There has been a lot of “fanager” talk over the season about the optimum Dodger lineup given our current roster. One of the favorite layman suggestions has been to drop Juan Pierre from the 2nd slot to the 8th — never mind the vocal folks who want to drop him altogether. ;)
In a discussion on lineups in the midst of a recent thread on Dodger Thoughts, one of the commenters linked to “Evaluating Traditional Lineups” on Retrosheet. For the sake of fun, I thought I’d pull a paragraph out of context and play around with the idea therein:
One pattern is clear here. The top three hitters in the lineup, both in terms of on-base and slugging percentage, hit 3rd, 4th and 5th, respectively. The players with the next two highest on-base percentages hit 1st and 2nd, followed by the rest of the hitters, in declining order of their on-base plus slugging percentages in the 6th through 9th slots.
This is based on the real-life composite NL and AL lineups of the years 1993-2004.
Now I should point out that the author warns against what I’m about to do…
Unfortunately, these small-scale subjects are usually what people care about. They don’t want to know about a composite Giants team from 1999 to 2004, they want to know about a single season. People aren’t concerned about generic teams, they want specific answers. How much did it cost the 1961 Yankees having Bobby Richardson leading off? Or having Horace Clarke in the same spot nine years later?
…but since I’m not conducting a scientific study, but rather a thought experiment, I’ll just ignore all that. ;)
Here is the Dodger roster sorted by OPS. Now, obviously I can’t just take the top 8 OPS players and plop them in the lineup. For one thing, Hong-Chih Kuo would be 7th on the list. But there are also position issues to keep in mind.
To no one’s surprise, Youth Is Served in the top OPS producers. Ignoring pitchers:
- Matt Kemp 1.007
- James Loney .942
- Wilson Betemit .866
- Russell Martin .844
- Jeff Kent .844
- Luis Gonzalez .835
- Andre Ethier .811
- Tony Abreu .743
- Rafael Furcal .729
So what might a hypothetical Dodger lineup look like going by the arbitrary OPS method?
- C Russell Martin
- 2B Jeff Kent
- CF Matt Kemp
- 1B James Loney
- 3B Wilson Betemit
- LF Luis Gonzalez
- RF Andre Ethier
- SS Rafael Furcal
- Pitcher
You’ll notice a couple of things to start with: no Juan Pierre, no Nomar, and Raffy is in the 8th spot. The composite lineup assumes what most managers and fans assume, that your fastest player or best base stealer will be batting leadoff. Let’s do a wee bit of rearranging:
- SS Rafael Furcal (S)
- C Russell Martin (R)
- 1B James Loney (L)
- CF Matt Kemp (R)
- 3B Wilson Betemit (S)
- 2B Jeff Kent (R)
- LF Luis Gonzalez (L)
- RF Andre Ethier (L)
- Pitcher
Now without getting too deep into it, that already looks like it would work well against lefties or righties. But since the arbitrary by-the-number method doesn’t keep handedness in mind, we could do an alternating setup that would take into account the players vs LHP/RHP (i.e. OPS filtered by LHP/RHP splits):
Versus LHP
- SS Rafael Furcal .838 (S)
- CF Matt Kemp 1.047 (R)
- 1B James Loney 1.179 (L)
- C Russell Martin 1.101 (R)
- 2B Jeff Kent 1.100 (R)
- LF Luis Gonzalez .904 (L)
- RF Andre Ethier .797 (L)
- 3B Wilson Betemit .751 (S)
- Pitcher
Versus RHP
- SS Rafael Furcal .680 (SS)
- RF Andre Ethier .815 (L)
- CF Matt Kemp .987 (R)
- 3B Wilson Betemit .891 (S)
- 1B James Loney .837 (L)
- LF Luis Gonzales .814 (L)
- 2B Jeff Kent .775 (R)
- C Russell Martin .764 (R)
- Pitcher
A case could be made that since Tony Abreu’s OPS vs RHP is higher than Kent’s, he should be the 2B. I think getting Kent to hit in the 7th spot would be enough of a challenge for your hypothetical manager. ;)
Juan Pierre’s first-half OPS was so much lower than that of the potential players at the three OF positions, that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to put him back in. If his hitting continues to improve in the second half, however…
And what to do about Garciaparra? Nomar’s last few games notwithstanding, you almost want to divvy things up by Home and Away splits. Nomar has an .825 OPS at home, better than everyone in the above lineup except Betemit, Kemp, and Kent. Nomar’s away OPS? .517. Yikes.