THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

"VS RIGHTIES

Fukudome, RF
Soto, C
Byrd, CF
Pena, 1B
Ramirez, 3B
Soriano, LF
DeWitt, 2B
Castro, SS

VS LEFTIES

Ramirez, 3B
Byrd, CF
Pena, 1B
Soto, C
Soriano, LF
Castro, SS
Baker, 2B
Fukudome, RF”

The author made the point that there’s no way the Cubs would bat the pitcher 8th, but he does realize that’s better for the lineup.

As the article highlights, the optimal lineup never has Colvin on the field; Fukudome is the better play either way.  Though it looks like Colvin is gonna be a near-full-time player

I used CAIRO’s split projections, which is from a tool berselius created based on The Book.  I’m sure some other projections would give slightly different lineups and there’s really a couple different ways you could do each lineup for that matter.

What’s the point of this? The Cubs (and no other team) will never bat A Ramirez leadoff, or Soto 2nd. There are certainly better ways to use the lineup research from the Book--- combining it with the other considerations that real teams use to establish their batting orders.

dave/4, the point was to just show what the optimal lineup is.  As for what the Cubs will do, well, this is the same team that batted Soto 8th last year even though he was their best hitter.  He hit 8th 38 times, 7th 40 times and no other spot more than 9 times.  So trying to use the research from The Book and applying it to a Cubs lineup while taking other things into considerations is kind of pointless.  Soto is going to bat 8th in 2011 and Koyie Hill will probably get about 40 or 50 starts more than he should.  Blake DeWitt is going to leadoff and Kosuke Fukudome won’t play much because the lesser outfielder, Tyler Colvin, will play every day.  Basically, take the research from The Book and throw it out the window because that’s what the Cubs are going to do.  There’s no fun in talking about the bad choices the Cubs are going to make.

Right, the Cubs won’t get much of it right. So, then, what would a *reasonable, somewhat sabermetrically inclined* team do? Such a team, like the A’s, might certainly choose to play Fuko over Colvin and install him at leadoff, even without going thru the Book procedure. All they have to do is look at his OBA and SLG, and the idea of leading him off will occur.

But the idea of batting A Ram 1st will never occur. If they go thru the Book procedure and that’s what they get, they will discard it.

OK, assuming we at least follow the rule from The Book that the best 5 hitters hit in the 5 top spots in some order, vs lefties who leads off?  Soto is the best hitter so you’d prefer not have him there.  Byrd and Soriano aren’t especially good at getting on base so I think you’d try to avoid either of them too.  That leaves Pena and Ramirez.  Neither of which any team would ever choose to leadoff.  I don’t disagree that teams would discard the information, but the Cubs lineup vs lefties isn’t easy to figure out if you’re going to use The Book and what teams are likely to do.