Optimizing Your Lineup

The other day, Lakeview owner Brian B sent along this old Beyond the Boxscore article about lineup optimization.  It's based upon Tom Tango and MGL's famous sabermetic book, The Book.  The article summarizes lineup optimization thusly

1. OBP instead of speed
2. Great hitter instead of bat control guy
3. Good hitter, but not your elite average guy
4. Best overall hitter, not your power guy
5. 4th best hitter after slots 1, 2, and 4 are filled; not your 'wannabee clean-up hitter'
6. through 9:  hitters in decreasing quality except that, if you can, put your speedster 6th and a quality singles hitter 7th.

Overall, I think this is realitvely good advice except for the 3 hole. The actual language from the article: 

The old-school book says to put your best high-average hitter here. The lead-off hitter should already be in scoring position and a hit drives him in. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am.

 

The Book says the #3 hitter comes to the plate with, on average, fewer runners on base than the #4 or #5 hitters. So why focus on putting a guy who can knock in runs in the #3 spot, when the two spots after him can benefit from it more? Surprisingly, because he comes to bat so often with two outs and no runners on base, the #3 hitter isn't nearly as important as we think. This is a spot to fill after more important spots are taken care of.

The study is based upon real world results, where the #1 and #2 hitters aren't optimized.  How often do we, in ATB, see the speedy, average or low-OBP guy bating first, and the control guy second.  If that's your lineup, than I agree, the 4 hitter is more important than the two hitter.  But if you have great OBP guys 1 and 2, then I disagree and would want a great run producer at #3.

Either way a great thought exercise and thanks for sharing Brian!