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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Thursday, March 19, 2009
1. Russell Martin
2. Manny Ramirez
3. Orlando Hudson
4. Matt Kemp
5. Andre Ethier
6. Casey Blake
7. James Loney
8. Pitcher’s spot
9. Rafael Furcal
2nd spot: Manny Ramirez. Ramirez is projected to have the highest OBP and SLG on the team. He is not the leadoff hitter (despite the .031 OBP advantage over Martin) because of his .527 slugging percentage. While batting Ramirez first would provide close to an additional 1 1/2 wins, it would also reduce the value of his excellent SLG. Batting Ramirez second will not only increase his plate appearances (the 2 spot had 17 extra plate appearances last season than the 3 spot for the Dodgers and 32 more than the 4 spot) but it will not be all that different than batting him 3rd as Furcal (if I had my way) will be in the 9 spot acting as a back of the line-up lead-off hitter.
3 spot: Orlando Hudson. With Martin and Ramirez batting 1 and 2, the 3 spot doesn’t need to be a power hitter. If both men are on, all that is needed is a single to drive in Martin. A successful at-bat for Hudson can even be to simply move the runners along so that the batters behind him can drive them in. If neither is on, Hudson’s job is to get on base so that Kemp and Ethier can move him around.
And Joe Torre can move around the dunny as he does a doubleshit take.
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Wait, so batting Ramirez leadoff would result in 1.5 wins, but the writer things it shouldn't be done because Ramirez will knock in more runs batting second? Isn't that similar to people intentionally reducing their income to fall into a lower tax bracket?
Yeah, only a moron wouldn't bat the pitcher eighth. I mean, everyone knows that.
Yeah, only a moron wouldn't bat the pitcher eighth. I mean, everyone knows that.
And if he thinks it makes some sense for Manny Ramirez to bat leadoff, then maybe the pitcher should bat seventh so there are as many men on base as possible for Manny. Or sixth!
An interesting investigation into statistics, though.
It's probably true, but the fun of fretting over batting orders will always trump the statistical truism of it.
So batting order is not truly irrelevant, just not worth losing sleep over. And there's something to be said for having a relatively stable order over the course of the season.
They are not obvious to me.
It does matter, but only in the margins.
Didn't RTFA, but Hulkower seems to have read "The Book" - they say bat your best guy 2nd, and Manny is certainly the Dodgers best hitter.
The quantitative description is that an optimal batting order can get you 5-15 more runs in a season. (This has been the case since I started looking at this several years ago, and has not changed since.) How you want to qualitatively say that "a little" or "a lot" is up to you. The numeric description is more accurate in any case, and will not change. That's the only thing you have to keep up with.
Also: remember that moving pitchers from the 8th slot (best) to 4th slot (worst) will cost your team 0.1 runs per game. That's the breadth of impact in making the single worst decision that no one would ever make.
***
Your best hitter should *generally* bat 2nd or 4th. It could happen that he will bat 1st (Rickey, Raines), it could happen that he will bat 3rd. You'd have to look at your entire set of players.
However, it will be very very difficult to find a situation where your five best hitters will not bat somewhere in the top 5. This may seem obvious to everyone here, but I think it's easy to find teams that put one of their 2 or 3 worst hitters in the 2-hole.
***
Also, since star hitters have huge egos, you have to defer to their inner child, as their petulance will easily evaporate the carefully crafted 5-15 run gain you can otherwise hope to get.
It's a fun toy, but the results truly are meaningless. For most lineups, you'd be better off just summing the players' stats and ingoring lineup entirely.
I wouldn't've thought petulance was so well-measured.
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