The value of the Phillies having four “starting” outfielders

When the Phillies signed Carlos Santana this off-season, it created a logjam in the outfield. Many people thought at the time that this meant the Phillies might try to trade one of their now-four outfielders — Rhys Hoskins, Odubel Herrera, Nick Williams, or Aaron Altherr. But we all know that never happened, and with Opening Day tomorrow, the Phillies are starting the season with four starter-quality outfielders and only three outfield spots.

Some might see that as a problem. Meghan Montemurro of the Athletic looked at the situation in January and was not optimistic. Her take was that teams have historically had a hard time evenly spreading plate appearances among four outfielders. She studied outfields and concluded that “since 2000, only nine teams have featured four outfielders who recorded at least 400 plate appearances while playing at least 85 percent of their games in the outfield.”

While I appreciate Montemurro’s look at the problem, I’ll take a different approach here and conclude that it’s a very good thing that the Phillies have four outfielders. Rather than set the bar for a successful four-man outfield at a minimum of 400 plate appearances per player, let’s look at it this way - how often do teams get close to a full season’s worth of plate appearances out of their opening day outfield?

The answer for 2017 was clear - not very often. For this inquiry, I looked at every opening day outfield last year and the plate appearances that those players amassed for that team. What’s quite obvious from this data is that very few teams get a full year’s worth of outfield plate appearances from their three opening day starters.

Simply averaging the plate appearances for each team makes this obvious. The Marlins led the way last year with 689 average plate appearances among Marcell, Ozuna, Christian Yelich, and Giancarlo Stanton. The Red Sox were second with an average of 637 (Benintendi, Bradley, Betts). The Braves (618) and the Reds (604) were the only other teams above 600.

The Indians are at the bottom of this chart with a minuscule 203 average plate appearances among their starting outfield of Michael Brantley, Tyler Naquin, and Abraham Almonte. The Nationals were next to last with just 296 (Werth, Eaton, Harper), the only other team below 300.

The rest of the league sat between 300 and 600 average plate appearances, with the average team getting 452 plate appearances from their opening day starting outfielders. The Phillies were fourth-worst on this list, getting just 311 plate appearances on average from Howie Kendrick, Odubel Herrera, and Michael Saunders. (Full chart is at the bottom of this piece.)

Looked at differently, we can figure out the missing plate appearances for each team. If you figure that each outfield spot gets about 685 plate appearances on the season (that’s an average - players higher in the batting order get more, lower get less), a team needs a total of 2055 plate appearances from its three outfielders over the course of the year. Anything short of that has to be made up with other players.

The Marlins actually got 11 more than that total, with 2066 from their top-of-the-lineup trio. Every other team fell below that. The Red Sox, second on this list, totaled 1911 plate appearances. Even with this high amount, they needed another 144 plate appearances from others. That’s not an inconsequential total.

And that’s for the second best team in this measure. Take the Cardinals, who between Randall Grichuk, Dexter Fowler, and Stephen Piscotty averaged 445 plate appearances among them and totaled 1334. With that total, they were just short of the average of 1355, so they are a good average team to look at. This average team was 721 PAs short from a full outfield in 2017.

The Phillies last year? With just 311 plate appearances on average, they totaled 933 PAs for their opening day starting outfield. That gave them a whopping 1122 missing PAs total. That’s almost two full-time players worth of PAs needed to fill the outfield last year.

What’s this all mean for the Phillies four-man outfield this year? It means that if the Phillies are anything like the average MLB team last year, they are not going to get anywhere near a full complement of plate appearances from three outfielders. The combination of injuries, sub-par performance, platoons, rest, trades, and other personnel issues means that in all but the rarest of situations, teams need to get a substantial number of plate appearances in the outfield from a fourth or even fifth player.

So, as the Phillies start the season tomorrow with four starter-quality outfielders, they should get a huge benefit from this logjam. Rather than filling the all-but-inevitable extra plate appearances with a player who is bench-quality, the Phillies get to use a “starter.” And even if these four “starters” don’t get these plate appearances evenly, as Montemurro’s piece shows they aren’t likely to do, they still should all get a substantial number of them, which should greatly increase the Phillies’ productivity over giving those plate appearances to a bench player.

For those interested, here’s the full data: