Oakland Athletics Could Become Contenders By Making These Four Changes
Jul 7, 2015; Bronx, NY, USA; Oakland Athletics designated hitter Billy Butler (16) rounds the bases after hitting a solo home run against the New York Yankees during the sixth inning at Yankee Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports
Bench Billy Butler
The A’s can do immediate addition-by-subtraction by admitting that Billy Butler is a $30 million mistake. He remains in the lineup out of a sheer obligation to try to get some return on investment, but it is just not working.
The $30 million designated hitter is batting .249, which is the ninth-highest mark on the team. Five other A’s have more home runs than Butler, and 10 other A’s have higher slugging numbers than he does. These are miserable marks for somebody who was brought in exclusively to provide power hitting.
But the lack of production at the plate is not the worst way he is hurting the team. He hurts the A’s most by what happens when he does get on base.
This season, the A’s have gotten a base hit or a double while Billy Butler was on first or second 34 times. Of those 34 times, Butler has only been able to take an extra base five times. That is a paltry 15 percent of extra bases taken.
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Consider the A’s 8-22 record in one-run games. These are the games that are decided by one or two extra bases taken. If Butler is only able to take these bases one out of every seven hits while on base, then he is really only in scoring position when he is on third.
This is why the A’s should replace Butler with Mark Canha in the DH position. Offensively, they are incredibly similar players. Canha’s .246/.307/.415 shows an almost identical amount of offensive production as Butler’s .249/.315/.377. Canha has also had more than 200 at-bats, so this is likely an indication of his actual ability, and not just numbers that are skewed due to a small sample size.
The key to why Canha would be more successful in the role is baserunning. Production will be neither improved nor diminished by replacing Butler with Canha, but the A’s will see more runs batted in by the players following the DH spot in the lineup.
In the 18 times that Canha has been on base during a base hit or double, he has taken extra bases 39 percent of the time.
Imagine how many more runs the A’s could have scored if Butler was taking extra bases 39 percent of the time.
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