Bloops: Optimizing the Giants’ Lineup
Posted by Neil Paine on August 19, 2009
"devil_fingers" of Driveline Mechanics has been doing a fun series called the "Lousy Lineup Optimizer", where he takes a lineup that's, well, lousy, and sees how much a shift to a more sabermetrically-sound batting order would impact their run scoring. Today he examines the San Francisco Giants, owners of an anemic .698 OPS and 4.03 R/G average, and makes some changes that could benefit the offense. The only thing missing is that he doesn't use an actual lineup simulator like the indispensible one at Baseball Musings, or the even-more-sophisticated spreadsheet that the Hardball Times released with their annual a few years back.
August 20th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Thanks for the link! I enjoy doing it, despite being more work than it seems to be. I'll continue to do it from time to time if people keep asking for it, and tentatively plan on doing it for the playoff teams once we get there.
I'm aware of the limitations of not incorporating a simulator, and at the request of a user, I did end up using the Baseball Musings one to compare lineups in the comments in response to a user (read the comments for more info). I don't use it in the main postings because while it's handy, the suggestions it makes might confuse users who wonder why I don't use those, since they seem to be better than my own suggestions according to the simulator. I don't know exaclty what assumptions they use. I don't know how it weights OBP and SLG (the only stats it uses) to determine who the best hittesr are -- I use wOBA, although 1.75*OBP+SLG works pretty well. It only uses SLG and doesn't take contact or isolated power into account. It doesn't take natter handedness into account (split up those lefties!). It also doesn't take into account double play tendencies, basetealing, or baserunning... then there's the issue of the pitcher...
This isn't to say it's a "bad" simulator. It's very cool, and I might use it more often simply to compare my lineups with the "standard" ones. But I don't want readers to think it's the basis for my work -- The Book is.
If I only had access to THT's... which annual was it with? Anyone want to drop me a line on that or any other cool batting order simulators that allow input of projected stats, including baserunning, stealing, GDP, etc.?
The real solution would be for me to program my own, but that's not going to happen.
Thanks... again, post any requests at Driveline. NO promises, but I'm a sucker for flattery.
August 21st, 2009 at 9:23 am
I believe THT's came out with the '08 annual. It had a password and a link where you'd download from their site, but I'm note sure if the link even works now, more than a year and a half later.