Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Lineup Mysteries, Explained

Gary Klein of the LA Times interviewed Mike Scioscia, Don Mattingly, and Tommy Lasorda to get their insights on how to construct a decent lineup card. Regarding Mattingly's case, I was definitely interested to understand his perspective since his lineups seem incredibly befuddling. But after reading the entirety of this article, I think Klein's piece can be summarized more cleanly (so I'll save you the time of reading):

  • 1: going to be up more than anyone else. Prototype: Juan Pierre.
  • 2: willingness to take pitches and bunt. Prototype: Scioscia circa Dodgers era, because he was slow.
  • 3: team's best hitter
  • 4: interchangable with 3
  • 5: capable of driving in runs (shouldn't this be the team's best hitter, then?)
  • 6: second cleanup hitter (so that makes #5 the third cleanup hitter?)
  • 7-9: other guys

There you have it! Now you can be a manager as well.

3 comments:

MR.F said...

Jeebus. Juan Pierre is the prototypical bench player.

Steve Sax said...

Juan Pierre is the prototypical oversized hat-wearing player

Loney Fan said...

Didn't Loney hit 3rd last night?