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From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: lineup dependency (again!)
Message-ID: <707@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 1-Oct-85 10:40:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: mmintl.707
Posted: Tue Oct  1 10:40:54 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 4-Oct-85 04:27:18 EDT
References: <455@philabs.UUCP> <696@mmintl.UUCP> <458@philabs.UUCP>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Distribution: na
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 53

[Not food]

In article <458@philabs.UUCP> dpb@philabs.UUCP (Paul Benjamin) writes:
>> >How about a stat such as "how many runs you
>> >contribute to", measured by runs you score, drive in, or help advance
>> >the runners,

One question.  Suppose the lead off batter singles and steals seconds.
The next two batters make outs.  The cleanup hitter walks.  The number
five hitter singles, bringing in the runner from second.  Finally, the
number six hitter strikes out.  Shouldn't the cleanup hitter get credit
for "contributing" to the run?  If he had made an out, it wouldn't have
scored.

>> In particular, if I know a player's on base and slugging averages, I don't
>> much care what his batting average is.  In fact, it is better if the batting
>> average is lower, with the same on base and slugging averages.
>
>Well, I think that is lineup dependent! Specifically, a cleanup hitter should
>get a lot of hits - his OBA is not terribly important.

Yes, but if you fix the OBA and SA, and decrease the BA, he gets more extra
base hits.  This is likely to mean more RBI, not fewer.

>He's supposed to
>be driving in runs. A perfect example of this is Jason Thompson. His OBA
>is among the best in the league, but his BA is low. I would much rather
>see a higher BA, even at the cost of a lower OBA. He just doesn't drive
>in runners. So who cares if we walks that much (he was leading the NL the
>last time I saw the numbers) - that just passes the RBI duty along to #5,
>and the Pirates haven't had a good #5 in a long time (George Hendrick??).

If your number five hitter can't drive in runs, don't blame it on the
cleanup hitter.  And do you really want a higher BA with the same SA?
Also, I don't have the statistics handy, but I believe Thompson scores
a fair number of runs.  It doesn't matter whether they are scored the
way they are "supposed" to be.

>It's true that they complement each other well. But they are both terribly
>inadequate to begin with, so who cares?

This is where we disagree.  I would say "reasonable but not ideal", not
"terribly inadequate".


By the way, an interesting statistic from the Elias book: looking at all
teams in the majors, the most runs per inning and the greatest chance of
scoring in an inning occurs when the number 3 hitter leads off the inning.
This suggests that the "traditional" batting order may not be the best
after all.

Frank Adams                           ihpn4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Multimate International    52 Oakland Ave North    E. Hartford, CT 06108