Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

In the major leagues, the trend is now to put your best hitters high in the lineup. Like Aaron Judge bats 2nd or even first. While traditionally, the best hitters batted 3rd and 4th. I think that part of this change is due to the DH; instead of an automatic out from the 9th position, there is a reasonable chance that the 9th place hitter gets on. Also, I think there is more of a tendency in modern baseball to pitch around sluggers and you wouldn't do that to batters early in the lineup. This article, https://www.lrsitsolutions.com/Blog/Pos ... blog-post/ , says that leadoff hitters get 40 to 50 more AB over the course of a season (which doesn't seem right to me). Anyway, with the modern focus on analytics, I'm sure there is a strong logic to putting the best hitters at leadoff or 2nd. Does this also apply to Strat lineups? Strat cards show double-plays and clutch hitting which can affect lineup decisions. In DH leagues, should I be batting my sluggers 2nd?

1, 2, and 4 are about equally important. I put my three best hitters in those spots, according to clutch. Then my next two best hitters in 5 and 3 also based on clutch - you want bad clutch in 1, 2, and 3, and good clutch in 4 and 5. Then remaining best to worst in 6-9.

https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2009/ ... -lineup-by

thanks for the link! The linked article says that the #4 and 5 hitters are more important than the #3 hitter because the #3 hitter often comes up with 2 outs and the bases empty. That is not intuitive to me - if you want to put your best obp players 1 and 2, then I would think that I'd rather put a better hitter 3rd rather than 5th for similar reasons to batting my best hitter #2.

Didn't Barry Bonds hit 5th a lot in his San Fran days? I remember wondering what that was all about, but it makes more sense after reading the article. Guess he should have hit 2nd more though; especially pre-BALCO.

franky35 wrote:thanks for the link! The linked article says that the #4 and 5 hitters are more important than the #3 hitter because the #3 hitter often comes up with 2 outs and the bases empty. That is not intuitive to me - if you want to put your best obp players 1 and 2, then I would think that I'd rather put a better hitter 3rd rather than 5th for similar reasons to batting my best hitter #2.

I agree it's not intuitive, but recall that baseball is a sport defined by failure. Even with high-OBP hitters in the first two spots, the most likely outcome for the #3 hitter in the 1st inning is to come up with 2 outs and no one on base.

I'm going to keep my best at #3, not #5. Why? At #3 he will get 36 more plate appearances than at #5 over the course of a season. Also, presumably I have two of my best OBP guys at #1 and #2, so it's more likely someone will be on base when he bats.