Pirates 4, Yankees 2

Fred’s batted ball stats don’t say whether his shoulder is bothering him, but it might. Maybe he’s not hitting the ball on the ground or on a line “right at” people, maybe he’s just not hitting either with authority. Look at this doubles, or IsoP. I can’t prove it, but I don’t think he’s hitting the ball well enough or hard enough to Get Lucky. I’m solidly in the “move him down” camp. He can be just as unlucky hitting 8th.

Another thing I can’t prove (but will argue to the death about), is that lineup construction matters little. I think it matters somewhat more than “little”. I’m familiar with the research, but I think the method doesn’t reflect real life. It removes game context, and running numbers over the course of a season won’t tell you if a black hole at #2 (or #1, or anywhere) is consistently killing rallies.

Put another way, you’re admitting there is a difference, however small. So if you had to win one game, how would you construct your lineup? I think most people would use what research has shown, or what intuitively tells you gives the best chance of scoring the most runs. I can’t prove intuition or common sense, but someone with no baseball knowledge could probably pick up a newspaper with a minimum of stats and construct a lineup for one game very close to the one that research shows also gives the most runs over the course of a year. MLB teams don’t play “162 games.” They play “a game” 162 times. I think it’s an important difference that is ignored by lineup analysis research, as well as some other modern statistical analysis.

That said, I understand that it works both ways. I was at the 2nd game of the Yankees-Pirates series, and there was a play in the 2nd where Jack Wilson singled with two out and two on. Beasley waved home Doumit, who was out by as much as I’ve ever seen anyone be out by. Forget the ridiculous “the pitcher was up next argument”. Instead, think of what the situation would have been if Duke batted 8th and Jack 9th. It would have been Duke up with two out and two on, and Russell might have been wishing he’d re-reversed Duke and Jack. I mean, all things being equal, would you rather have Jack or Duke up at that point? That’s game context that running numbers for 162 games will never, ever tell you.

Off topic—did anyone catch the last line of Dejan’s Q&A today? Spooooky. I wonder if he thinks or has a good idea that a trade will happen between now and then, or if whatever is in Sunday’s “Inside Pirates” in the PG will spark some hot debate.

Reasearch shows that the order of a lineup makes very little difference in the outcome of a game other than the fact that the leadoff hitter is guaranteed to leadoff at least once per game. The only other advantage is that each position in the lineup will get about 17 more appearances than the position directly below them in the lineup over 162 games. For example, the #3 hitter will get about 17 appearances more than the #4 hitter over an entire season and 34 appearances more than the #5 hitter over a complete season(it’s cumulative). This means that by batting Sanchez #2 (who is batting .230) and Wilson #8 (who is batting .300) that Sanchez will get 102 more appearances than Wilson (17×6) and that makes no sense at all. I wish someone who explain this fact to Russell so he could drop Sanchez in the batter order and maximize the team’s offense to get the most production possible out of it.