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Thursday, April 21, 2011
Nice article on ESPN Insider about batting order…
http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/insider/news/story?id=6395656
Same stuff we’ve read scores of times, but nicely reasoned and explained by the author, Matt Meyers. Here are some highlights (the bolding is mine):
For years, baseball lineups followed a pretty basic logic: fastest guy hits first, contact and/or fast hitter is next, high-average guy bats third, power bat in the cleanup spot and the next few guys in descending order of general skill. There was nothing scientific about this method—it seemed tied to some old-school vision of small ball—but many managers remain obsessed with it despite evidence that refutes the usefulness of such strategies as bunting and base stealing.
Frankly, it’s somewhat astonishing that clubs have not been quicker to rethink how they construct lineups. Would Albert Pujols really be offended if Tony La Russa said to him, “Research shows the best hitters should hit second or fourth, so I’m going to put you in one of those spots.” If anyone, you’d think La Russa, who has experimented with the pitcher batting eighth, would be open to such an idea. Shunning such comprehensive research in favor of tradition is both arrogant and ignorant. It’s like walking into your shrink’s office and he or she saying, “I know we’ve been treating you with Prozac, but I think we should try a prefrontal lobotomy like we used to do in the old days!”
You might dismiss my rantings by saying, “it’s just 11 runs.” My response: Isn’t that kind of the point? A huge focus of sabermetrics is finding small marginal advantages, and hoping then when you add them up they amount to a legitimate edge.
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