Will the Giants' second-best hitter be a factor off the bench?

By foxsports
Published

There are pretty much only two scenarios in which the second-best hitter on a team is available off the bench in a postseason game. The first is that Don Mattingly is the team's manager. The second is in effect tonight: Said second-best hitter is injured or coming back from an injury. Like the Giants' Mike Morse.

But, as we move into the time of the game when the announcers will start talking about threats off the bench, it's worth asking how good we really know Morse to be. There are all sorts of narratives that conventional wisdom applies to players -- he's hot, he's cold, he likes this park, he's 4-for-11 against this pitcher, he's big in spots like this, he's comfortable coming off the bench, he's rusty from the long layoff. Most of those are of limited utility and rarely backed by evidence. The last, though, is the exception.

In 2012, the Giants opted not to carry Melky Cabrera on the postseason roster, even after he was eligible to return from his PED suspension. It seemed like it might be the Giants taking the high road. But at Baseball Prospectus, Mike Ferrin and Dan Turkenkopf wondered whether it was for a more statistically sound reason: Rust.

They looked at players who had missed 50 games or more, to see how they did upon returning. Conclusion: In the 20 plate appearances after such a return, the players were worse than we would have expected. Quite a bit worse, actually -- about 17 points of True Average, Baseball Prospectus' all-things-considered hitting stat. Here's what 17 points of True Average means:

• If you're 2014 Mike Trout (.353 True Average this year), it makes you 2014 Anthony Rizzo.
• If you're 2014 Yasiel Puig (.320 True Average), it makes you 2014 Hanley Ramirez.
• If you're 2014 Adrian Gonzalez (.300 True Average), it makes you 2014 Yan Gomes.
• If you're 2014 Jacoby Ellsbury (.275 True Average), it makes you 2014 Robbie Grossman.
• If you're 2014 Salvador Perez (.250 True Average), it makes you 2014 Derek Jeter.



And if you're Mike Morse (.296 True Average), it makes you ... Starlin Castro? Jon Jay? Brian Dozier? Juan Uribe? Pablo Sandoval? Somewhere in that range. That's still plenty of thump to make him a threat off the bench. But as far as narratives you're likely to hear in this game (and series), it also makes this one of the more compelling ones.