I generally don't put too much importance on how managers order their batting lineup, but I, along with everyone else in the Royals nerdosphere, have been flabbergasted by new skipper Ned Yost repeatedly slotting Jason Kendall in the two spot. In an attempt to quantify just how stupid this is, I plugged the Royals most common starting nine into the "Lineup Analysis" tool at Baseball Musings. You plug in nine players' on-base and slugging percentages, and the tool spits out what should be the best and worst 30 lineups for those players. I used stats from this season only. Using the tool's model based on the 1959-2004 seasons, the best Royals lineup should score 4.967 runs/game, and would look like this:
DeJesus
Butler
Callaspo
Aviles
Guillen
Podsednik
Maier
Betancourt
Kendall
while the worst should score 4.654 runs/game and would look like this:
Callaspo
Kendall
Aviles
Betancourt
Podsednik
DeJesus
Butler
Maier
Guillen
The difference in runs/game is .313, which would equal 50.7 runs over 162 games. That's a lot of runs; the best lineup should get around five more wins than the worst. Maybe lineups are more important than I thought.
You may have noticed Kendall bats ninth in the best lineup and, of course, second in the worst. But it's worse than that: Kendall bats ninth in EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE THIRTY BEST LINEUPS. He bats second in the eight worst lineups, and in 24 of the worst 30. Wow.
(By the way, the Royals are scoring 4.571 runs/game, which is less than the supposed worst possible lineup should give them...)
This is very interesting. I think Aviles' place isn't accurate yet because of how few games he has played. My main concern is that the lineup tool doesn't account for speed. I'm not sure how Kendall's speed is, but you can see the difference it makes for Podsednik. Kendall usually does a good job of advancing Podsednik when asked to sacrifice, though. Hopefully Yost becomes open to moving him back for more than a game at a time. I think some of it is affected by how well DeJesus has been doing batting third.
ReplyDeleteThank you sir.
ReplyDeleteAviles's .338 OBP and .473 SLG don't seem too far off to me. I'd love to see that OBP improve, but the man doesn't take walks.
It's true there are other variables like speed not taken into account. Baseball nerds probably oversimplify a little bit, but I do think getting on base and hitting for power are the most important factors for scoring runs.
I'm sure Yost is enamored with Kendall's ability to get the bat on the ball, but to me, saying someone is good at sacrificing is saying someone is good at making outs.