RFI: Batting Order Strategy

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Are there any good solid guides out there covering batting order strategy?

From my amateur analysis I've come up with the following traits:

Lead-off: Patient (high OBP), Fast, Contact Hitter. The best combination of speed and OBP.
2nd: ??? This seems to vary from manager to manager. Patient (high OBP) would be assumed, I'd guess the second best combination of speed and OBP.
3rd: High-SLG (but not necessarily a home run hitter), Contact.
Clean-Up: Contact, Home-Runs, High SLG.
5th: Contact, High SLG, but not necessarily as patient (OBP) as #1-4. More prone to strikeouts than #3-4.
6th: The remaining player who has the best combination of Patience (OBP) and SLG.
7th: Next best OBP
8th: OR should 8th have the next highest OBP so as to get on base with 2 outs and have the pitcher finish the inning?

What gives, baseball fans?

Sorry, this seems to apply to NL based management only, I'll leave the long-awaited "DH-C/D?" heated debate for another rainy day.

― gygax! (gygax!), Wednesday, 4 February 2004 02:32 (twenty-two years ago)

So I'm guessing we have no little league coaches on ILB?

― gygax! (gygax!), Wednesday, 4 February 2004 18:47 (twenty-two years ago)

Cue SNL skit: Sabermetric Little League coach.

― gygax! (gygax!), Wednesday, 4 February 2004 18:57 (twenty-two years ago)

haha--I was a Little League umpire for a while. NO FECKING WAY I would want to be a coach. I'd much rather be the Charlie Lau or Walt Hriniak (except I'm a dead pull hitter).

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Wednesday, 4 February 2004 19:07 (twenty-two years ago)

1st- speed, decent opb.
2nd- contact hitter for the ol' hit and run play.
from here on out i would wager you just play favorites.

― otto midnight, Thursday, 5 February 2004 02:44 (twenty-two years ago)

The person that bats third is generally the best all around hitter on the team. If the highest average hitter on the team doesn't have great power, but always makes contact, they move to 2nd unless you don't have anyone decent to lead off. Which is why guys like Boggs and Gwynn lead off at times in their career, even though neither was a threat to run.

AL teams seem to follow some kind of Wockenfuss rule and never have the slowest runner batting 9th, even with the DH. You don't want some lead leg on base in front of your speedster, if possible.

I think if you have a power hitter that is dangerous, they are going to bat 4th even if they strike out like Rob Deer or Reggie Jackson. There are a bunch of current players with good power that strike out at ridiculous levels such as Adam Dunn, Richie Sexton, Jim Thome and Troy Glaus.

― earlnash, Thursday, 5 February 2004 02:57 (twenty-two years ago)

1. First, good speed. Must have the ability to get to third on a single to right field. As far as hitting, he must have a good OBP. Whether he has a high average or a great ability to draw a walk does not matter. Just get on and be ready to get to third on a single or pop out to right.
2. Must be able to hit the ball to right field with a certain degree of precision. A pull hitting lefty is good, but a righty with an inside out-swing like Jeter may be better. This is why Jeter is the best #2 in baseball. He hits them to right field all day and gives Soriano a chance to get to third with one or no outs.
3. Power. Must have great power. I am not a huge fan of stats, and I believe that scouting tells you all you need to know, not a stat sheet, but OPS is a good measure of a #3 hitter. The idea is that you can give him te green light because if your plan works as concieved, you have a man on third who can score on a fly out if your homer falls short. Also, you can afford an out, because with one or no outs, you have the cleanup hitter coming up next.
4. In my opinion, the cleanup hitter doesn't need a bit of power at all, although most will disagree with me. Sure, you'd like anyone this high in the lineup to have some pop, but I feel that the cleanup hitter has to be the person with the best batting average. He must be able to get on base and drive men in, period. Also, one reason that eliminates the need for power is that the 5th hitter in my lineup would need to have quite a bit of it.
5. Basically another 3rd spot guy. In fact, I would interchange the 5th and 3rd hitters if they hit from different sides of the plate depending on what hand the pitcher throws with. Against a righty, my lefty would go 3rd, and vice versa. The idea is that because the cleanup hitter is so good, this guy will have runners on base and in scoring position often, but because he has little help behind him in the lineup, he may have to take things into his own hands. Of course, this is assuming that your team has 5 relatively good hitters only, which I feel is fairly easy to have.
6. From here on out, it is a bit of a crapshoot. It is unlikely that 6-9 are great hitters, so you basically have to feel it out and decide which particular guy can hit the opposing pitcher, or whose tendencies are better against the pitchers throwing hand. Ideally, the 6th hitter has the best of the remaining OBP. Obviously, you want him to get on base, and you don't care whether he hits, get hit, walks, etc.
7. I feel that the #7 hitter and #8 hitter are interchangeable. Ideally, the #7 would be a righty against a lefty or vice versa.

In the NL, the 8th batter should have a bit of speed if you can afford it. The same goes for the 9th hitter in the AL. The reason is that the next batter, be in the pitcher in the NL or the leadoff man in the AL, will likely be a ground ball or line drive hitter. Speed would be nice in the last spot so that they can leg it out.

Being a Yankee fan, I will use them to demonstrate MY perfect lineup. This is pending the A-Rod deal.

1. Lofton - Speed
2. Jeter - Great opposite field hitter
3. Giambi - Power; lot of K's. Not consistent enough to protect #4.
4. A-Rod - Great all around hitter
5. Sheffield - Power. Can protect A-Rod.
6. Posada - Could also go with Matsui here, but Posada is a switch hitter.
7. Matsui - Little pressure in this spot, so good production will come.
8. Enrique Wilson, etc. - 2nd base is up in the air. Basically a leftover.
9. Bernie Williams - I love Bernie, but he has lost ALL of his power. Since he can still run a little, he my be able to stretch a Lofton single to third.

― Tommy Baseball, Sunday, 15 February 2004 19:30 (twenty-two years ago)

Very nice analysis Tommy, although I have to wonder about this:

4. In my opinion, the cleanup hitter doesn't need a bit of power at all, although most will disagree with me. Sure, you'd like anyone this high in the lineup to have some pop, but I feel that the cleanup hitter has to be the person with the best batting average.

I'm trying to envision a high batting average hitter like Tony Gwynn hitting clean-up in your lineup merely because of his high BA... all those slappy bloops or bunt-singles really put the probability of runners in scoring position making it home in jeopardy.

And just so you know, I have a huge soft spot for traditional baseball thought (SBs, hit/runs, sac plays)... that's why I rooted for the Marlins in the World Series last year! :-O

― gygax! (gygax!), Friday, 20 February 2004 01:05 (twenty-two years ago)

everyone should, as trad baseball is simply way more exciting. that's why mlb needs to start devoting some time to suppressing run scoring, and i guess it might as well start with the steroid crap.

― John (jdahlem), Friday, 20 February 2004 01:20 (twenty-two years ago)

twenty-two years pass...

Migrating, migrating (homepage)...Something I wrote in 2009 after watching a VHS of the 1971 ASG:

Some comic relief right off the top: Sparky Anderson has Mays leading off and Aaron batting second. You'll sometimes hear about teams having power at the top of the lineup, maybe a couple of middle infielders with 15-20 home runs apiece. On this particular night, the N.L. had 1200+ home runs setting the table.

Looks like Sparky was a half-century ahead of the curve there. Mays and Aaron would almost certainly be leading off today for any team, unless there were a Rickey Henderson-level leadoff guy to knock them down to second.

― clemenza, Monday, 16 March 2026 00:16 (one month ago)

(There is no "Rickey Henderson-level" leadoff hitter not named Rickey Henderson; let's say Mookie Betts/George Springer-level instead.)

― clemenza, Monday, 16 March 2026 00:25 (one month ago)

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