A couple of years ago, I discovered a pretty fascinating tool for putting together baseball lineups. I’m already envisioning most of the reactions from the “baseball purists” and the “anti sabermetrics” crowd. Just relax, guys. There MAY be a better way to approach building a lineup than what your grandfather told you on the front porch while you were listening to Harry Kalas (R.I.P, we miss you).
We’ve all heard all the “rules” of building a line up; You need speed at the top of the order, you need a contact hitter who can bunt in the two-hole, your best hitter hits third, and your best power guy hits clean up, and so on and so forth. Well, maybe that’s all wrong. I’m willing to go out on a limb and say at least some of it is. For me, the easiest one to get on board with debunking is, you need speed at the top of the line up. I don’t agree. Speed is way down on my list of priorities when choosing a lead-off man. First of all, by simple logic and mathematics, your lead-off man, over the course of a game and a season, will accumulate more at-bats than anyone else in the line up. That’s usually something you would leave to your best hitter. Besides, the lead-off man is only the lead-off man in the first inning. After that, he’s just the guy after the pitcher, and he’s probably the guy who got his 4th or 5th at-bat when the rest of the lineup didn’t. Call me crazy, but I don’t want Jimmy Rollins to have the most at-bats over the course of 162 games on this Phillies roster. That alone is enough for me to give some credence to this tool on baseballmusings.com.
Their lineup analysis tool takes the statistics of the players involved and creates the best lineup possible as far as run expectancy goes. The findings are always very interesting and usually quite unorthodox, which I can appreciate. Here’s what the computers had to say:
- Carlos Ruiz
- Hunter Pence
- Jimmy Rollins
- John Mayberry Jr.
- Shane Victorino
- Ty Wigginton
- Chase Utley
- Pitcher
- Placido Polanco
Tags: Carlos Ruiz, Charlie Manuel, Chase Utley, Domonic Brown, Hunter Pence, Jimmy Rollins, john mayberry jr., Johnny G, Placido Polanco, Ryan Howard, Shane Victorino., Ty Wigginton
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