Projecting The 2010 Red Sox Lineup: No. 3 Spot

at least it’s not astro glide.

If Big Papi hits for the whole season the way he hit in the 2nd half, how can you not begin him in the 3rd slot? I would have a short leash. 10 games at the most, and I would be watching very carefully at bat speed, whether or not he is jumping at the pitches, ie guessing more than hitting, etc. The player hitting 3rd is suppose to scare the opposing pitcher and everything else can fall into order. No matter how good each of our other hitters are, there is only one batter who scares pitchers on the team.

…the way Pedroia and Youk work the pitch counts, they could make for VEEERRRYYY long first innings for opponent starters. wear ’em down early, and the power guys get a shot at some tired pitches, and more mistakes.

The problem with it is Ells is gonna score on doubles from first or second. And he’s gonna score on any single from second and on some from first. And he’s going to put himself on second with a steal 60 or so times. So unless Pedie walks, the chances of both Pedie and Ells both being on when #3 come up seems small because if he gets on with a hit the chances are probably good that Ells comes home. (And of course I’m ignoring outs made by either.)

So our #4 hitter probably isn’t going to see a lot of GS chances unless both Pedie and the #3 batter walk.

I suppose the stats are there somewhere to indicate how often Ells came home if the batter immediately behind him got a hit. I suspect its high.

Of course, this is a GOOD thing. :-D

But every lineup optimizer I’ve looked at says that runs are maximized by putting a high-power, middling hitter at #3, and stacking your best hitters at 1,2,4,5.

These systems run thousands of games with various variations of lineups for each hitters’ stats, and almost invariably that’s the way it comes out.

Here’s a link to one optimizer that you could try. Not saying it will put Ortiz #3, but I think you will see it generally supports that the best hitters should be 1,2,4,5 in some order.

No, but the idea is that there is a value to every situation, or what James calls “states.” The lowest value “state” you can have is two outs, no one on. The highest is no outs, bases loaded.

So the idea is that you want to have your best batters up in the most valued states. And the three slot is slightly less important because it has more at bats with two outs, no one out than anyone else. At least that is the theory.

The “practice” is the mathematical optimizers; they don’t care about theory, they just crunch numbers. They run thousands of games with every possible combination of the lineup and report which ones produce the most runs. I think the optimizers figured it out first — and the theory came along after to explain why.

the Sox really can switch up 3,4,5,6,7 between Youk, VMart, Drew, Papi and Beltre. If Papi is hitting like he did later in the year, then 3rd isnt all that bad. Vmart can go just about anywhere cuz he is a switch hitter. Youk and Drew just about anywhere because they have power and good OBP. And Beltre, if he has a monster year (contract year) could also be deserving of it too.
I think Tito will have Vmart 3rd, Youk to protect, and Ortiz 5th to start the season. He likes to give certain players their “respect” and believes in them, so that is why I think he will have Ortiz 5th.

If you have watched enough baseball you would know that some hitters just seem to cause the pitcher to be unable to find the plate when they are up, or too often find the middle of the plate. That’s why they drive in a lot of runs. And too often the pitcher is worried about the hitters that preceed that hitter, that they seem to get on base more often also. I don’t care if it sounds silly. Pitchers have been known to do silly things for some reason beyond understanding.