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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: Lineup dependency
Message-ID: <694@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Sep-85 14:55:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: mmintl.694
Posted: Tue Sep 24 14:55:49 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Sep-85 06:41:36 EDT
References: <453@philabs.UUCP>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Distribution: na
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 36
Summary: 


In article <453@philabs.UUCP> dpb@philabs.UUCP (Paul Benjamin) writes:
>By the way, if you still doubt the existence of lineup dependency (which
>you undoubtedly still do) then answer the following question:
>
>    If there were no lineup interaction, then all managers would bat their
>    best hitter first, then their second-best, etc. to give them the
>    most opportunities to hit. [...]

You are mixing apples and oranges here.  Of course lineup order in this
sense matters: a walk followed by a home run is two runs, while a home
run followed by a walk is one run.  I thought (up to this point) that
the discussion was about whether players hit better depending on where
they bat in the order.  I don't *think* anyone ever claimed that OBA and
slugging pct give a complete description of a team's offensive abilities;
just that they are the two best readily available statistics.  Which they
are.

I am unconvinced by the Mattingly data.  There is just not enough there
to be statistically significant.

On the other hand, batters definitely DO hit better with men on base.
The book put out by the Elias Sports Bureau (it has their name in the
title) has statistics on this for the entire major leagues last year.
As I remember (the book is not here) the effect was about 20 points in
terms of batting average.  So clearly there is an advantage to batting
after a player who gets on base a lot.  Although the statistics for it
are not available, it seems likely that this is enhanced when batting
after good base stealers.

I am much more dubious about the claimed advantages of batting *before* a
good hitter.  This very likely affects the number of walks a player gets
(certainly the number of intentional walks, but probably others as well).
I doubt it much affects the overall performance.

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