THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Where to bat Soriano?

Alfonso Soriano has big splits.  Per 600 PA, comparing bases empty and men on base:
BE: 100 singles, 33 HR, 40 2b+3b, 27 NIBB
MO:  95 singles, 26 HR, 36 2b+3b, 29 NIBB

His wOBA are: .379 with bases empty and .344 with men on base.  IIRC, the difference for the average player is a 5 point drop or so.  I’m sure someone can correct me.  But, he’s got a 35 point difference here (based on almost 3000 PA with bases empty and 2000 with men on base).  One standard deviation is roughly a 15 point difference, so we see here a difference of around 2 standard deviations. 

While that doesn’t necessarily mean that Soriano definitely prefers to bat with bases empty, it points very strongly toward that.  Soriano would be a good case study for PITCHf/x: how often does he take/swing at each count?  How often does he do so when a pitch is at the fringes of the strike zone (+/- 15 inches from the middle, excluding +/- 5 inches in the middle)?  If he actually approaches the PA differently, then this would point to his sample data being more indicative of something real.

While I can generally agree with Joe “BP” Sheehan’s article, I have concerns with Soriano. 

As for the pitcher batting 8th causing strategic headaches: if this forces a manager to pinch hit for him earlier a couple of times a year, this is a good thing.  A reliever is usually a better bet than a starter his third time through the order.  (One day, some MLB team will wakeup, and go with a 5-day rotation, where you have 3 regular starters for the 1st, 3rd, 4th day, and an all-relief rotation for the 2nd and 5th day.  At the very least, do this in September, when you’ve got plenty of called up young guns who can easily go 1 or 2 innings.)

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Pitchers batting 8th

David Pinto makes the case to bat the pitcher 8th.  Readers of The Book already know this is a decent strategy.

(Click on the “Batting Order” category link at the bottom of this blog entry for more articles on the topic.)

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Batting the pitcher 8th?

John Beamer is on board as well:

Looking at the NL as a whole and using the same model that we used for the Cardinals we can replicate (or at least attempt to) these results. My calculations suggest that moving an average pitcher to the eighth hole results in an increase of about 0.7 runs per year, slightly less than what The Book found. Moving the hurler further back to number seven is no different to batting the hurler ninth, which is identical to the conclusion in The Book.

That’s for the average NL team.  But, for specific teams, like the Cards, you have two wrinkles: 1. Albert Pujols is not your typical #3 or #4 hitter.  Plus, it would likely matter if you model him as the #3 or #4 hitter.  2. Cards pitchers are better than average.  As I showed in The Book, the “second leadoff theory” doesn’t apply to the AL.  So, there’s a point, somewhere between the average NL pitcher and the average AL #9 hitter where it doesn’t matter where you put your worst hitter (8th or 9th).  More accurately, we’re talking about the gap between the two worst hitters.

If John is around, can you take the typical NL slot numbers, and alter the #9 hitter upward enough until you get a breakeven as him being 8th or 9th?  And part 2: take the typical NL slot numbers, and replace the #3 with Pujols, and then the #4 with Pujols.  What’s the breakeven point for pitchers in each case?

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Optimizing the Batting Order

I’d like to go through a real-life example of how to optimize a batting order.  I give all the mechanics in The Book, so I’ll reserve discussion about the application of those tools here.  What I would like from you is:

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