Fredi Gonzalez and the lineup
by craig on Apr 16, 2008 8:39 AM EDT
in News and Rumors
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PrintFredi Gonzalez is contemplating some lineup changes.
Marlins second baseman Dan Uggla (hitting .191) continues to bat second, but managerFredi Gonzalez said he has considered changing that. There is some internal sentiment that Uggla is not well-suited there. ''He's probably a 3, 4, 5, 6 hitter,'' hitting coach Jim Presley said
Manager Fredi Gonzalez isn't worried about Uggla, and he has no immediate plans of moving him out of the No. 2 spot in the lineup.
While it is true that Danny isn't what most think of for a prototypical number two hitter, that doesn't mean it is bad slot for him either. Uggla started slow last season posting a .219/.294/.429 in April before tearing it up in May.
To continue the thought on the lineup, one day Hanley won't be hitting lead-off, he will most likely bat third.
But here's the deal, the Marlins aren't having any trouble scoring runs. Sure sometimes they come in bunches and at other times they can't seem to string hits together. But unless Fredi is clairvoyant there is no way to know which two or three players will produce the hits in every game.
Example: the Marlins had nine hits on Saturday against the Astros and didn't score a run. Last night they only had seven hits against the Braves and were able to put four on the board. (Granted, two runs came via gift walks with the bases loaded.) And in both cases virtually the same lineup order was in place.
For now and maybe the rest of the season, just let everyone hit where they are comfortable and they will put up runs. And as everyone knows, the lineup order isn't a major problem -- the major problem is the starting pitching. Get the starters lined out and then mess with the batting order, if you must.
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99 problems
Study after study has shown that lineup order has shockingly little to do with total runs scored, unless you do something really awful like have your best hitters 5-8 and your worst hitters 1-4. But I do think it’s important for player production. I can see how a hitter would get all messed up by hitting in a certain spot and changing their approach. So the Fish just need to make sure each hitter sticks to the approach that works best for them, no matter where they hit.
I don’t think the starting pitching is the biggest problem. Of course everyone knows the Marlins pitchers won’t be much better than average at best. The real problem is still the defense. They have the 2nd worst DER in the league (only SF is worse). Tons of hits are dropping in between fielders. You guys would know better than me where they are dropping.
Exactly.
Once you have the right players in the lineup (which likely isn’t the case now, but that’s another story for another time), batting order optimization is the kind of thing that maybe over the course of the whole season might net you an extra win.
In fact, running last night’s lineup through Pinto’s optimizer (which, I should note, only focuses on OBA/SLG, rather than handedness, GBs, Ks, etc. and thus is not truly optimal) Fredi’s lineup should score 4.786 runs per game. The most optimal ordering? 4.845. That’s nine and a half runs over the course of a season—just under one win.
Roster construction is important; lineup construction is not.
depth
it seems to me that the fish have a lot of players that could potentially be everyday players on a lot of other teams. Does anyone know how deep our roster is relative to other teams? To me it seems fairly deep and well constructed.
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