One Fish, Two Fish, Stat Fish, Jew Fish

Lineup Analysis

So. There two games I play more than all others; World of Warcraft and Out of the Park Baseball. OOTP is an absolutely amazing baseball sim, with more features and wondrous things than I could care to mention (though I’d love to if people were interested). Anyhow, I was thinking about my lineup, and about how, abstractly, the perfect lineup would be organized.

So, first, my team (obp/slg) (I play with a fictional league - 32 teams, 8 4 team divisions, top 4 division winners and top 4 other teams make a 16 team playoff - I could tell you some stories):

C: Wes Strickland, 333/497
1B: Norm Moffatt, 411/550
2B: Arturo Marquez, 364/449
3B: Yasushi Ueno, 294/436
SS: Hidekazu Kiyomizu, 361/411
CF: Domingo Vela, 385/426
OF: Carlos Ruiz, 375/545
OF: Alfredo Longoria, 355/551
DH: Carroll Swain, 313/499

As you can tell, overall a fairly strong lineup (actually a bit over 6 runs a game). Some players are obviously good hitters, Moffatt, Ruiz, Longoria… And then you have the weak spots - Ueno’s the weakest link, with Kiyomizu and Swain as the niche spots - Kiyomizu being all on-base focused, and Swain being all power. Here’s the optimal lineup with this roster:

1: Domingo Vela, 385/426
2: Norm Moffatt, 411/550
3: Arturo Marquez, 364/449
4: Alfredo Longoria, 355/551
5: Carlos Ruiz, 375/545
6: Carroll Swain, 313/499
7: Wes Strickland, 333/497
8: Yasushi Ueno, 294/436
9: Hidekazu Kiyomizu, 361/411

Note the major distinctive components of this lineup:

1: Ruiz 5 and Longoria 4, even though Ruiz has almost as much slugging, and notably more on base.
2: Swain 6 and Strickland 7, even though Strickland is clearly better. This is to put Strickland’s OBP in front of the top of the order.

So anyhow. I was curious about the values of obp and slg (wondering about whether my lineup was too obp or slg heavy - last year it was much more obp, and I was worried that this year was too slg.) I ran a ton of seasons together and came up with some values. One point of team obp (ie, the difference between .335 and .334) is worth 5.58 runs a season. One point of team slg is worth 3 runs a season. I was curious about how shifting the numbers around would improve/hurt the lineup. So I ran some adjustments, modifying each batter by giving them 20 more obp at the cost of 37 slugging (equivalent numbers), and then giving them 40 slugging and taking away 21 obp (also equivalents.) Here was the result (measured in resultant runs per season), by lineup slot (extra obp result / extra slg result):

1: Vela, +4.86 / -1.458
2: Moffatt, +4.05 / +.486
3: Marquez, +3.24 / -.324
4: Longoria, -3.564 / +2.43
5: Ruiz, -1.296 / +.162
6: Swain, -4.374 / +1.782
7: Strickland, -3.726 / +1.134
8: Ueno, -2.754 / -.324
9: Kiyomizu, +3.402 / -3.24

Some interesting results. The slots where extra obp at the expense of power is desired are: 1, 2, 3, 9. The spots where power at the expense of obp is desired are: 4, 6, 7. The relatively neutral spots are 5 and 8. Taking it to the next level, I thought it would be neat to distill each player into possible points (putting their obp and slg into one pool) and then reassigning them in a way that would build the ultimate lineup (given the skill level the lineup was at). My system was imperfect, but here’s what I came up with.

1: Moffatt: 500/389
2: Strickland: 315/531
3: Kiyomizu: 390/358
4: Ruiz: 300/692
5: Marquez: 400/389
6: Longoria: 300/659
7: Swain: 290/544
8: Ueno: 270/481
9: Vela: 450/313

This new lineup scores about .35 more runs per game, or about 50 more runs a year, or about 5 more wins a year. Of course, these players don’t exist, but I tried to keep their stats vaguely realistic, if caricatured. There are several interesting things about these results. The obvious thing is that extreme players are favored - much better to have one crazy power hitter and one crazy obp hitter than two balanced hitters of comparable skills. The thing that surprised me the most was that Moffatt, the hitter with the most potential points, was shoved directly into the 1 spot, with their points spent on OBP. Here are the implied lineup desires (for an excellent lineup, like the 2006/2007 yankees or 2004/2005 red sox, or some such):

1: Butt-loads of OBP, but also not a lot of power
2: Generally, the best obp but with power - in this lineup, it ended up being different because of the 450 and 500 obps in front of the 2 slot - generally you’d want something more like the original Moffatt - 411/550
3: Mostly good obp, with a bit of power - you want good obp to get in front of the 4, 6 and 7 hitters
4: The power version of the 2 slot - the best power generally
5: like the 3 spot, but with more power
6: all power - don’t care about obp at all
7: lots of power, but with some obp - you do want to get on base for the 1,2,3 after all
8: the crappiest batter, just dump them and forget them
9: like the 1 slot - you want all obp, and not a lot of power

This is all theoretical - what really got me was the idea that you wanted extreme performers. In theory this could be a money saving mechanism, getting ‘worse’ batters that fit into a slot you need filled. Anyhow, i just thought it was neat.