Avoiding Double Plays

In 60's Mystery League I believe I have Jim Davenport on his '62 season.....297, .357, .456 and productive vs both RHP and LHP. The problem with the card is he has a slew of gbA's in column 2 from 4-8 plus one more at the 12.

Does anyone have a thought on how to avoid him hitting into an extreme amount of DP's? He has an "A" bunt rating and "C" H&R rating.

I've considered possibly batting him lead off, that way, at the very least, he will have 1 AB with no one on first. It's also a non DH league, so in many instances, the previous batter will not be on base. The down side of that is I have other players on better years that the AB's would probably be more warranted to go to.

I've thought about hitting him behind Maury Wills who has an "AAA" SB rating and putting wills on steal more. But from my experience, even the good base stealers in Strat get caught at an alarming rate even vs bad catchers.

I'm leaning towards batting him down lower in the order and checking the "bunt more" box in hitter preferences. I figure the one out is much less damaging than the 2 and he'll have opportunities in other situations to take advantage of his relatively productive card.

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

Would you really want a 297, .357, .456 hitter batting down in the order? If you think that he may have more double plays on his card than other hitters in your lineup you could bat him leadoff or 5th, behind your cleanup hitter. Hitting him low in the order defeats the great luck you have in getting a great card for him. If you don't like his best card then I would recommend you not using him.

Real life managers, Alvin Dark and Bill Rigney, had the same dilemma with Davenport. He batted leadoff a lot early in his career. As he got older you'd find him batting sixth or seventh, sometimes leadoff. It'd be kind of neat if SOM had a different running rating for each of the five years to reflect realistic speed rating. Anyway, in 1962, he seems to have batted second, fifth, sixth, or seventh. The Giants had great hitters, so, Dark could afford to bat him sixth or seventh. Assuming you don't have the same potency as the real 62 Giants, I'd want him batting leadoff or second, behind Wills.

Thanks for the input guys. As it turns out, I had him pegged on the wrong year. He came out of the gate red hot and quickly took a nose dive, so I threw him back. I'm rolling with McAuliff/Freese 3B platoon. Ugly defense, but getting the job done offensively.

As I thought about it more, if he had been on the year I thought, I probably would have batted him lead off to limit his double play impact but still allow him the opportunity to swing away and take advantage of the slugging on his card.

I'm not sure there is a great answer when you get a card like that, I've had Pudge Rodriguez before where he had some nice power numbers but he was just an absolute rally killer with the number of DP's he would hit into. Sometimes you just have to take the good with the bad.