Is Puig the best 8th hitter?

Phil Gurnee ♦ June 23, 2017 ♦ 3 Comments

Much has been made about the success that Puig is having hitting out of the eight hole, which led me to wonder if Puig was the best eight hitter in baseball?

The simple answer is no. He is, however, one of the best. I used 50 PA as the criteria for this which might be too low. The table below has several interesting columns. The OPS is what that hitter is doing from the eight spot. The OPStot column is their cumulative total OPS for the season.  The PA column is the number of plate appearances hitting from the eight spot. The PAtot column is the total number of plate appearances.

This shows that while Puig has hit in the eight spot a lot, he has spent much more time in other spots in the order.

That .881 OPS by Puig is very good. Seven home runs in only 113 plate appearances is excellent. He is clearly thriving from the eight hole, but he is far from the best at it.

Player             OPS OPStot  PA PAtot HR RBI BB   BA  OBP  SLG
Matt Wieters     1.137   .690  65   225  5  13  9 .345 .446 .691
Kolten Wong       .964   .838 100   179  1  15 12 .341 .434 .529
Devin Mesoraco    .961   .842  66   107  4   6 10 .255 .379 .582
Travis dArnaud    .910   .736  91   143  7  20  8 .259 .330 .580
Cameron Rupp      .894   .650  51   168  2   6  5 .304 .373 .522
Yasiel Puig       .881   .773 113   271  7  19 13 .268 .345 .536
Jordy Mercer      .863   .785 116   273  3  11 15 .297 .388 .475
Jarrod Dyson      .856   .686  69   246  2  11  6 .317 .406 .450
Sandy Leon        .827   .653  70   145  3  11  6 .281 .343 .484
Joey Gallo        .820   .820  82   255  5  16 10 .194 .293 .528
Chase Headley     .816   .697  66   263  1   8 10 .315 .409 .407
Michael Taylor    .815   .763  92   210  4  11  4 .284 .315 .500
Eddie Rosario     .809   .768 104   234  3   9  5 .306 .340 .469
Andrew Knapp      .799   .720  54   108  2   4  7 .255 .352 .447

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 6/23/2017.