Should Your Best Hitter Still Be Batting Third? -Motley Fool

[iiisenordingdong]

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/03/03/baseball-myths-should-your-best-hitter-still-be-ba.aspx

 

Interesting Article 

 

"Only three teams -- the Minnesota Twins, LA Angels, and LA Dodgers -- preferred their best hitters -- Joe Mauer, Mike Trout, and Yasiel Puig --  at the No. 2 spot."

 

[Brent Maguire]

If you've ever read The Book by Tom Tango, it talks in depth about who should hit where. 

 

Your best hitter should be hitting 2nd and your #4 and #5 hitter surprisingly should be your better hitters than your #3 hitter. Basically, your 4/5 hitters have more meaningful at bats than the #3 hitter. The higher amount of at bats for the #3 hitter is offset by the fact that there are better situations for the 4/5 hitters.

 

If you were to construct your lineup like this, it would look something like Calhoun-Trout-Hamilton-Pujols-Freese. That's nothing drastic except for switching Pujols and Hamilton. 

[nate]

Motley Fool is the Bleacher Report of financial reporting websites.

 

With that said, why is a financial reporting website talking about baseball?

Edited March 3, 2014 by nate

[tdawg87]

Isn't there an article like this for every spot in the batting order?

 

Trout should hit 7th. For the lulz.

[iiisenordingdong]

Motley Fool is the Bleacher Report of financial reporting websites.

 

With that said, why is a financial reporting website talking about baseball?

I am pretty sure the author was bored and had a deadline, he tied in ticket sales at the end to make it relevant to financial reporting. 

[HaloFan85]

It all depends on the rest of the lineup.  In this particular lineup having so many middle order bats, Trout is probably best suited for the 2 hole.

[Angelsjunky]

Here's some simply logic: the higher you are in the order, the more plate appearances you'll get over the course of a season. There's an argument that you could rank the hitters in order of best to worst, to maximize total plate appearances.

 

Regardless, I read somewhere that your #3 hitter leads off the fewest innings. I'd rather that not be Trout.

[GregAlso]

If you've ever read The Book by Tom Tango, it talks in depth about who should hit where.

Your best hitter should be hitting 2nd and your #4 and #5 hitter surprisingly should be your better hitters than your #3 hitter. Basically, your 4/5 hitters have more meaningful at bats than the #3 hitter. The higher amount of at bats for the #3 hitter is offset by the fact that there are better situations for the 4/5 hitters.

If you were to construct your lineup like this, it would look something like Calhoun-Trout-Hamilton-Pujols-Freese. That's nothing drastic except for switching Pujols and Hamilton.

Yep, this^^

[Brent Maguire]

Regarding my earlier post, you could switch Hamilton and Freese around in that lineup. Freese as a higher OBP guy hitting 3rd may be better than Hamilton's power there.

 

This isn't going to happen however since I'm sure Scioscia will have Pujols hitting 3rd for a long time. 

[Barrett]

Regarding my earlier post, you could switch Hamilton and Freese around in that lineup. Freese as a higher OBP guy hitting 3rd may be better than Hamilton's power there.

 

This isn't going to happen however since I'm sure Scioscia will have Pujols hitting 3rd for a long time. 

I believe Pujols has that somewhere in his contract

[Mark68]

Regarding my earlier post, you could switch Hamilton and Freese around in that lineup. Freese as a higher OBP guy hitting 3rd may be better than Hamilton's power there.

 

This isn't going to happen however since I'm sure Scioscia will have Pujols hitting 3rd for a long time. 

Yep, until about 2021.