The Tuesday Discussion: Wells at the Top

March 18, 2025

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This week we asked our writers the following:

Do you like the idea of batting Austin Wells leadoff?  If not, who would be your leadoff hitter?

Here are their replies:

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Lincoln Mitchell - My sense is that unless Anthony Volpe demonstrates he hit for a high OBP, Wells should probably bat leadoff. However, as on older fan and an an early converter to advance metrics, I find myself torn about how batting orders have evolved. While I don’t believe in the fast guy first, bat control guy second etc. way of forming a lineup that was too common in the 1960s-1990s, it still throws me to see the best hitter batting second and an OBP guy with no speed batting first. I understand the value, but I miss the poetry of older batting orders and leadoff hitters from previous generations. Where have you gone Mickey Rivers, Rickey Henderson, Maury Wills, Brett Butler, Tim Raines, Bill North…

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Paul Semendinger - Square peg, round hole. Typically a team would like to have its leadoff hitter play most games. A catcher won't. If Austin Wells catches 125 games, that would be a lot. He will probably play less than that. (The last time the Yankees had a catcher who appeared in 125 or more games was 2016 when Brian McCann played in 130 games - 92 of them at catcher.) So, in short, assuming Wells catches 125 games (which is unlikely), that still leaves at least 37 games where the Yankees won't have their leadoff hitter. (That's about 20% of the games a team plays. Even if this is a good idea, it will only work 80% of the time, at best.) To me, that's a foolish approach. If a team is looking for consistency, changing the lineup once every five games (at least) isn't the way to create that consistency.

Secondly, while so many have high hopes for Austin Wells (including me), what was the rationale most use to explain the fact that he batted .111 in September? That's right, "He was tired." Last year, Wells caught in 110 games. That was the most he ever played in a professional season. So, the plan would be to use the guy who tired out last year in more games and in a more demanding spot in the batting order? To me, all of that lacks much logic.

Finally, I know the Yankees love to think they are ahead of the curve and smarter than every other team across the entire history of baseball. (They aren't, even if they think they are.) With this, the Yankees are trying an approach that does not get used often. It's a rarity. Baseball-Reference has a chart that lists all of the catchers in MLB history that batted leadoff in at least 10 games in a season (it seems that chart hasn't been updated since 2010, but the bigger point remains.) It's happened 23 times by 13 different catchers. Only once has a catcher batted leadoff for more than 100 games in a season in a season (through 2010). Once. Jason Kendall is the catcher who did this most often - in seven different seasons. In only one of those seasons, did Kendall's team make the playoffs. (That might not mean much, but, if one considers all the teams from all the seasons that baseball has been played, only once has a team that reached the post season utilized a catcher as the leadoff hitter.

Austin Wells has potential, but I have never seen his skillset compared to Jason Kendall. Wells' B-R page doesn't show career comparisons, but Kendall's does. Wells' name isn't on Kendall's list. The Yankee catcher who appears on Kendall's list most often is Thurman Munson. In his entire career, Thurman Munson appeared as a leadoff hitter exactly... once.

Square peg, round hole. The Yankees are going way out of the box to try something that logic and history both say will not work.

The Yankees, of course, don't have a good option for leadoff, at all. Among all bad options, I'd go with Jazz Chisholm. The spot he's batted the most in his career has been.... leadoff. Imagine that.

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Cary Greene - The Yankees batting Austin Wells in the leadoff position is akin to taking a cleanup hitter and asking him to bat leadoff - get on base a lot - go from first to third and second to home while at the same time, also asking him to steal a bag here and there. All the while, if the Yankees bat Wells first, they'd also be willing to bestow the most at bats on the team to him per game. Since Fangraphs projects wells to hit for a .231 average while posting a .314 on base percentage with a -0.4 BsR, I'd like to pump the brakes just a bit on this silly adventure that Michael Fishman and his Yankees analytics team are getting ready to embark upon as it makes about zero sense. 

For how many seasons in a row must Brian Cashman orchestrate a poor example of three outcome baseball - which coincidentally - has zero proven correlation to playing winning baseball. Cashman is allowing the Yankees to be run like a Fantasy Baseball team. Gone are the days of Mick the Quick getting on base ahead of Willie Randolph or Roy White with Thurman Munson, Reggie Jackson and Graig Nettles lurking in the lineup. The 2024 Yankees offense will live or die based on how well the Yankees will be able to plate Aaron Judge - who obviously will be walked incessantly this season by opposing managers and why wouldn't they employ such a strategy?

Does anyone think Wells and his projected .314 on base percentage is going to force teams to pitch to Judge? Is pitching to Cody Bellinger or Paul Goldschmidt going to strike the fear of the Lord Almighty into opposing managers? With first base open, walking Judge makes a whole lot of sense and doing that forces very questionable players into the position of making teams pay for such a decision. This season, there's no Juan Soto hitting in front of Judge and there won't be a Giancarlo Stanton batting cleanup either. 

No, no and NO! Wells should not bat leadoff. So who should? Look, I didn't design this roster, Cashman did. Based on who's in the cupboard, I might actually open the season with Alexander Vargas batting leadoff - even though Spring Training means next to nothing. He's hot right now, give him a shot and use Anthony Volpe as a bench piece because he sure as heck hasn't shown up ready to play some ball this spring. 

With Vargas batting leadoff, the Yankees could slot Judge in second followed by Bellinger. Once Varas comes back to earth, Bellinger could and probably should hit leadoff, followed by Judge. I'd also be fine letting Trent Grisham get a few opportunities in the early going to hit leadoff and start in center field while he's at it. 

Batting Wells in the leadoff spot is typical of how out of touch Brian Cashman really is with the game of baseball. It's going to be hard to watch the Yankees grasp at straws like that, but I'm bracing myself because it's definitely something Cashman will acquiesce to Fishman to make happen. 

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Ed Botti - Do you like the idea of batting Austin Wells leadoff? 

I think that idea is ridiculous, to be nice.

If not, who would be your leadoff hitter?

They do not have a player that fits the profile of a leadoff hitter. But based on the roster, if Cabrera plays third, I’d bat him leadoff for a while. If he doesn’t play, I’d let Chisholm try it.

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Derek McAdam - I would usually prefer someone with speed to lead off, but I don’t think the Yankees have many options when it comes to that. So for the time being, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to test Wells out leading off. He’s done well in Spring Training, so I definitely think he should get a chance in the regular season. 

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Andy Singer - I have a feeling that my friends here will disagree with me strongly, but yes, Austin Wells is the exact guy who should lead-off against right-handed pitching. A lot of people chalked up the cause of Wells' September swoon to fatigue, but that's only if you don't watch the games. Wells got hit on the hand/wrist by a baseball in a late-August/early-September game, and all of his metrics immediately tanked. Even the poor numbers Wells produced in April and early May were buoyed by strong underlying metrics, unlike September. That tells me that the guy that was probably the best all-around catcher in baseball through the bulk of the summer is the real Austin Wells.

From June 6th to August 31st, Austin Wells hit .299/.388/.542. Can you imagine a world where someone gets on-base in front of Judge almost 40% of the time? Oh right, his name was Juan Soto. Wells is the next best bet to recreate that run-producing magic at the top of the order. So what if Wells doesn't have speed? The Yankees won't run in front of Judge anyway, for good reason.

The only issue, in my mind, is that Wells struggles against left-handed pitching, but even there, Wells posted strong walk rates against lefties. Batting a lefty atop the order also helps lineup balance the rest of the way through. To me, this is a no-brainer.