Lineup Construction
Or how my being terrible at baseball led a college coach to change his lineup
A few years ago I had a discussion with a college head coach about lineup construction.
He had recently moved his best hitter from third in the order to second and then first over a few games and I asked why.
“To get him more at-bats”, but that just didn’t seem to make much sense to me. How often does this make a difference?
Obviously, the closer to the top of the lineup you are the more you bat and over the course of a season and I suppose it could add a handful of plate appearances if the move were for an extended period of time.
The data I’m citing is older and just for two seasons, but the effect, at least at the MLB level, is minimal.
The average number of plate appearances by position for a leadoff hitter is about 4.7 per game. The number predictably goes down by approximately 0.1 for each spot lower in the order. A two-hole hitter gets an average of 4.6 at-bats per game, a three-spot guy gets 4.5 at-bats on average, a clean-up hitter gets 4.4, and so on down the list. It’s not exactly 0.1 each time, but it’s close enough to use it as a general rule.
The college regular season is 56 games. Moving a batter from 3rd to 1st for the entire season might mean 12 more plate appearances on average.
Doing it for two weeks (8-10 games), means somewhere between 1.6 and 2 additional plate appearances, assuming the same distribution of plate appearances per spot as the study above.
The reasoning was nonsense.
How does relate to the Astros?
Moving Jeremy Pena from 2nd to 1st would add about 15 plate appearances per year, assuming he bats 1st for 150 games, which he likely won’t.
The bigger change will come for Kyle Tucker, if this projected lineup becomes a thing.
Moving from 5th to 2nd means .3 plate additional appearances for Tucker every game he’s at No. 2 instead of No. 5.
It also means Tucker’s RBI go down, because instead of Altuve, Pena, Bregman and Alvarez ahead of him, he’ll likely have McCormick, Meyers, Maldonado, and Pena ahead of him, which means fewer runners on base.
But what about the bottom of that lineup? During our conversation, that same college coach quizzed me about the No. 9 spot and asked what I would do there.
I looked over his options and suggested a smallish 2nd baseman, who had been batting 7th or 8th in the lineup (when he even played) with an average in the .250 range, but an OBP closer to .400.
He wasn’t the worst hitter on the team, but with little pop, he wasn’t a priority for the coach.
I suggested he may want someone in the 9th spot that would more likely get on base, turn the lineup over and give the best hitter (the one he had moved to lead off) a better chance to bat with someone on base instead of leading off an inning.
Ironically, this thought was in my head because of my high school coach who placed me 9th in the line-up, which pissed me off.
I marched straight to his office and when asked about it my coach said, “You’re my second leadoff hitter.”
He was likely avoiding hurting my feelings, but there’s some validity to his point.
I was relatively fast, took a walk when offered most of the time, wasn’t terrible on the bases and got lucky once in a while.
In other words, I was decent at getting on base, but not good at hitting.
What if the Astros batted Maldonado 8th and Jake Meyers (assuming a return to 2021 OBP) or Chas McCormick 9th?
I don’t have any numbers to back it up, but that would seem to increase the odds that the leadoff man is going to bat with someone on.
That college coach? He batted the 2nd baseman 9th that night and he ended up being a huge part of a comeback win.
The experiment lasted a few more games and then it was done, but the point remains.
If you have the option, consider placing your worst batter 8th and a better option to reach base 9th.
The Astros have that option.