Ike Davis and First Base

Last year Ike Davis posted a .264/.351/.440 slash line, good enough to be a little bit above league average as a hitter. This year he's at .345/.424/.595, which is a wee bit better, and which he's almost certain not to keep up all year, but let's say he turns out to be a little bit better than his rookie campaign. Maybe he ends up having an overall batting average around .275 or .280 instead of the .265 region, raising OBP to around .365 or .370, and gets his slugging percentage up around .500. That's a pretty good hitter; in fact, it's a very good hitter. But it is not, we are told, good for a first baseman. I have two problems with that assumption. One relates to Ike Davis himself, and the other relates to the idea of defensive positions having certain levels of offensive prowess required of them.

As for Ike, here's what I'd say. The idea that first base should be a plus-plus-plus offensive position is that it is the least demanding and/or least important position on the field defensively. All you have to do to be a competent first baseman is stand there and catch the ball. Therefore, it's a perfectly natural place to put big, hulking sluggers who couldn't very well be a shortstop or a center fielder. All true enough. But it's also true that, at first base just as at any other position, better defense is better. Having a first baseman who moves well, has decent range, is really really sure-handed on the catching side of things, and will make lots of smart aggressive plays and make them well really does improve your team. And Ike Davis looks to be a pretty fine defensive first baseman. Keith Hernandez hit a career-high eighteen home runs for the Mets in 1987. He was a first baseman, and he never hit twenty home runs. Sure, he had a .384 OBP and averaged thirty doubles a year, but he still wasn't a slugger in the mold of Albert Pujols or Mark Teixeira or Adrian Gonzalez or Prince Fielder. Or Ike Davis, for that matter, who's got more power than Keith though probably less hitting-for-average skills. But he won eleven Gold Gloves, and that made a difference for his teams. First base needs to be a strong offensive position because we assume it will be a weak defensive one, but a strong defensive first baseman has that much less need to be Albert Pujols at the plate (and note, Ike isn't a bad hitter).

More to the point, though. You have a team consisting of nine players, eight of whom aren't pitchers (I'm assuming no DH, because that ruins things). Those eight position players need to play the eight positions, and you'd like for them to play those eight positions well. They also each need to bat, in some order, and you'd like both for them to each bat well and for them to form a nice cohesive lineup. Fundamentally those are different things. Now, since first base is a much easier position than shortstop we expect more people to be able to play first than short and therefore to find more sluggers at first; perhaps there's also an idea that spending more effort becoming an offensive player means you should be playing a position that requires less effort. But from the team's perspective, it doesn't matter. You want your lineup to produce X hits, and Y home runs and Z doubles and score ABC runs. It doesn't matter if your shortstop hits 15 home runs and your first baseman 25 or it your shortstop doesn't hit any and your first baseman hits 40. (Well, it might matter in that there might be a difference between having two players 40/0 and two players 25/15, but which positions they play doesn't matter.) One thing the New York Mets have on their current lineup is a shortstop who can easily hit fifteen home runs, while also providing at least that many triples. That's way the hell above-average power for a shortstop. And to a certain extent it takes some pressure off the positions that are "supposed" to produce sluggers to do so. (It's one of the things Jose Reyes brings to the table that doesn't get mentioned very often.) So Ike Davis is a good defensive first baseman and he's also a good power hitter (how good, exactly, remains to be seen). He's also, for the time being, dirt-cheap. That's a good player to have on your team, especially if it is a team with a power-hitting shortstop and a power-hitting third baseman. That other people who play first base, many of them not as well, are even better hitters does not really change that.