Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Bonds Bats Third

Finally! The Giants should have made this decision years ago.

As I pointed out three years ago, he should be batting second. But third is a lot smarter than cleanup.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

cho here.

drake, you take a complex question and oversimplify it in the same way my grandmother thinks she can push a button on the computer and have tea poured for her.

in this article, there is a table that totals all the AB's from 1993 to 2004. if you normalize, leadoff gets 10% extra AB's per year, 2nd gets 6.6%, and third gets 6.2%. the difference from 2nd and 3rd in the lineup averages about 2 AB per year.

the other side that you need to factor in is how many baserunners you lose by having barry hit 2nd instead of third.

i don't think 2 extra AB's per year is worth it. the extra's baserunners are.

go cubs!!

Anonymous said...

the URL i meant to link to is:
http://www.retrosheet.org/Research/RuaneT/lineup_art.htm