A Statistical Breakdown of Wetherholt and Barry's Lineup Contributions

WVU Baseball head coach Randy Mazey made an assumption of his lineup during a postgame interview, so I got to work figuring out if he was correct.

Following WVU Baseball's seven-inning run rule victory over the Pitt Panthers, Mountaineer head coach Randy Mazey met with media. He was asked about the swapping of key pieces within his lineup - specifically, JJ Wetherholt and Braden Barry. 

"When he's hitting well, that's where you want him: right in the middle of the lineup," Mazey said of Barry's role. "After JJ hits a home run, it feels like Barry just smashes the baseball, and JJ has that effect on people... Real leaders can influence the people around them, and that's what JJ is doing without saying anything."

During that postgame interview, he casually dropped a statistic about Barry's batting average and efficiency when hitting behind Wetherholt, making a correlation between Wetherholt's hitting and Barry's subsequent results.

I decided to do a deep dive into the lineup's RBI success when a few key factors were swapped. My goal was to determine if Mazey's statement about the top of the order's slugging was correct.

I scoured every box score from this season's action, denoting lineup shifts, specific to cases in which Wetherholt and Barry were 1. hitting back-to-back and 2. both getting hits. The latter statistic was adapted as I furthered the analysis, as the instance of Wetherholt ending up on base and Barry either subsequently walking or grounding/flying out became a more significant trend. Additionally, I removed Wetherholt walks from the equation, as Mazey's initial quote referenced Wetherholt home runs and bat-to-ball results.

Here's what I found.

The beginning of this season saw Barry batting in the leadoff spot and Wetherholt hitting in the two-hole. The Barry and Wetherholt 1-2 punch continued until the second Hofstra meeting, a total of 22 games. I anticipated that in moments when Barry worked his way onto the base path, Wetherholt would follow, but admittedly, I didn't realize the RBI power those two held. Mazey alluded to Barry hitting more successfully when following Wetherholt, but the breakdown actually proves otherwise. 

I made note of every at-bat that resulted in Barry aboard the base path (walk/single/double) and what Wetherholt did immediately after. A total of 20 at-bats ended with Barry somewhere, primarily by way of singles. The two most common occurrences, Barry single Wetherholt single & Barry double Wetherholt single, lead the stats with four cases apiece. Next most common: Barry single Wetherholt HR, a total of three times. The beginning of the season went on with this kind of base path movement, effectively a merry-go-round of scoring for the Mountaineer offense.

A Barry single lead to a Wetherholt RBI in seven cases, and Barry doubles and walks combined for an additional eight runs batted in. In this pattern, Wetherholt hit five home runs and Barry hit one.

When Mazey started juggling the roster, he swapped Wetherholt into the leadoff spot and placed Barry in the two-hole, the way it would stay until the Mountaineers played the Kansas Jayhawks.

During this time with Wetherholt leading off and Barry on deck, West Virginia entered conference play. I looked specifically at games that saw Wetherholt singles/doubles/home runs followed by Barry hits/walks. A step further, I broke these outings into games when the two hit back-to-back versus their success when spaced differently among the nine.

This is the section of the statistics that Mazey was referring to, but I found that his assumption was incorrect.

I tracked each Wetherholt home run during this part of the season (six in total) and what Barry did after. When hitting back-to-back, Wetherholt home runs were followed by one out and one home run. In instances when Wetherholt hit a home run and Barry followed further down the lineup, Barry walked (1), singled (1), and got out (2).

In cases of Wetherholt small ball, singles produced singles (4), doubles (2), walks (3), and outs (12); of note, that daunting 12-out statistic produced base advancement in nine cases. Once again, a bit of a misleading statistic, as technically, these at-bats provided Wetherholt 90 additional feet. Compared to the Barry-Wetherholt 1-2 punch, which produced 14 instances of Barry scoring as a direct product of Wetherholt's bat, the opposite situation only produced eight runs, and furthermore, only one game that generated back-to-back home runs.

Sorry, Randy.

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