Production By Batting Order Position on the 2010 Royals

by Freneau on Nov 15, 2010 11:39 AM EST in Kansas City Royals News

The 2010 Royals hit their best hitter #3 most of the time, which is right in line with standard baseball thinking. Other than that...

Split	PA	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS ▾
Batting 3rd	713	.326	.385	.458	.843
Batting 4th	699	.260	.340	.440	.780
Batting 5th	690	.277	.340	.435	.774
Batting 7th	662	.277	.329	.395	.724
Batting 6th	676	.260	.315	.389	.704
Batting 1st	761	.265	.323	.380	.703
Batting 9th	625	.268	.315	.379	.694
Batting 2nd	741	.275	.325	.350	.675
Batting 8th	641	.253	.303	.369	.671

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 11/15/2010.

Baseball-reference nicely lists the batting order positions throughout the season. The number 3 slot was mostly Butler and DeJesus, with dashes of six other players thrown in. And yes, the leadoff and number two hitters were some of the more out-producing spots on the team.

There's all kinds of interesting stuff in the data here, but for me, the thing that stands out is the number of PAs. When I think about lineups, this is always what it boils down to for me. Over the course of a season, the top of the order guys simply hit more. Hitting Butler, for example, second in the order (or even God forbid leadoff) would be anathema to old school baseball thinking. Yet the difference between hitting second and fourth (where he spent much of the year while) is roughly 40 PAs. That's something like 10 hidden games in there.

I like how the #9 slot, despite the presence of pitchers hitting during interleague, was able to out-perform #8 and ... gasp... #2.
Why was the second-spot in the order so weak? Do I even need to say it? Even getting Aviles's insanely hot September wasn't enough to save the second spot.
The most stable lineup position was cleanup, where only six Royals hit all season. Butler had 70 starts there, followed by Guillen's 44. Next was Kila was 23 and then a handful of Betemit, Ankiel and Fields starts.

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Comments

Thinking about all those outs from our #2 (and virtually throwing away the first inning during so many games)

is a really depressing way to start the day. Thanks Will!

by Gross(est) on Nov 15, 2010 11:53 AM EST reply actions

At least we can expect our #2 to be improved next year

Until Kendall is back from robot arm surgery, of course.

by Boots 58 on Nov 15, 2010 11:57 AM EST reply actions

He Is Literally

The $6M man.

I used to be an A's fan until they left town and got good.

by philofthenorth on Nov 15, 2010 5:45 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs

.675 OPS from your number 2 hitter.

priceless.

Go Royals!

by BabyBlues on Nov 15, 2010 12:40 PM EST reply actions

The 2010 Royals hit their best hitter #3 most of the time, which is right in line with standard baseball thinking.

That #3 spot also had a .358 BABIP for 2010. Without looking it up, I would assume that Billy hits his share of liners, but that .358 still probably represents a fair amount of luck.

by kcemigre on Nov 15, 2010 1:04 PM EST reply actions

Hitting Butler, for example, second in the order (or even God forbid leadoff) would be anathema to old school baseball thinking.

I don’t expect a Hillman or Yost to see the value of those 40 extra PAs on any given night, since we aren’t playing a whole season that night. (i.e. forest/trees conundrum).

Maybe someone could somehow convince a Royals manager that Billy should hit leadoff in order to avoid GIDPs. Like this:

1. Billy’s got a good approach, but it does produce some hard-hit grounders.
2. Lots of those grounders quickly wind up in the glove of a middle infielder.
3. When there’s a runner on first, that’s a high-percentage double play.
4. Maybe Billy should hit in a spot where there are fewer runners on first… which spot is best for that?
5. Hey, let’s make him the leadoff man!
6. Profit ! ! !

by kcemigre on Nov 15, 2010 1:12 PM EST reply actions 1 recs

I'm not sure

Don’t we want Butler up with men on, since he’s our best hitter by far? Shouldn’t he bat behind high-OBP guys, if we can find any, so he can drive them in?

"I'm not proud of a lot of things I've done. I'm not proud of biting the head off a bat, or having a poor education, or drinking too much and taking illegal drugs. But it could be worse. I could be that c**t Sting." --Ozzy Osbourne

by Juancho on Nov 16, 2010 11:01 AM EST up reply actions

I think it depends largely on whether Butler's hitting style is going to continue to produce

league-leading double play numbers. Was that an aberration, and he’s going to lift the ball more in the future, or is 2010 the real deal? Whether or not it was because of Seitzer’s preseason “hit-the-ball-on-the-ground” shenanigans, when Butler hits a potential DP ball, there is NO chance he beats it out.

The only people who really know where [the edge] is are the ones who have gone over it.

by SagehenMacGyver47 on Nov 16, 2010 1:58 PM EST up reply actions

So Billy can clog up the bases?

No thanks!

But seriously, just moving Kendall and Pods out of the top spots would have helped tremendously. With DDJ gone, I have to imagine the 1-2 spots fall to Aviles,Dyson, or Blanco.

by AxDxMx on Nov 16, 2010 11:12 AM EST up reply actions

Not sure Aviles or Blanco would be better that Pods

Dyson is still has a ways to go before he convinces me he can’t hit significantly better than TPJ

Making watching baseball as fun as doing your taxes.
My Twitter feed.

by Matt Klaassen on Nov 16, 2010 12:35 PM EST up reply actions

Heh, some manager in Toronto one season had the common sense to bat Matt Stairs leadoff

for a fair number of games.

Thinking outside the box CAN occur in baseball – just not likely to occur in KC.

"We're gonna win with pitching and defense" General Manager Dayton Moore, circa winter 2009

"Where did all these Indians come from?" General George Armstrong Custer, circa summer 1876

by loyal2sdad on Nov 15, 2010 1:28 PM EST reply actions

"Some Manager" = John Gibbons

Gibby led off his lineup with Matt Stairs for 7 games in 2007. While maybe not a “fair number” of games, Stairs produced in those 29 PAs, with a .238/.414./.429 line, including 5 runs, 4 doubles, and a 7:1 BB:K.

I bet you Gibbons couldn’t handle the .238 in the leadoff spot.

by Tito42 on Nov 15, 2010 1:44 PM EST up reply actions

Stairs was hitting 5th the night that Gibby IBB’d TPJ.

TPJ’s OBP climbed from .148 to .172 that night.

April 25, 2008.

by kcemigre on Nov 15, 2010 2:05 PM EST up reply actions

Serious Strategery On

Both sides. I’m surprised they were able to IBB TPJ.

I used to be an A's fan until they left town and got good.

by philofthenorth on Nov 15, 2010 5:49 PM EST up reply actions

I wish Mellinger or Dutton would do a piece on this

I feel like even the casual fan would be able to grasp that productive plate appearances are even more important than grit when confronted with evidence like this.

I increasingly believe that some of Dayton’s apparently brainless decisions (especially overpaying for power-hitting free agents) are done with an eye toward the facebook page / KC Star comment section. If we had smarter fans, we might have better front office decisions.

"I think a tactical error might have been committed by the manager of the Royals"

by KSinDC on Nov 15, 2010 1:29 PM EST reply actions

Now for a snarky comment on how to improve the team

The Royals should acquire more hitters like the guys who manned the #3, #4, and #5 spots, and fewer hitters like the guys who manned the #8, #2, and #9 spots.

You’re welcome, Dayton.

"We're gonna win with pitching and defense" General Manager Dayton Moore, circa winter 2009

"Where did all these Indians come from?" General George Armstrong Custer, circa summer 1876

by loyal2sdad on Nov 15, 2010 1:30 PM EST reply actions

Please acquire more Jose Guillens!!!

That’s what you are saying, correct?

by Boots 58 on Nov 15, 2010 1:58 PM EST up reply actions

Actually, I was trying to say

don’t acquire the shitty, negative WAR players more than I was saying acquire good players.

Seriously – it doesn’t take many black holes in a lineup to cancel out all the good done by one good player.

"We're gonna win with pitching and defense" General Manager Dayton Moore, circa winter 2009

"Where did all these Indians come from?" General George Armstrong Custer, circa summer 1876

by loyal2sdad on Nov 15, 2010 5:11 PM EST up reply actions

#2 - black hole - hmmmm.

must – refrain – from – making – obvious – joke – here…

"Things could always be worse." - Buddy Bell

by buddyball on Nov 15, 2010 5:48 PM EST up reply actions

That is misleading

Our lineup was so bad that, outside of a couple of spots, we were putting a horrible hitter up to bat. It really didn’t matter where we batted certain players because they sucked.

I agree Kendall should not have been batting 2nd, but what other complaints can we really have about the lineup? Look at the OPS of each lineup spot……it’s terrible pretty much all around the board.

When Podz was on the team, who else would you have batted leadoff? Yuni batted at the bottom of the lineup almost every game. After Podz was gone we played around with a few other guys in the leadoff spot, and most of them did quite poorly. But it’s not like we had better options.

There isn’t a lot separating the bottom 5 OPS spots in the lineup. I don’t think the fact that our #9 spot had almost as high of an OPS as our #1 spot is proof of anything other than Dayton has done a poor job of bringing in quality hitters.

by OMGKendallWTFwasthat? on Nov 15, 2010 7:14 PM EST reply actions 1 recs

The argument is that a lot of times the "traditional" lineups aren't the most optimal

I don’t have the link right now, but there is research into what order you want to have your best hitters (I believe it’s 1, 2, and 4, can’t remember the order). This is showing that in at least two of those spots (1 and 2), we have some of our worst hitters.

It’s not like this would have made us a 90 win team, but we probably would have won a few games if we optimized our lineup.

by Boots 58 on Nov 16, 2010 10:03 AM EST up reply actions