Hold the Mayo

April 14, 2007

Who's On First

When I was young I played a lot of baseball. I played Little League and even drove in the winning run in the Championship game. I used to watch a lot of baseball too. Growing up we had only one TV in the house and if there was a Red Sox game on, that is what we watched. Not that I'm complaining. Those were the days when Yastremski was in left field, Fisk was behind the plate and unfortunately Billy Buckner was on first base.

As I've gotten older I've sort of lost interest. Though it was thrilling when the the Sox finally won the world series.

I was listening to the radio the other day and the sports guy was doing his banter with the morning hosts discussing rumored changes to the batting line-up for one of the New York teams. I don't remember which team or any of the names involved. The problem they all had was that according to the rumor they were going to put this guy who was a power hitter second in the batting order. They were in universal agreement that this was all wrong.

I just can't help but wonder if it really matters.

I understand the theory. You want a lead off batter who is good at getting on base - and if you're lucky fast enough to steal a base. Batters 2 and 3 are mostly geared to moving that base-runner forward so that the clean up man can bring him home. It's a great plan on paper. The problem I have understanding it is that after the first inning it doesn't matter. If the first three batters make an out, your lead off hitter in the second inning is your power hitting guy.

I know baseball lives on stats. So maybe someone out there can tell me how many times in a season does the lead off batter score a run in the first inning? If this strategy works 50% of the time I guess you'd have to do it because it would work half the time for the other team too. But if it's much less than 50% it seems rather pointless to base your entire batting lineup on the fist inning.

I would think alternating power hitters with high on-bace percentage hitters would be a better run producing strategy over the course of the game.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 03:48 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment

1 The first inning is the only time you get to tailor your hitters for optimum performance, so why not take advantage? You place your weakest hitters at the bottom of the lineup so that they bat as late in the game as possible, and if the batting order rolls around again your 'top of the order' will get the extra at-bat before your less effective batters.

Also, power hitters tend to strike out more, so ordering your lineup so that they're batting every other batter can be a real rally-killer, assuming everything goes according to average.

Baseball is a game of exceptions. A good hitter still makes an out seven out of ten times. Still, you always start the runner with two outs, you always bring in a lefty to pitch to a right handed batter (and vice versa). Long experience and stats show that the advantages are small, but you need to know the percentages and take advantage of every last one of them to be successful over the long season.

Managers who don't (like Alou from the Giants for the last several seasons) would drive fans batshit crazy as he would make game decisions on a whim. Very occasionally he would look like a genius, but more often you'd be scratching your head wondering what he was thinking, while looking for a brick to throw at the TV.

Posted by: Ted at April 15, 2007 01:22 AM (+OVgL)

2 I would discuss with you this topic, but I'm off-top.

Posted by: Sammy at April 16, 2007 10:23 PM (OmPxo)

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