Photo by R.J. Oriez via Wikimedia Commons
Jesse Winker
Jesse Winker batting for the Reds in 2019
As the Brewers build out their lineup for the months ahead it seems likely that they’ll have a revolving door in the designated hitter spot. They didn’t get a lot of offensive production from the newly permanent role in 2022, but neither did most other National League teams.
During the 2022 season Brewers designated hitters batted just .227 with a .306 on-base percentage and .399 slugging. Andrew McCutchen, who played there more than twice as often as any other Brewer and underperformed all three of those numbers, is no longer in the organization.
For 2023 the mix of playing time is yet to be determined, but FanGraphs’ depth charts have started from the assumption that offseason acquisition Jesse Winker will be there more often than anyone else, followed by Keston Hiura and William Contreras on days off behind the plate. The site’s projections have all of them outhitting the Brewers’ 2022 production at the position, but at this point any effort to predict which of them will spend the most time there is, at best, an educated guess.
Between Good and Bad
A lot of National League teams played the 2022 season without establishing a full time DH and/or seeing much production from the players they sent out there. The Brewers’ .699 on-base plus slugging (OPS) from their designated hitters ranked exactly in the middle of the NL. What’s more notable, however, is the gap between good and bad in that role. The difference between the fourth and 12th best NL teams at DH was 99 points of OPS. The gap between the same rankings at second base, for example, was only 55 points. In center field it was 63. Designated hitter is a role that only has one job, but there’s a big gap between the teams that do it well and the teams that do it poorly.
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One factor in that discrepancy is differences in designated hitter strategy. As noted last winter, there are two camps when it comes to the role: Teams that have a single player who fills the spot most days and teams that rotate several players through the role in an effort to keep bats in the lineup on days off or keep their bench sharp. Across baseball six players appeared in 100 or more games as a DH in 2022, while other teams didn’t have a player who appeared in the spot more than 40 times.
The second factor, however, is player development. For many years public-facing prospect evaluators (and presumably also teams) have devalued “bat first” minor leaguers, players with a relatively advanced approach at the plate but questions about their ability to stick at any defensive position. For years the knock was at least in part based on the premise that a “DH only” prospect would only be useful to American League teams. Now all 30 teams would have a spot for someone who fits that profile, however, and there aren’t 30 of them to go around.
What it Takes
“The problem you run into is you don’t really get a lot of DH prospects. Most prospects you want to be playing a position, because that’s where they’re most valuable,” Dan Szymborski, creator of the prominent projection model ZiPS, told the Effectively Wild podcast in January. “I think there’s an argument to be made that, because of the sudden change, first base/DH types might be underrated in a real world sense right now.”
Being able to be effective in the designated hitter role requires an adjustment for many players. Someone who’s used to playing most days in the field may struggle to effectively make the adjustment to waiting in the dugout between at bats. Minor league teams have the designated hitter but most top prospects aren’t put there often, at least in part due to the perceived value discrepancy Szymborski notes between a “bat only” prospect and someone who plays a position.
In the modern era, however, it’s harder than ever to make consistent and/or solid contact against MLB pitching and the rules have changed to allow more “bat first” types into everyday lineups. It’s more difficult than ever to find guys who fit that mold, though, and player development may have to adapt how they evaluate and develop guys who might be able to do it.
