Optimizing the batting order

Though with the caveat that I have been known to view a number of guys fairly differently than the rest of the people here.

1) Hanley - sort of similar to the problem with Pujols: he’s so good at so many things, he’s the best choice at a number of slots; so all things being equal, I’ll give him the most PAs
2) Hermida - cue the outrage… I still say he’s a top-3 OBP and wOBA guy in this lineup. Both he and Uggla would be able to leverage their strikeouts here, but I think the OBP difference is greater than the K difference.
3) Uggla - based on the combination of ISO and Ks, however…
4) Ross - …there’s no obvious distinction between the third- and fourth-best hitters.
5) Gaby - having put Uggla at 3 instead of 5, I basically just looked for OBP here. The lack of Ks should also help, what with the likely men in scoring position.
6) Maybin - speed in front of singles
7) Baker — hello singles
8) Pitcher
9) Cantu

The problem with Baker on either side of the Pitcher is that it presents consecutive lefties if McPherson were to pinch. And considering the relative importance of lineup optimization and separating lefties, that may actually change things. I dunno, this is a tough lineup for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that guys like Gaby and Maybin and Baker haven’t established their talent levels and peripherals at the MLB level. Perhaps more than any team in baseball, I’d say the morale of guys re: their spot is likely more important than the handful of runs gained by optimizing. And yes, I really did just promote an intangible over analytics. First people give Samson props, now this… the world may end before we ever get to the new stadium.

I’d also note that there are a number of guys with significant splits, so things may be much clearer doing RHP and LHP lineups. I may take a shot later tonight.

Obviously if, as I said before, optimizing the lineup is made more difficult by having so many guys with unestablished talent levels and peripherals, that difficulty is magnified many times over when working with splits. But I’ll give it a go anyway…

vs. RHP
1) Hanley
2) Hermida
3) Cantu
4) Uggla
5) McPherson
6) Ross
7) Maybin
8) Pitcher
9) Baker

Initially I had Cantu and McPherson switched, but McPherson gets moved to separate from Hermida.

vs. LHP
1) Hanley
2) Gaby
3) Uggla
4) Ross
5) Cantu
6) Hermida
7) Maybin
8) Pitcher
9) Baker

I don’t know exactly what to make of Cantu coming out at 3/5 here and 9 in the single. I mean, I know that I didn’t see much of a drop from Cantu to Baker, and so I felt ok putting Baker at 7 and Cantu 9, to combine Maybin’s speed and Baker’s lack of power. But even thinking about Cantu as a 7 in the single vs. 3/5 split is odd. Looking back over things, I think this is an interesting side-effect of everyone else’s splits. With so many guys who have significant splits (the Gaby/McPherson swap, Ross vs. lefties, etc), Cantu stands out as being steady against both. So while a few guys drop because of their splits on one side, and a few guys drop on the other, Cantu rises on both sides.

Whatevs. Just an exercise anyway, right? Besides not really mattering in terms of runs produced, it literally doesn’t matter because I’m not called upon to write the lineup card. So I’m content in saying that this is how it would come out based on my numbers, but garbage in/garbage out, so your results may vary.

I’d love the idea of batting him 9th so he can hit in front of Hanley. At least until he proves himself as a major leaguer.

For the numbers guys… With the 1,2,3 combination coming up to start the game and the #9 getting a lot of 3rd outs potentially, does that make it the most common innings starter or does it come out fairly uniform over the year? Is it significant enough that the 9 to 1 transition isn’t as important?