Recently, Kevin Kernan of the NY Post said the Mets are screwing up Michael Conforto by making him their leadoff hitter and not letting him hit in the middle of the order. Conforto has easily been the Mets best hitter and has not even been close. His OBP, slugging percentage, wOBA (weighted on base average), and wRC+ are all first on the team by a good margin.

Metrics say the best hitter should bat second. In 2016, leadoff hitters averaged around 4.35 plate appearances a game and about 705 PAs over a full season. The second hitter averaged around 4.21 plate appearances a game and about 682 PAs in a full season. So why is it worth sacrificing those extra plate appearances? Well if the leadoff hitter is good, the number two will have a lot of chances with men on base making it the optimal spot where he has a lot of chances with men on base and a lot of plate appearances.

Some examples of this have been Josh Donaldson in Toronto, Mike Trout in LA, Corey Seager for the Dodgers, and Kris Bryant for the Cubs.

The key statement I stated above is, “if the leadoff hitter is good.” The issue with the Mets is they don’t have many (if any) people capable of leading off outside Conforto.

In the full scheme of things, the Mets will not drastically score more runs or fewer runs because Conforto is hitting leadoff instead of second. Conforto creates runs out of the leadoff spot by getting on base and creating more opportunities for the people hitting behind him.

Jay Bruce has 75 RBI and it is fair to say a big reason he has so many RBI is due to the success of Michael Conforto. Conforto himself has 56 RBI while primarily being a leadoff hitter this season. If Conforto hit second and say the Mets had a 2015 version of Curtis Granderson leading off, then he could have 75-80 RBI right now.

Hitting him second would be optimal but doing that would mean you need another high OBP bat like Conforto such as 2015 Curtis Granderson. That brings up an interesting point though, 2015 Granderson and Conforto would be a incredible one-two combination at the top of the order, would it really matter what order they hit in? The answer is, not really. Both are 130 wRC+ hitters or better who hit for power and got on at a high rate.

Lineup protection is also not that imperative. Michael Conforto has succeeded this season despite having a league average Asdrubal Cabrera or other league average hitters hit behind him thus far. Jay Bruce’s worst streak this year came when he had a red hot Neil Walker hitting behind him.

A better example of this is with the Washington Nationals. Anthony Rendon is one of the best hitters in baseball and he hits sixth. Dusty Baker‘s reasoning is that Rendon protects Daniel Murphy and if he didn’t, then Murphy would never see a pitch to hit. Meanwhile, Matt Wieters and his 68 wRC+ protects Rendon. Between Rendon and Murphy, Rendon is having the better year and Rendon is having the second best season of any Nationals hitter despite having virtually no lineup protection behind him.

Good hitters find ways to succeed despite who’s hitting behind them. Lineup construction is fairly simple, have the better hitters hit earlier so they can have more PAs and get more PAs with men on base. Have the worse hitters bat lower so they have fewer PAs to not produce as many outs as they would if they hit earlier in the order.

Having a lot of good hitters on the team can definitely make lineup construction redundant. The Nationals still score lots of runs even though their configuration is certainly questionable. Asdrubal Cabrera keeps hitting second for the Mets but they still score runs because they get good production from 3-6 in their lineup on most nights.

So to quickly recap, the Mets are not ruining Michael Conforto by asking him to leadoff.