Better Than Picking From A Hat?
Posted by Steve L. on February 24th, 2006 · Comments (5)
According to David Pinto’s awesome Baseball Musings Lineup Analysis tool, the Yankees best 2006 line-up would be:
1. Giambi
2. Sheffield
3. Jeter
4. A-Rod
5. Matsui
6. Cano
7. Posada
8. Williams
9. Damon
Great timing, as I’m previewing a copy of “The Book” by Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman, and Andrew Dolphin – in which their findings say that your three best hitters should bat somewhere in the #1, #2, and #4 slots. And your 4th and 5th best hitters should bat in the #3 and #5 slots.
It all seems to synch up.
But, I’ll say this, Jessica Simpson has a better shot at making Mensa than Jason Giambi does of ever batting lead-off for the Yankees.
I’m a big advocate of letting Giambi bat second with Jeter ahead of him. Both Jeter and Giambi get on base at (or close to) a .400 clip, which is exactly what you want the top 2 guys to do.
Pinto added a feature that calculates the number of runs a lineup would score:
http://tinylink.com/?V63OtqanAl
According to that, the WORST Yankee lineup would still score 5+ runs a game.
I certainly appreciate what all you stats guys come up with and some of it actually makes sense but baseball is not played in an excel spreadsheet. Would Giambi clogging the bases batting leadoff not result in double-plays and the kind of station-to-station style of baseball that HASN’T worked for the Yanks and A’s over the past few years? I know that stats may seem to be the answer to everything but 100 years of baseball hasn’t been completely wrong…
I don’t think GIDP would be all that relevant. Boggs batted leadoff and scored a fair number of runs.
Don’t feel like doing the legwork right now WRT team numbers, but Paul O’Neill led the league in GIDP in 1998.
Now, if Giambi would bunt on the shift, wow, what a lead-off hitter he would be!