Never thought I'd see the names "Royce Clayton" and "Norma Shearer" in the same paragraph.

Yes, I could envision Royce being the object of Norma's affection in some pre-Code drama coming to Film Forum next week. Of course, in 1931 what would have happened is he'd get a bit too close to the real-life Norma for Irving Thalberg's tastes, and he'd wind up at Paramount playing leading man to the young, pre-"Twentieth Century" Carole Lombard in some programmer.

Somebody's been watching a little too much TCM. Just kidding, I like your plot.

I think that the #6 slot in the batting order might be the first one where you want to look at the AL and NL separately because of the DH. In the NL, there are 5 traditional hitting positions - 1B, 3B, LF, CF, and RF, whereas, in the AL, there are 6 traditional hitting positions - add the DH. So, to some extent, in the NL, the #6 hitter is the best hitter at a fielding position, whereas in the AL, the #6 hitter is the worst hitter at a hitter's position.

I notice, for example, that of Steve's top (bottom?) 10, he only has 2 post-DH ALers, whereas, I think he's got 6 post-DH NLers (and 2 pre-DHers). The honorable mention list for post-DH players also looks to have more NLers (although only 8-5, so it's not a huge difference).

True, Derek Jeter's name should have been Royce Clayton.

Instead Jeter's trying his Royce impersonation this season. :-)

Steve's a little harsh on Clayton. Teams were clearly always happy with his defense (I have no opinion) and he was roughly an average hitter for a SS through about age 31 or so. He was a perfectly fine starting SS choice up to that point -- one you'd always be looking to upgrade but more than good enough to be starting for somebody. It's the remaining 800 games of his career which are a bit more of a mystery.

timing.

royce had a decent season in SF a year or two before TLR went to st. louis and decided that ozzie was done. even though royce had already reverted to form by the time he was the regular st. louis shortstop, i guess tony wanted to show who was boss and let royce hang around too long. i think all the other teams felt like he deserved a shot if he had been the guy to take over for smith.

There are three post-season teams in those top ten ('81 Phils, '85 Cards, '02 Braves)

Exactly right, Walt. The baseball world is littered with everyday shortstops who hit about as well as Clayton through age 31, from Carrasquel and Roy McMillan to Rafael Ramirez, Omar Vizquel and Orlando Cabrera.

Clayton had his biggest offensive year at age 29, and so I guess teams lived on the memory of what he could do for longer than usual...

Hey, Royce Clayton is married to a former British Olympic sprinter. If that isn't star power, I don't know what is...

By the time you get to #6 hitters, you start to get way too many cases of "And what else were they supposed to do?" Steve winds up looking at the #7 and #8 hitters in several of his cases and admitting as much.

And there he goes picking on another Whitey-era Cardinal team. And yes, Pendleton stunk, despite blowing into the big leagues looking like a hitter, and despite having a future in which he'd be a hitter again. (Of course, he should have played - that team was all about defense, and his defense mattered, maybe especially to John Tudor.) The problem, as Steve mentions, is that they also had Ozzie, and Ozzie was a good hitter - a good hitter of a leadoff shape. Had Coleman not been around, Ozzie could have batted leadoff; in fact, when Coleman wasn't around after the tarp roller incident, Smith did bat leadoff.

Try to figure out what you could have done with that lineup. Coleman wasn't much use anywhere except leadoff, but as a leadoff hitter, his baserunning did have just enough value to justify putting him there. Now, anyone want to complain about batting McGee second? For sure, McGee isn't going to complain about it. With Coleman and McGee, there are an awful lot of runners in scoring position - to cash them in merely requires batting average, and Herr had the best batting average around. (And with the unique opportunity, became a 100+ RBI singles hitter). Clark should bat cleanup? Sure. After that, the best hitter was Van Slyke, so Van Slyke should have batted 5th (and he should have played more than he did, and he shouldn't have been traded for Tony Pena ...). That leave three spots to determine, and the players available were Smith, Pendleton, and the catchers, Nieto and Porter. Porter was a pretty good, albeit low-BA, hitter when he played, but he couldn't play all the time. Nieto had just as low a BA, and without Porter's walks or power. Probably Porter should have batted 6th when he played, but not Nieto. (In fact, Porter batted a fair amount of cleanup after Clark got hurt and before Cedeno got rolling on his miracle month.) With Nieto in the lineup, maybe it makes marginally more sense to bat Smith 6th, but his lack of power doesn't make him much of an RBI guy.

Other lineups to think about:

1. Coleman, 2. O. Smith, 3. McGee, 4. Clark, 5. Van Slyke, 6. Herr, 7. Porter/Nieto, 8. Pendleton, 9. pitcher.

Or for the more radical approach:

2. O. Smith, 2. McGee, 3. Clark, 4. Van Slyke, 5. Herr, 6. Porter/Nieto, 7. Pendleton, 8. pitcher, 9. Coleman.

But with the lineup they had, I remember Bill James mentioning in his next year's Abstract that the Cardinals were the only team in which the runs scored by lineup position went in perfect descending order from leadoff down.