Batting Order

Seeing Aaron Judge bat first for the Yankees is a bit of a shock. But he is doing awfully well, .430 / .485 / .884 = 1.369 in the leadoff spot. Would you do the same? Bat Ruth or Bonds or Frank Thomas in the #1 hole? Makes a lot of sense to me to give your best hitter as many batting opportunities as possible.

I personally prefer to bat my top OBP hitter first, followed by the best hitter / slugger in the #2 spot. in a DH league without the pitcher batting, I'll put guys like Stanky and Yost at the bottom of the order and Bonds or Ruth in the leadoff spot. Seems like a better run-scoring formula than the traditional cleanuo spot.

Yeah I seem to recall that at least for SOM I saw some sim data that showed no statistical significance in run production differences for random batting orders by season's end. I forget what the parameters were but it convinced me at the time. So if low cap I am more traditional with OBP at top, a runner-mover with hits and productive outs at #2 and then the normal best hitter 3, slugger , posi clutch at 5-7 if able.
Higher caps, I just put the best guy up top most times and then yeah a high obp guy at the bottom.

For low to mid caps I look at it more of a continuous 4-AB cycle, how does it look every four ABs and can I score with one baserunner and one hit. That's why I love midcaps and deadball.

For Judge, I don't know. Hopefully it isn't a scheme to get him more PAs. A little weird to me.

Absolutely nothing wrong with batting your best hitter leadoff. 1 2 and 4 are the spots for your best hitters. Ideally OBP at 1 and 2 and SLG at 4. In Strat I try to put bad clutch at 1 2 and 3 and good clutch at 4 and 5. And ideally an asterisk stealer leading off to induce the hold. As Frankie said, the difference between the most and least optimal lineup order is quite small. But I still do my lineups most every night because it's one of the most fun parts of the game for me.

One of the most amazing performances I saw in an 80mill league was a team that batting the 1941 Ted Williams leadoff against both righties and lefties---the splinter went nuts....I think he scored something like 230 runs scored with an OBP of over .550.
Not bad for a slow guy....