Baseball’s Best Bench

Eleven years removed from his MVP season, well past his prime and near the end of his career, Jason Giambi doesn’t play much anymore. When the Rockies penciled him into the lineup Thursday, it marked just his second start in nearly a month.

But the 40-year-old slugger showed he had something left in the tank, blasting three homers and knocking in all seven of Colorado’s runs in a blowout win over the Phillies. In the process, Giambi accomplished a feat that’s becoming increasingly rare in baseball: providing a big contribution off the bench.

A generation ago, teams carried 10-man pitching staffs, allowing managers to deploy a litany of platoons and employ ace pinch hitters, while still saving room for speedy pinch runners and defensive replacements who could make big plays late in a game. Before Bobby Cox built a dynasty in Atlanta, he managed the first winning clubs in Blue Jays history, using his deep bench to field platoons at multiple positions. Meanwhile, professional pinch hitters such as Manny Mota and Wallace Johnson stayed employed, despite having little value other than their ability to bag a base hit late in a game.

Today, teams use 12-, even 13-man pitching staffs, leaving little room to collect a group of quality backups. For all the advantages managers gain by being able to play bullpen matchups, they’re giving a lot of that back by trotting out shallow benches.

Though it’s tough to peg one person for starting the trend of bloated bullpens and tiny benches, Tony LaRussa certainly helped get the movement going with the way he built his pen around Dennis Eckersley while managing the Oakland A’s in the late 1980s.

Baseball being a game of copycats, other teams started expanding the size of their bullpens, hoping to tap into that Oakland magic. The trend rapidly accelerated once pitch counts and more conservative usage of starting pitchers came into vogue. Today, a typical American League team carries just four bench players.

One of the best ways to handle this severe limitation is to build a versatile roster. The Tampa Bay Rays have Ben Zobrist, who doubles as one of the better hitters in the league and a multi-position threat, having played everywhere except pitcher and catcher in 2009, then skipping just pitcher, catcher and shortstop last season. Adding Sean Rodriguez (seven positions played last year) allows the Rays to platoon, pinch run and pinch hit as well as any club with just four bench guys possibly can. (Why the Rays have bothered with a seven-man ‘pen while their long relief man almost never pitches is another question, and a strike against their usually sharp manager Joe Maddon.)

Through the season’s first six weeks, however, the honor of baseball’s best bench goes to another team: LaRussa’s own St. Louis Cardinals. Perhaps realizing what he’s wrought with his bullpen tinkering, LaRussa has long targeted the most versatile players to man his bench, shying away from the Matt Stairs types who can get you an occasional pinch-hit homer but little else.

Hole Cards
Owning baseball’s best bench is one of many reasons the St. Louis Cardinals sit in first place in the NL Central.

PLAYER PA AVG/OBP/SLG
Jon Jay 89 .312/.398/.455
Allen Craig 80 .319/.400/.507
Nick Punto 77 .262/.355/.385
Gerald Laird 48 .214/.313/.381

This year’s club is no exception. The three bench players who’ve seen the most playing time — Allen Craig, Jon Jay and Nick Punto — have played four, three and three positions, respectively. All three have hit well, too (see table), so much so that Craig has seized the starting second-base job with Skip Schumaker on the disabled list. LaRussa’s penchant for flexing players at different spots doesn’t just extend to relative no-names either. To make room for other players, Albert Pujols has played two games at third base this year, the first time he’s handled that position in nine years. As much as Matt Holliday and Lance Berkman have supercharged the offense and Jaime Garcia, Kyle McLellan and Kyle Lohse have been revelations in the rotation, the Cardinals might not be in first place if not for the contributions of their reserves.

The contending team that might have the weakest bench is Philadelphia. Though the Phillies knew they had a major injury risk with Chase Utley, they failed to acquire quality backups, watching Wilson Valdez (.234 AVG/.261 OBP/.290 SLG, not far off his career numbers) and Pete Orr (.230/.299/.279, and ditto) struggle mightily in Utley’s place. Brian Schneider, 34, predictably flailed (.173/.218/.327) behind Carlos Ruiz at catcher before going on the DL. With Raul Ibanez looking close to the end and All-Star center fielder Shane Victorino on the DL, backup outfielder Ben Francisco’s performance (.216/.329/.360) has also been a letdown, though his career numbers are considerably better.

With a team heavy on star power but showing age or injuries or both at several positions, the Phillies could sorely use some bench reinforcements to hold off the upstart Marlins and Braves in the NL East. Given GM Ruben Amaro’s history of making in-season upgrades (including Stairs, Professional Hitter himself), we could well see that happen in the next few weeks.





Jonah Keri is the author of The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First -- now a National Bestseller! Follow Jonah on Twitter @JonahKeri, and check out his awesome podcast.

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