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San Diego Padres catcher Nick Hundley (left) an manager Bud Black discuss why the team would gain a few runs over the season if he hit 9th.

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If you're anything like me, you can't help but obsess over lineups. While the most optimal lineup only increases offensive output by about 5-15 runs a year over a traditional lineup, for teams with weak offenses those marginal runs are all the more important. Hence this series on optimizing lousy lineups. Of course, you may get bad because your team makes it in here. You might decide that the "Lousy" in "Lousy Lineup Optimizer" applies to the process, or the person attempting to do the optimization (me). In any event, I'll be doing these from time to time throughout the season.

Today's subject is the San Diego Padres, a team that many pegged for 100 losses this season. Hey, they can still get there, I guess, but it doesn't look likely, as of this writing they are in second their division. Heck, maybe all the teams whose lineups I optimize are going to outperform expectations. There are some fun players to look at here... It's an "interesting" situation out West, so let's take a look at optimal lineups for the Padres.

[Previous installments: Kansas City Royals]

Lineup Optimization by The Book

This is the second in an occasional series I will be writing from time to time on lineups. The general principles are largely drawn from The Book, which is worth checking out on this and many other topics. Sky Kalkman gives a good, brief rundown in this article. So there os good stuff out there, but I've wanted to do these for myself.

Here are a few of the guidelines (with my own twists). Yes, there is a lot of stuff here... Feel free to skim or skip this stuff entirely if you want and browse down to the "Getting to the Point" section, although it will make more sense if you've at least skimmed over the following.

• "It's all relative." Although this isn't directly stated in The Book or in any of the summaries I've seen, I think it's worth noting: the appropriate sport in the batting order for any particular player is relative. People talk about having a "true leadoff man" or a "#4 hitter" or that a player has a swing that's just perfect for hitting #2 or whatever. But the truth is, a player's "best" place in a lineup depends on his skills relative to the other players.
• Where should the best hitter hit? Obviously, you want your best hitter to get the most plate apperances. You want to try to get your best five hitters (by wOBA or equivalent stat (e.g., not OPS) in the top five spots. Of those 5, generally, the best hitters will be in the #1, #2, and #4 spots. Ideally, of these three the hitter in the #1 spot will have the best OBP, the #4 hitter will have the most power, and the #2 hitter will be somewhere in between (relative to the #1 and #4 hitters). The best hitter will probably be inthe #2 or #4 spot. The fourth and fifth best hitters will be in the #5 and #3 spots, respectively. Yes, you read that right: the #3 hitter's onlly advantage in run expectancy over #5 is in home runs. Of the top five spots, this is where you want your low-OBP slugger. As we'll see, platoon issues can make getting the best into the ## 1,2 and 4 slots tough, but getting them into the top 5 is pretty close.
  
• The other half: In slots ##6-9, simply go in descending order of hitter quality, keeping in mind:
  
• Platoon issues: Separating lefties takes a certain precedence, since this prevents the opposing team from leveraging LHPs against your lefties, who generally have bigger platoon splits. Moreover, given platoon splits (more on how these are generated in the next section), different batting orders against righties and lefties are in order (har har).
• Can pinch hitting help? Note that in the chapter on platoons, the authors of The Book show that pinch hitting to gain the platoon advantage really doesn't solve this and other problems since the penalty pinch hitters suffer from the difficulty of  hitting off of the bench offsets the platoon advantage they might gain.
• Speed on the bases: Baserunning and basestealing are important, but are difficult to place, since often (but not always) the same players are good at both. In general, you want good baserunners (aside from stealing -- those good at taking the extra base, scoring from first on a double, etc.) in front of good contact hitters who can "move them over." Basestealers are best leveraged in front of poor hitters who have trouble moving them over. In both cases, if possible, avoid putting these players in front of high-power hitters, since this negates the advantage of those skills. So while your good baserunner might best be utilized at the top of the order (in front of a #2 hitter with moderate power), your best basestealer will likely be best utilized in further down the order in front of poor hitters -- say, in the #5 or #6 spot.
  
• The Jim Rice Effect. Some spots have a greater odds of facing double play situations. The spot that sees the most DP situations is #3 by far, followed by #2. Therefore, try to avoid having high GDP players in those spots. The spot that sees the least (particularly in the NL) is the leadoff spot. So some times if you have an excellent hitter who also hits into a good number of DPs, even if he is slow, it might be worth it to move him into the leadoff spot.
• Movin' on up: The "second leadoff hitter" theory has some validity -- having a #9 hitter who can "set the table" for the top of the order does increase run expectancy, so putting the worst hitter 8th sometimes helps. However, this worst hitter has to be really, really horrible in order for the advantage to obtain. In other words, in National League parks, hitting the pitcher 8th is the smart move.
  
• Remember that who is in the lineup is much more important that what order it goes in. So relax -- despite my nitpicking and worry over two points of wOBA (see below) here and there, it really doesn' t matter that much.
  

Projected Stats, Sources, and Ground Rules for this Series

• Who gets in? As I wrote above, ultimately, who is in the lineup is more important than what order they go in. Having said that, in this occasional series my focus is opposite issue -- the order. So I'm going to accept whatever group of players the manager is throwing out there, whether I think it is the right group or not.
• Where are those numbers coming from?, the basics: For each posts raw batting stats, I'll either use projections from one or more of the more popular projection systems (CHONE, ZiPS, PECOTA, or maybe even in-season Marcels), or if it's a "reader request" and the requester wants to submit his or her own numbers, that's fine, too. For the Padres, I chose to use CHONE.
  
• Who is the better hitter? From these stats, I will generate a wOBA (if it isn't done already, such as at FanGraphs) for each player. wOBA (weighted on-base average), for those who don't know, is the total offensive value stat that has taken the baseball internet by storm. Introduced by the authors of The Book and invented by Tom Tango, wOBA takes care of all the problems OPS had in terms of the weighting of OBP and SLG, doubles and home runs. It's roughly on an OBP scale, so something between .330-.340 is about average. For the version used at FanGraphs, .330 was about the MLB nonpitcher average in 2008.  You can read more around the 'net, but in short: if one player has a better wOBA than another, he's a more productive hitter, period. wOBA for playres can be found at FanGraphs and Stat Corner, for now, and probably more places as time moves on...
• What about platoon splits? As The Book  also explains (I'm telling you, you really should read it!), while each player has his own platoon split, it takes a lot longer than you would think to establish it -- it takes about 2,000 PAs against LHP for right-handed hitters to be able to say with some degree of confidence what their platoon split is -- so that's means only guys in the league a long time. For left-handed hitters, since there is more variability, it doesn't take as long -- about 1,000 PAs. Still, only veterans really get that far. Until then, most players should be assumed to have the league average platoon split. So, following the procedure used in by the authors for earlier years, I took the average wOBA and  OBP splits for the 2005-2008 AL (it was easier to exclude pitchers that way) and applied them to each player. The only stats I will be adjusting this for are wOBA and OBP. BA, SLG, ISO are the generic ones, just to get a sense of the "kind" of hitter a guy is, obviously, those will change, too. but are harder to adjust for generically. [For more on estimating platoon skills, read this.]
  
• What about Stolen Bases? I took the linear weights SB/CS runs projected and prorated for ~600 PAs.
• And baserunning? A bit more complicated... I looked at different options, and finally used Baseball Prospectus'  EQBRR stats minus the stolen basees component, and did a primitive Marcels-type projection with them, without age adjustments, but with regression to the mean incorporating the Speed Score listed in the CHONE projections. Only two years of data so far, so take them with a grain of salt, but it's something. The listed numbers are projected baserunning runs above/below average per 600 PAs.
  
• How about grounding into double plays? I thought this would be easier, but the data was hard to find for opportunities and stuff... In short, the new Baseball Reference came out with information on GiDPs, opps, league averages and stuff. So I was able to do a three year Marcels, again. The number listed is the GiDP runs above (avoided) or below (grounded into ) average per 600 PAs, normalized for the average number of opportunities seen over 600 PAs from 2005-2008. 

First, here are the raw, un-platooned stats projected by CHONE and myself (it's still early in the season!) for the Padres that have started most often this season, in the one of the more common batting orders Baseball Reference records the Padres used the most this season so far.

Getting to the Point:

What's that? You actually want to see a batting order?

Comment: As I've been looking at the batting orders for some of these, um, less high-scoring teams, I've noticed that one issue is that their best hitters all tend to hit left-handed. In itself, that may not seem that surprising, since left-handed hitters on average are better than right-handed hitters. But what this means is that the worse hitters on these teams are usually getting the short end of the stick platoon-wise, and when the team does face a LHP, the best hitters are somewhat neutralized (because lefties generally have larger splits) while the right-handed hitters aren't good enough to make up the difference. Like I said, it's just a hypothesis.

But what about the lineup here? Without discussing the projections much, let's just say that while CHONE sees Brian Giles as a pretty good hitter, still, it isn't too impressed with his power relative to the Padres other hitters. But he has a good OBP -- expected .380 vs. RHP. He's not much of a basestealer, and he's below average at avoiding the GDP, but he is an above-average baserunner... sounds like a great candidate to lead off. I understand why the Bud Black hits Giles and Gonzalez 3 and 4, as Gonzalez is pretty clearly the best hitter on the team. Still, having a LOOGY leveraged against those guys late can't be fun. Hey, it's another think that messes with teams who have a good lefties but not too many good righties -- ideally, we'd have Giles #1, Gerut #2, and Gonzalez #4, so it hamstrings an optimized lineup, too. Remember that contrary to traditional batting order thinking, the #5 hitter should be better than the #3. Gonzalez is better than Gerut, so he goes #5. Since the #3 spot sees the most GDP opportunities anyway, that's a good place for Gerut, who is good at avoiding them.

As for the rest of the lineups, well, only Headley and Kouzmanoff look like average-to-above average hitters (given average splits). Headley has the higher OBP and less power, so he goes in at #2 to split up Giles and Gerut, and Kouzmanoff goes in at #4. The rest of the lineup sort of writes itself. No, Nick Hundley's not much of a hitter, but he is considerably better than most pitchers, so hitting him #9 will give you a few runs a year extra if he gets on base in front of Giles, et. al.

Comment: Well, this looks familiar... Not too many other choices. If you want to go purely by OBP, maybe you'd want Eckstein leading off, but that's where wOBA comes in -- he just doesn't hit with enough power, even against LHP, to be worth getting that many PAs over other guys. I suppose that if you think Headley's splits are more uneven than that, D 'Lil could switch with Headley, although "Mr. Little Things" isn't much of a baserunner anymore. Sorry if I sound like a typical saber-nerd here, ripping on Eckstein. He really was a good player a few years back. Kouzmanoff makes more sense here hitting 4th as a powerful cleanup guy. 

Final Thoughts:

As I've said before, and you've probably read elsewhere, versus a traditional lineup an optimized lineup only gains a team 5-15 runs a season. Still, give than 5 runs/half a win costs about $$2-3M on the free agent market, it's not completely insiginificant, especially for a team dealing with fiscal issues like those of the Padres.