Angels Star Shortstop Could Work As A Cleanup Hitter

The Los Angeles Angels had a lineup problem this season, and a small part of it was about Zach Neto. Neto had a rough season, both offensively and defensively, and the Angels considered trading their star shortstop at the deadline before they rejected what were reportedly a series of inferior offers. 

They’re keeping Neto for now, but there are multiple questions associated with doing this. Neto was the Halos’ leadoff hitter for most of the season, and he was ineffective for a number of reasons. 

The biggest was his chase rate and strikeouts, both of which were off-the-charts high. Neto came into the season hunting homers, and his overall numbers suffered as a result. He struck out 215 times in 619 at-bats, and for every game where Neto sparked the Angels with a leadoff home run, you can find five or more where he killed big rallies by failing to put the ball in play.

There was one intriguing experiment that worked surprisingly well, however. Manager Kurt Suzuki dropped Neto into the cleanup spot in midseason to try to shake him out of a slump, and Neto looked like he belonged there. It was the one spot in the lineup where his tendency to chase could be justified, and he responded with an impressive but brief power surge. 

The “brief” part of his was never really explained by Suzuki, which is just one reason why he should be fired. One justification would be that the manager only had three genuine hitters in his lineup, with Mike Trout and Wade Meckler being the other two, especially during the second half of the season. 

Neto never really addressed the issue of whether he was comfortable hitting in the four hole, but he did rebound late in the season. He stopped chasing and started spraying, and he managed to boost his average to almost .240 as he finished with a slash line of .239/330/.439 with an OPS of .766.

We still don’t know if Neto fits going forward, and we won’t until new ownership takes control next year. But the eye test this year said he’d look just fine in the middle of the lineup, especially if the Angels decide to slow crawl their rebuild by taking stock initially. 

The other part of his is whether new ownership intends to pay Neto. His contract would currently land in the area of a $40 million AAV, but a lot of that depends on life after the lockout. But Neto’s a keeper, and he could be a clean-up hitter once the Halos get it together and start to build a real baseball team.