Who bats 9th?

[Jack of Arcades]

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It's retarded. Bat your worst player 9th.

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you don't always bat your worst hitter 9th, saying this is naive. it depends on the makeup of your lineup and what you have as far as power and speed. the OP has a point and it is very effective if the team has the correct perssonnel to do so though that its not always the case as well.

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Obviously if you want to alternate L/R better or something, you might move him up a spot, but having a second "table-setter" is not an optimal strategy. Lineup construction has more or less been solved. "Optimal Lineups" are essentially:

#1. Traditional Leadoff Hitter is usually oka here, you want to stick your best hitter that doesn't hti a ton of homers. You can sacrifice some OBP for speed.
2-9 order your best hitters by 1.8OBP+SLG

Doesn't do much, of course. Maybe 15 runs over a season. Still, that's about $2 million...

[rwperu34]

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[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
It's retarded. Bat your worst player 9th.

[/ QUOTE ]
you don't always bat your worst hitter 9th, saying this is naive. it depends on the makeup of your lineup and what you have as far as power and speed. the OP has a point and it is very effective if the team has the correct perssonnel to do so though that its not always the case as well.

[/ QUOTE ]

Obviously if you want to alternate L/R better or something, you might move him up a spot, but having a second "table-setter" is not an optimal strategy. Lineup construction has more or less been solved. "Optimal Lineups" are essentially:

#1. Traditional Leadoff Hitter is usually oka here, you want to stick your best hitter that doesn't hti a ton of homers. You can sacrifice some OBP for speed.
2-9 order your best hitters by 1.8OBP+SLG

Doesn't do much, of course. Maybe 15 runs over a season. Still, that's about $2 million...

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Let me get this straight. You want David Ortiz to bat #2 for the 2005 Red Sox?

[Jack of Arcades]

Yes. He will get approximately 20 more PA, and when he comes to bat at the beginning of the game he'll always be batting with 0 or no outs. Unless you have two great hitters in front of him, you'll rarely have two men on for him anyway, and you're pretty much assured that his at-bats will come with less expectancy because there will be 1 ot 2 out.

[rwperu34]

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Yes. He will get approximately 20 more PA, and when he comes to bat at the beginning of the game he'll always be batting with 0 or no outs. Unless you have two great hitters in front of him, you'll rarely have two men on for him anyway, and you're pretty much assured that his at-bats will come with less expectancy because there will be 1 ot 2 out.

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If all things were equal, including the OBA/SLG relationship, this would be a great way to optimize your lineup. But if you have a player with a 350/585 hitting right in front of a player with a 400/450, you will be costing yourself runs.

Also, the EV of a basepath clogger like David Ortiz being on base and a speed deamon like Johnny Damon or even a normal slow guy like Bill Mueller is not the same, no matter how many outs. So you set your lineup so Ortiz is more likely to come up with runners on and less likely to be starting rallys. That would be #3 or #4, with two or three of your better batters are hitting right in front of him, not #2, where two of your worst hitters will be hitting in front of him.

[Jack of Arcades]

in your 400/450 vs 350/585 example, the two hitters are almost equal with the altter being *slightly* better. Depending on a) your other hitters, b)the handedness of the batters, c) speed, etc, you might put either one in front of the other without it costing you much at all.

PS: Cookie Monster's big, but even he can score from 2nd on a single. Putting someone like Bill Mueller in front of him is idiotic. Mueller has no business getting 20 more PA than Ortiz.

[tdarko]

jack,

i agree with what you have said (to a degree) since my post, but i don't think that a lineup is going to ever be concrete.

for instance some teams will hide their worst hitter (a defensive guy) in the 8th spot to try and open up big innings in different ways. having two speed guys go 9-1-2 to start an inning is a very dangerous thing and very scary to pitchers, a lot of big innings start this way. for instance, if the 9 and 1 hole scrap their way on now a traditional 2 hole who typically is known for handling a bat very well has many options...with speed on the bases he can hit & run, run & hit--this opens up the field and produces a lot of holes...if he is left handed (a lot of 2 hole hitters are) this gives him a chance to hit behind the runner to move them over--now that gap between 1st and 2nd has expanded greatly b/c of the speed on the bases (having to hold them on).

i am just saying that lineups have been effective in many ways and you can't just say put your worst hitter last. sometimes you need to be creative with what you have.

as for david ortiz and him being in the 2 hole, there is a good reason for that. first off i have him in the 3 hole instead of the 4 hole so that he does get more at bats and actually sacrifice a few RBI's which is the very reason he is in the 3 hole and not batting in the 2 hole. at the end of the season his RBI total is way more valuable than his at bat total and you simply will not get the RBI's batting second or barry bonds, a-rod, manny and every great power guy in the league would be batting leadoff instead of even second. mueller's couple extra ab's mean virtually nothing but ortiz's tons of extra chances with mean in scoring position not only mean a ton to his stats but the team as well.

[Jack of Arcades]

tdarko,

re: ortiz, you're not trying to maximize his rbi total, but to maximize your teams run total. While Ortiz might lose some RBI, they'd surely be picked up by Manny. Plus, you more quickly get to your heavy hitters so that you have Ortiz coming up with 0 out a lot more often. this will maximize your big innings. I'm sure you'd be sweating if you saw a formidable 3/4/5 come up - why let the pitcher settle down and get a relatively easy out at #2? I mean, if you've got Rickey and Raines you'd go 1/2, and maybe even Damon/Youks, but batting a weak hitter at #2 is the cardinal sin of lineup construction.

As for the #9 hole, it's a good thing there are a lot of crappy hitters that are fast. that way you can put them in the 9 hole... [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[rwperu34]

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in your 400/450 vs 350/585 example, the two hitters are almost equal with the altter being *slightly* better.

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Fine. You don't want a 400/400 hitting right after a 375/610.

[Jack of Arcades]

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in your 400/450 vs 350/585 example, the two hitters are almost equal with the altter being *slightly* better.

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Fine. You don't want a 400/400 hitting right after a 375/610.

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Of course not. Your 400/400 should be batting leadoff!

[DougOzzzz]

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It's retarded. Bat your worst player 9th.

[/ QUOTE ]
you don't always bat your worst hitter 9th, saying this is naive. it depends on the makeup of your lineup and what you have as far as power and speed. the OP has a point and it is very effective if the team has the correct perssonnel to do so though that its not always the case as well.

[/ QUOTE ]

Obviously if you want to alternate L/R better or something, you might move him up a spot, but having a second "table-setter" is not an optimal strategy. Lineup construction has more or less been solved. "Optimal Lineups" are essentially:

#1. Traditional Leadoff Hitter is usually oka here, you want to stick your best hitter that doesn't hti a ton of homers. You can sacrifice some OBP for speed.
2-9 order your best hitters by 1.8OBP+SLG

Doesn't do much, of course. Maybe 15 runs over a season. Still, that's about $2 million...

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I'd wager ordering players by a more OBP-heavy version of OPS (maybe 3*OBP+SLG) would have a stronger correlation with run production.