters, and in some, they’ll have just four. One of those four is Andrew Benintendi, and as such, the talented outfielder may just be the X-factor for the Red Sox in the American League Division Series.
I know what you’re thinking – five of the nine hitters being left-handed is more than half, and that would give the team the platoon advantage. But let’s examine who those hitters are. First, you have the gimmes – David Ortiz and Jackie Bradley Jr. They were two of the team’s best hitters against right-handed pitching this season. No one is worried about them.
Then you have Sandy Leon, who is a switch hitter, but one who has historically hit better from the right side of the plate. For his career, he has hit .273/.333/.417 vs. lefties and .246/.313/.340 vs. righties. He’s been better than that against righties this season, to the tune of .286/.337/.427, but that .767 OPS pales in comparison to his 1.062 OPS vs. lefties this season. Leon also fell off pretty hard in September, and for the month he hit just .203/.292/.250 in 72 plate appearances against right-handed pitching. Also, he probably won’t start every game, and in his place will be a right-handed hitter of poor quality.
Next is Brock Holt and/or Travis Shaw. One of them should be manning third base. With a starting rotation of all righties, Aaron Hill probably won’t start. Holt and Shaw won’t be some magic potion though. Even though they have the platoon advantage against right-handed pitching, they hit worse than several of their right-handed hitting teammates against righties this season. And like Leon, they finished the season ice cold. Overall, the three were the team’s three worst hitters for the month of September.
September performance doesn’t necessarily carry over, but Holt and Shaw have been bad for awhile, and it would be odd to expect them to just magically snap out of their slump now.
Finally, there is Benintendi. The young outfielder tallied 85 PAs against right-handed pitchers. In them, he posted a .400 on-base percentage and a .584 slugging percentage. This season, there were 429 players who logged at least 80 PA against right-handed pitchers. Only six others posted at least a .400 OBP and .500 SLG against them:
Well, that’s quite the little list, isn’t it? But as potentially uplifting as this list is, the two things that don’t fit with the others are Benintendi’s total PAs and the total value he’s generated. wRAA stands for Weighted Runs Above Average, and it measures the number of offensive runs a player contributes to their team compared to the average player. It’s a counting stat, a cumulative stat. The more you play, the more value you’ll pile up, if you’re an above-average player. Benintendi doesn’t stack up with the other players on this list in that sense, but he has been very good in his short time in the majors.
So good, in fact, that his 6.9 wRAA against right-handed pitching this season is already more than Holt, Leon and Shaw combined (6.5), and the three of them had 895 PA against righties. If he can keep hitting this well in the ALDS, he should end up being a huge difference maker.
The question is can he? Is he in for a rude playoff awakening? Is his lack of experience a blessing? Only time will tell. He might have trouble with Corey Kluber’s sinker, as he didn’t fare well against sinkers, and that is Kluber’s primary pitch. But he did quite well against sliders, which according to PITCHf/x is the pitch Kluber throws second-most frequently. Game-planning for Game 1 starter Trevor Bauer is an exercise in futility. One of the thinking-est pitchers out there, Bauer is constantly mixing his pitches up. He usually throws five pitches, except for that one start when he only threw two pitches. In some starts, he throws 20 percent change-ups, and in some, he throws 1.2 percent change-ups. In one start he threw 50 percent two-seam fastballs, in another he threw 5.2 percent. Shrug emoji.
The bottom line is that it’s a short series, and any way we could parse the numbers could wind up being pointless. It is also true that even without having the platoon advantage, the team’s right-handed hitting starters Mookie Betts, Dustin Pedroia, Xander Bogaerts and Hanley Ramirez are still plenty dangerous. The Red Sox didn’t have one of the best offenses in baseball this year by accident. But if Benintendi hits against the Indians the way he hit righties in the regular season, the Red Sox offense is going to be especially dangerous.
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