The eight of you who are familiar with this series will remember that "Lousy" in the title does not necessarily refer to the lineup, but perhaps to the optimization procedure, or, as the "Optimizer" (me). The Giants have made some additions down the stretch (Ryan Garko and Freddy Sanchez) as they push for a wildcard spot. No, Garko and Sanchez aren't exactly mashers, and those trades were not exactly universally acclaimed. However, it is also true that in the short term they are better hitters than Travis Ishikawa and Emmanuel Burriss. But does the lineup still qualify as lousy? Since I agree with those who say we should look forward by checking out a player's "true talent" estimate (using past performance, age adjustment, environment, etc) rather than the past -- maybe not. And when I look at the ZipS RoS projections for the starters for the Giants, their average wOBA is about league-average.

That being said, as of this writing the Giants have the second least-productive offense in baseball at 96.8 park-adjusted Batting Runs below average. The SBNation Giants site, McCovey Chronicles, has "In play: Out(s)" as its (awesome) subtitle.  And let's face it: I wanted to write about a team that actually is playing meaningful games at this point. Sure, over a full season, an optimized lineup will only probably only gain a team between 5 and 15 runs, so over these last six weeks, even 4 runs would be a miracle. But, hey, teams spend a lot of resources on trades that accomplish a lot less than that. Why not do something that will help you team win that won't cost you anything more?

But this all pales in comparison to the biggest justification for this column: any team using Bengie Molina as their everyday cleanup hitter definitely could be getting more out of their batting order.

Lineup Optimization by The Book

This is the fourth in an occasional series have been writing batting orders of particular teams. 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. While there is already good stuff out there, I like to do this things 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 and browse down to the "Getting to the Point" section, although if you aren't somewhat familiar with The Book's ideas on lineup optimization, it's at least worth skimming this section.

• "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 spot 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? The best five hitters (by wOBA or equivalent stat (e.g., not OPS) should be 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 in the #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 only 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 RHP and LHP are in order (har har). This also means that if your best hitters are lefties, they may not get into the "ideal" spots next to each other.
  
• 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 (e.g., 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 according to The Book, although it is worth noting that Tom Tango wrote the chapter on lineups, and Mitchel Litchman (aka "MGL") is more circumspect regarding the value of the pitcher hitting 8th.
  
• Remember that who is in the lineup is much more important that what order it goes in. So relax -- despite my nitpicking over two points of wOBA here and there, it really doesn' t matter that much. But it sure is fun to quibble...
  

Projected Stats, Sources, and Ground Rules for this Series

• Who gets in? Again 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 generally going to accept whatever group of players the manager is throwing out there, whether I think it is the right group or not. I won't always get this right, since lineups change day-to-day depending on how players are feelings, how much acid reflux the manager had the night before, etc.
  
• 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. This far into the year, the beginning of the season projections are still pretty good, but some players are peforming differently enough (or are getting more PAs than expected) that our projections change. For wOBA/AVG/OBP/SLG stats for this column on the Giants, I'll be using the handy ZiPS In-Season projections ("RoS") as listed at FanGraphs on Sunday August the 16th. For steals, I'm generating the runs above average per ~150 games from ZiPS preseason projections for reasons we can get into in the comments if you really want to...
  
• 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 players 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. In the "vs. RHP" and "vs. LHP" lineups, the wOBA and OBP figures are adjusted for league-average splits, and are thus italicized. [For more on estimating platoon skills, read this.]
  
• What about Stolen Bases? I took the linear weights SB/CS runs projected by ZiPS before the season and prorated for ~600 PAs.
• And baserunning? A bit more complicated... In the previous installments, I used Baseball Prospectus'  EQBRR stats minus the stolen basees component. But I realized that what we're really looking here is just the runners ability to advance on hits, so starting with the Giants, I'm just  using the EqHAR component. I did a primitive Marcels-type projection with them, without age adjustments, but with regression  incorporating the Speed Score listed in the CHONE projections. Just to get a feel for the relative abilty of the baserunners, I projected runs values above/below average per 50 advancement opportunities. The listed numbers are projected baserunning runs above/below average per 600 PAs.
  
• How about grounding into double plays? In short, the new Baseball Reference came out with information on GiDPs, opps, league averages and stuff. So I was able to do another pseudo-Marcel. 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. 

Getting to the Point

Below are the raw, un-platooned stats projected as of August 16, 2009 for the Giants from the ZiPS RoS projections at FanGraphs with some other stuff. I had a hard time figuring out who the Giants were going to start in left field. I originally did the lineups with Fred Lewis in LF (he's a really good baserunner, by the way), but a commentator in another thread said Nate Schierholtz was probably going to be getting most of the starts, so I subbed  him in (his projection is also better than Lewis's). I hope I didn't screw too much stuff up. Below is something like a recent Giant batting order according to baseball-reference.com, except with Nate Schierholtz hitting in the #1 place instead of Velez.

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

[Only the columns in italics are adjusted for league-average platoon splits.]

Comment: Whatever other problems one might have putting together a batting order for the Giants, having too many good left-handed hitters isn't one of them. Seriously, in some lineups, all the best hitters are lefties, so it makes it impossible to get them in the 1, 2, and 4 spots. Anyway, after adjusting for average platoon splits, the three best Giants hitters (projected) vs. RHP are Sandoval, Schierholtz, and Garko, followed by Rowand and Winn in a tie. The first inclination, given the various wOBA, OBP, ISO, and baserunning numbers, was to put Schierholtz #1, Garko #2, Sandoval #4, and then have Rowand hit #3 (he has a higher ISO than Randy Winn, and the #3 hitter sees the most 2-out PAs, so more HR power is important in that spot), and put Winn, the closest thing this lineup has to a basetealer, #5. However, If you look at Rowand's numbers, he's absolutely dreadful when it comes to grounding into the double play, and the #3 spot sees the most GDP opportunities, by far. By putting him in the #1 spot, we avoid that (particularly with OBP wizards like Molina and Renteria at the bottom of the order), and both Garko and Schierholtz have been better than average at avoiding it. That probably saves as many or more runs than any other single betting order move. The #2 and #4 hitters are to be of the same quality, and maybe Scheirholtz would have just as much power as Sandoval if we adjusted those numbers for platoon splits. Plus, Schierhotlz isn't exactly projected to be a walks machine. But I finaly decided that Sandoval is just a bit of a surer bet for power and "moving guys over," but I can see it either way. And, yes, either guy (or any number of Giants) would be an upgrade of Bengie Freaking Molina hitting cleanip.  You could also make the argument for switching Garko and Schierholtz, given how well Nate avoids the GDP. It's all pretty close. Finally , having Winn hit #5 allows his decent base stealing to be leveraged in front of the terrible hitters behind him so he can get into scoring position for the occasional Sanchez single vs. RHP.

[Only the columns in italics are adjusted for league-average platoon splits.]

Comment: If nothing else, these guys should smash LHP. And I was also easily able to slot the guys with the three best wOBA vs. LHP in the #1, #2, and #4 slots. That is so rare and exciting that I'll leave it to you to decide whether switching Sanchez and Garko in order to better utilize Garko's better HR power (although not ISO in general, oddly), ability to avoid the DP, and Sanchez's baserunning better. Rowand again stays at leadoff, since GDP ability doesn't Platoon." And ##6-9 easily go in descending order of wOBA. I do go against The Book by having a better hitter at the #3 spot than the #5 spot, but Winn's speed is a bit wasted in front of Sandoval, and his despite Renteria and Molina being almost league average against LHP, I'm going to guess they'll still need his help to get into him into scoring position. Keep in mind that not everyone agrees with having the pitcher hit #8, but it works either way.

Final Thoughts:

I don't know if anyone reads these, or if those who do actually enjoy them, but I like putting them together (although it takes a lot longer than you would think). Remember that these are just suggestions. They are worth debating in a friendly manner, and trying out in different combinations.  I don't have a sophisticated simulator to try these out on. I know that Baseball Musings has one, but it doesn't take baserunning, platoon splits, and GDPs, etc. into account, although if you want to compare these and other lineups using such a simulator, it would be interesting to compare the results.

And if through some strange twist of fate, it somehow leads to Bengie Molina not hitting cleanup, then all this work will have been be worth it.

Update August 19, 2009, 4:11 P.M. EST: Just realized that I made a small mistake -- Sandoval (whom, I should note, looks like a surefire superstar with those sorts of numbers at age 22) is actually a switch-hitter. It doesn't really make a difference for the orders. I just changed his numbers back to "even" for platoon splits. Sorry, Giants fans, no disrespect intended, the kid is a stud.