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Stuart Fairchild Shouldn't Hit Leadoff With Elly De La Cruz in the Reds' Lineup
Fairchild has had plenty of hype, but little to show for it.
The Cincinnati Reds have been fielding some intriguing lineups, lately. With Jonathan India catching the bug that’s going around, the lineups have had to be shuffled a bit, but there is one player in particular who seems to be hitting too high in the order: Stuart Fairchild.
Here’s an exercise. I will give you player A and player B with only their stats and no names, and you tell me who they are:
Player A: 15 Games, 40 AB, .250/.318/.275
Player B: 21 games, 72 AB, .306/.412/.639
You’re picking player B, right? I would hope so. Fairchild is Player A and Player B is Elly De La Cruz.
This an absurd comparison, right? Like who on earth would compare these two players? The reason I am doing so is because of Monday night's lineup. David Bell has had Fairchild ahead of De La Cruz in four of the last five games.
Fairchild has had a lot of publicity about his offseason workouts. He added strength along with working on his swing to become a more consistent hitter. That’s all well and good, but it has not translated to the field yet.
To go along with his lackluster slash line, Fairchild’s quality of contact numbers aren't impressive. League average exit velocity, how hard a player hits the ball usually, is 88.4. Fairchild, so far this year, has an average exit velocity of 86.4.
You might be thinking this is just a small sample size and it'll move up. That's far from guaranteed. His career average exit velocity is 86.1, so that's normal for Fairchild.
Also one final note as I saw many people citing his platoon splits this year as a reason he should lead off against lefties. Fairchild’s slash line of .391/.482/.435 is nice, but he’s had a total of 23 at-bats vs lefties this season. In his career, he has seen southpaws for 167 at-bats and has a slash line of .252/.362/.395.
If we want to limit the argument to just this year, De La Cruz is getting on base just over 37% of the time against left-handed pitchers in a similar sample size. Give me that all day over Fairchild in the leadoff spot.
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