Deconstructing Kendall

On the morning of June 3rd Ned Yost awoke to find Jason Kendall hitting .287/.347/.348 and made the inexplicable decision to bat him second from there on out. While that line wasn't awful it also wasn't accurate because in Kendall's previous 38 games he hit .258/.329/.320, meaning his numbers were already trending downward. Since being installed as the everyday #2 hitter he's hit .240/.296/.269 and amazingly Yost hasn't moved him down in the lineup.

Yost can talk he wants about Kendall's bat control and veteran presence but the numbers are there for the world to see and they're not good. For the season he's at .241/.295/.273 in the two hole (he had three starts there prior to June 3rd). The MLB averages for number two hitters are .273/.337/.404 - Kendall isn't just below average, he's way below average. His sOPS+ is 55 making him 45% worse than a league average two hitter. And still he bats second everyday!!!!

sOPS+ is OPS+ split adjusted and his numbers across the board are just dreadful. Here are some sOPS+ numbers for the struggling Kendall:

Split	League	Kendall	sOPS+
as 2 hitter	.273/.337/.404	.241/.295/.269	55
as catcher	.249/.320/.380	.260/.318/.302	79
home	.266/.336/.420	.277/.352/.328	83
away	.252/.318/.391	.244/.285/.280	61
1st half	.259/.329/.406	.271/.333/.320	80
2nd half	.258/.323/.402	.231/.277/.256	49

And this is just his offense. On defense, where he was supposed to be an upgrade, he has 13 errors and 6 passed balls. (It'd be too easy to do another John Buck comparison but you can click here to see his splits.) Yost has talked about giving Brayan Pena more time but, really, what's the point in doing that this late in the year? I don't think there's anyone who believes Pena will be in Kansas City next year, Lucas May has hit .291/.351/.503 in AAA this year and seems the likely choice to back up Kendall in 2011.

I didn't get the Kendall signing when it happened and I don't get it now and I especially don't get why he continues to bat second. In fact, I probably never will.