by Gregg Pearlman
At the moment it looks as though the Giants will stick Tsuyoshi Shinjo, their newly acquired center fielder, into the leadoff spot. This makes sense in only one way: somebody has to bat leadoff, and the rest of the lineup spots are more or less set. Other than that, there is absolutely no reason or evidence to suggest that Shinjo is anything like a leadoff hitter. I honestly have no complaints about Shinjo generally as a player; I just really don't like the idea of him leading off. I also hope that nobody expects him to be Ichiro II.
From all accounts, Shinjo is a wonderful defensive outfielder, and the Giants could certainly use one of those, but as a hitter he seems to match up well with guys like Calvin Murray (and we've already got one of those) and Darren Lewis, who has managed to forge a nice career as a defensive replacement. Both Lewis and Murray are wonderful center fielders, and neither of them really can hit. Murray has more pop than Lewis, but I'm not sure Shinjo has any more than Murray. Is that a concern for a leadoff hitter? You bet it is, because on Dusty Baker's San Francisco Giants, the leadoff hitter is the center fielder.
We see article after article about Shinjo (or "Jo," as his nickname will probably be), and it seems as though there's no end to the hype and the apparent need to portray him as kinda free, kinda wow. (My guess is that they're overhyping him to divert attention from his general lack of offensive ability.) In the Giants newsgroup JVV says that this "media blizzard is obviously all about marketing to the Asian community in San Francisco." And there's some merit in that. But I'm not convinced that the best approach to take is, "Hey, everybody! We're the first family on the block to get a television set!" That sure is what it looks like to me.
When the Giants signed Darryl Hamilton before the 1997 season it was treated as if they'd pulled of the coup of the century, as if they'd signed Willie Mays In His Prime Jr. The Shinjo stuff is reminding me of the Hamilton hype, only I'd probably rather have Hamilton, even with his legs being awful. Granted, the fact that both men will have worn uniform number 5 as Giants might have some effect.
Jonathan says, "Recall that Hamilton replaced Javier in center field; Hamilton was probably a little worse than Javier, and Shinjo is probably a little worse than a Marvin/Murray platoon."
Hamilton was a good Giant, and even a good leadoff hitter (especially in 1998, before he was traded), but wouldn't the Giants have gotten a similar performance out of Stan Javier (if Javier otherwise weren't busy making Glenallen Hill forcibly deny having lost his job as the regular right fielder)? Well, maybe not; I felt that Hamilton did better than Javier would have. Does that mean Shinjo will do a better job than Darren Lewis would have? I sure hope so.
"I think his defense will be the most important factor for the Giants," says Jeddi, who adds, "He'll at least hit over .270."
I can't be that optimistic. First, the guy proved he couldn't even hit in Japan -- over nine years or so. Second, .270's not bad, but if he's going to bat 600 times and draw even 60 walks, he's still going to put up an OBP in the .330s, which -- while better than reasonable expectations -- is still wretched. For Shinjo to be any help as a leadoff hitter, he's probably got to bat around .330.
Another Jonathan says I'm "setting the bar a little high for him, don't you think? How many leadoff hitters who were 'any help' to their teams hit .330 last year?"
Well, that's probably the point.
"Given what we had at leadoff last season, I think Shinjo can't do much worse."
Ah, but Shinjo's OBP was .320, which is putrid. As Rob Neyer of ESPN.com says in a February 19 column titled "Is Shinjo the answer for Giants?," Marvin Benard's OBP also was .320, and nobody's talking him up; Shawon Dunston's was .293; Murray's was .319. We can probably agree that based on prior performance, Shinjo is not an upgrade at all.
But the reason I say ".330" is that given the number of walks he's likely to draw, he'd need all those hits to move his OBP into the "good" range. (The same is true of the other three.)
So, yeah, the bar's set real high, and he's not gonna clear it. He'll attempt a Fosbury Flop, miss the bar (on the wrong side), and hit the padding, which will force him to give himself a nosebleed with his own knee.
If a guy doesn't get on base much and you want him to be a leadoff hitter, he'd had better have some speed. Shinjo, however, was 4-for-9 in stolen base attempts, and he scored only 46 runs in 400-some plate appearances. Granted, he hardly ever batted leadoff for the Mets (which is certainly another red flag): seven at-bats, one walk, a single, a double, three whiffs.
Interestingly, though, he had a .368 OBP when batting sixth last year, with a .444 slugging percentage. Most of his at-bats were from fourth to seventh, and I'm convinced he'd help the club more if he batted lower in the order. (He had a .486 slugging percentage out of the fifth spot.) Probably the most important numbers we need to know are the fact that he went 6-for-17 against the Giants last year with two home runs, which gives us a pretty good idea why the Giants got him.
Against the Giants' division rivals Shinjo went: 1-for-8 in Bank One with a walk and five strikeouts (which seems totally reasonable under the circumstances; 1-for-7 at Dodger stadium (the hit was a home run); 1-for-8 at Qualcomm with a walk; 3-for-9 at Coors with a double; and 4-for-7, a double, a homer, and three RBIs at Pac Bell.
His lefty-righty splits were odd: .258/.312/.418/.730 against lefties, and .305/.352/.354/.706 against righties. But you just wait: announcers are going to babble on about his batting average against lefthanders as though he actually hits them well.
I want to stress again: he didn't really hit even in Japan, but my only previous indication of this was a batting average of .249 and a guess that he didn't draw a lot of walks over there.
Adam C., however, provides Shinjo's Japan statistics, which I think provide a very broad hint of things to come. Adam says, "From age 19 (1991) to age 28 (2000), Shinjo played 1,054 games in Japan, or 6.51 162-game seasons. His 162-game averages:
AB R H RBI TB 2B 3B HR BB SO HBP SB CS E AVG SP OBP 590 70 147 80 249 25 5 22 42 122 8 10 4 6 .249 .422 .308
"You can't walk off the islands"?
Not to start a new argument about the validity of OPS and its variants, let's point out that his OPS here is .730; his OPS where you multiply OBP by 1.25 is .807; his OPS where you multiply OBP by 1.5 and slugging percentage by 2 is 1.306... wow! This guy's a monster!
Adam enumerates the following points, each one followed by my comments:
So what it's boiling down to is this:
Last year the Mets were wise enough not to bat him too high up most of the time, and, again, he did reasonably well in the sixth slot.
Why is this not a red flag?
I gather that means that .320 is about all we could hope for. See, if Shinjo ends up not being the leadoff hitter, I could live with that, as long as he shows some pop.
"The obvious answer is that the Giants simply shouldn't let anyone bat leadoff," says JVV. "They don't have anyone who can do it."
That's the only thing that makes sense. That and maybe having three guys bat seventh.
"They should just start games letting Aurilia bat with one out."
Careful what you wish for.
Neyer points out that Shinjo drew only 22 unintentional walks in 123 games last year, and he quotes Dusty Baker: "I don't want to put any undue pressure on him. I want him to play like Shinjo can play. We want him to be Shinjo. Everyone wants the leadoff man to walk more. Not everyone is a walk-type person."
Which is fine if you get enough hits. Geez, it's like they're trying to take RBIs away from Barry Bonds.
Neyer goes on to point out that Benard and Shinjo had identical OBPs last year (with Benard's lifetime OBP being .347) and identical slugging percentages (.405). We gained defense, and I sure hope that's enough. But Neyer also points out something even more important: "Shinjo battled a quadriceps injury last season but Shinjo is reportedly completely healthy at this moment. Good news, made only slightly less good by the fact that it's been a nagging injury for Shinjo over the last three seasons, and figures to nag Shinjo again."
This certainly could be why Shinjo tailed off a lot after the break: his OBP was about the same, but his power dropped a lot.
"Still," Neyer concludes, "one fundamental fact remains: unless Shinjo and/or Benard improves by quite a lot over last season, every day the Giants are going to have one of the worst center fielders in the National League."
Or maybe several of the worst center fielders in the National League.
Of course, I don't have a better solution for the Giants, given their personnel situation. I wouldn't have minded if they'd taken a flyer on Kenny Lofton (who has declined significantly in recent years), or even Rickey Henderson (who's not a center fielder anyway), but Shinjo is what they have. Some in the Giants newsgroup have toyed with the idea of having Rich Aurilia or even J.T. Snow bat leadoff -- Snow solely on his ability to draw walks. However, it most likely would be insane to move Aurilia out of the two-hole, where he's hitting directly in front of Bonds, and Snow, of course, is significantly slower than an ambling bullet. That said, if the starters are Snow, Jeff Kent, Aurilia, and David Bell in the infield; Bonds, Shinjo, and Reggie Sanders in the outfield; and Benito Santiago behind the plate, the sad fact is that Shinjo is almost certainly the best option in the leadoff spot. Well, the least worst.