Soriano Leadoff?

But this really has been debated to no end and we probably don’t need another fan post about it. This topic goes back to last year even, and a lot of people think Soriano should be batting 5th of 6th. But apparently, most of us won’t have our wishes come true anytime soon.

aghhhhhhhhhhhghghghghghghghghgh

Do we really want to start this again? Enough already!

I was just thinking what this site needed was another post on the batting order in general and Soriano batting leadoff in particular.

It’s been what, ten minutes since we’ve had one?

Roberts
Cedeno
Lee
Ramirez
Fukudome
Soriano
Soto
Pie
Pitcher

yea i did it, sorry :p

I thought i would get this reaction

One popular whipping boy for the Cubs right now is left fielder Alfonso Soriano. He’s making our center field situation look positively rosy, batting .173/.222/.320 so far on the season. No sugarcoating – that sucks like a Hoover.

But when you dig a bit deeper, there’s cause for hope, and not just a little but quite a bit. In early May pretty much everything is driven by batting average, and after one month a player’s batting average is a lot less stable than it is in, say, August.

Let’s take a look at one of my favorite little stats, Batting Average On Ball In Play. BABIP is a player’s batting average when you remove walks, strikeouts and home runs and simply look at when a ball is playable by the opposing team’s defense. A league average BABIP is normally right around .290. Soriano’s BABIP right now is .174. Which, right, bad. But we’re taking a look at batting average – a stat I’ve already said tends to be subject to a lot of random fluctuation, or noise – and removed walks, strikeouts and home runs, the three events that a player has the most control over.

When trying to predict a player’s BABIP going forward, his line drive rate is a much better indicator than his current BABIP. And Soriano’s line drive rate is down a bit so far this season, but still reasonably healthy at 18.3%. Given his LD%, we would expect a BABIP of right about .300 for Soriano.

Soriano’s walk rate has actually increased (very slightly) so far this season, and his power numbers are (slightly) diminished, but both would be acceptable going forward (and Soriano’s power should heat up later in the season). His problem so far has been that not enough of his batted balls are falling in for hits, and that’s not a function of anything Soriano is doing wrong, just a function of luck. Don’t worry about Soriano.

HE’S BATTING FIRST.

This is the most annoying thing to see every single day. I know that I can just not read it but I still SEE it and it annoys me.

Not to mention, and no offense to the poster but NOTHING new at all was addressed in this. It was another of the same exact argument that he shouldn’t lead off.

This team has way more issues than this.

Who is really going to lead-off if not Soriano? Soriano’s due for a spike in production which would be good to have batting first. On the other hand, Cedeno and Theriot are due for drops in production. Reed Johnson can’t hit RHP. Soto and DeRo don’t have the speed. Dome is the only LH Lou will bat above #8 and Lou wants a LH breaking up the righties. So, unless we make a trade, who’s going to bat first?

First!