It had to happen eventually. The Cleveland Indians’ 2-0 loss Sunday afternoon—the final game in the Texas Rangers’ four-game sweep—marked the first time this season that the Tribe had dropped four straight.
As a result, the Indians have now fallen into a tie with the New York Yankees for the best record (33-24) in the American League, and their once-formidable lead over the second-place Detroit Tigers is down to 2.5 games.
Losing four straight at home is bad enough, but the worst part of the series was that the Indians got shut out twice in a row, falling 4-0 on Saturday before Sunday’s 2-0 loss. There’s no single silver bullet that can explain how one of the best lineups in the league could be completely silenced in two consecutive games, but part of the problem is quickly identified from the box score.
In both of the Tribe’s shut-out games, manager Manny Acta had Orlando Cabrera batting second. A suboptimal batting order can’t fully explain Cleveland’s inability to score, but this is not a coincidence.
There’s no clear consensus on the best way to organize a lineup, but pretty much everyone agrees that you shouldn’t mess around with the No. 2 hole. In the words of Beyond the Box Score’s Sky Kalkman:
The #2 hitter comes to bat in situations about as important as the #3 hitter, but more often. That means the #2 hitter should be better than the #3 guy, and one of the best three hitters overall. And since he bats with the bases empty more often than the hitters behind him, he should be a high-OBP player.
You can say that Cabrera brings intangibles to the team or that he’s invaluable to clubhouse chemistry. You could even argue that he’s been good on defense, though neither observation nor statistics (-15.2 UZR/150) would support your opinion. But there’s no question that he’s been a true liability at the plate.
How does he hold up against the standards for No. 2 hitters? Among Indians players with at least 100 plate appearances, Cabrera’s .271 OBP is dead last and more than 40 points behind next-to-worst Grady Sizemore. Only two Indians in the lineup this weekend—Shelley Duncan and Lou Marson, both normally bench players—have gotten on base at lower clips than Cabrera.
Nor is he “one of the best three hitters” on the team. O-Cab entered Sunday’s action with a .590 OPS and a .265 wOBA. With a 64 wRC+, he’s been 34% worse offensively than the average MLB hitter and 20% worse than a waiver-wire scrub or a guy you’d call up from Triple-A. What about this situation makes hitting him second in the lineup sound like a good idea?
Using each player in Sunday’s lineup’s season-to-date numbers entering the game, Baseball Musings’ Lineup Analysis calculator says the Tribe’s optimal lineup would have Cabrera hitting sixth. Meanwhile, the worst-possible permutation has him hitting second.
Of course, Acta probably isn’t making his lineup based solely on success to date. Using instead ZIPS’ rest-of-season projections for each player (Adam Everett does not have them), though, batting Cabrera second looks even worse. Every single one of the 30 most optimal lineups has O-Cab hitting sixth or lower, while each of the worst possible permutations has him hitting second, fourth, or fifth.
In all likelihood, the batting order wouldn’t have made the difference in either of the games this weekend. But it’s a lot harder to get shut out when the lineup is put together in the best possible way.
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