Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
February 26, 2008
La Russa Moving the Pitcher Up

Tony La Russa will bat his pitchers eighth this season:

La Russa believes the move gives the Cardinals more opportunities to score runs. Having a position hitter in the nine hole makes No. 3 hitter Albert Pujols more like a cleanup hitter without dropping him in the lineup, which could possibly sacrifice an at-bat.

Given that Ned Yost said earlier that he would consider batting Kendall ninth, I'm working on why this makes sense for my next SportingNews.com article.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:21 PM | Strategy | TrackBack (0)
Comments

I credit LaRussa with breaking from baseball tradition, which can be particularly entangling, when he batted the pitcher 8th last season. I think it's the right move. Every analysis I have seen indicates that it will improve run scoring. I would like to see my favorite team do it too.

Posted by: C Johnson at February 26, 2008 09:00 PM

While I applaud thinking out of the box in most situations, La Russa is one of the all time over thinkers of our generation.

Posted by: dbacksbuzz at February 27, 2008 12:06 AM

While I applaud out of the box thinking in general, La Russa has to be one of the most over thinking managers of all time.

Posted by: dbacksbuzz at February 27, 2008 12:08 AM

I heard Yost trying to explain the logic last night on Milwaukee Radio, WTMJ, and let me tell you the logic was extremely tortured. He's just not a smart manager -- saying that in any given season, a manager can only make 1 or 2 decisions that impact a game for a win or loss, that players make the only impact on games being won, and after admitting that a position move killed Bill Hall's offense last year also asserting that a move to 3B after not playing there in years should get him back to hi 2006 form. He's somehow assuming that Kendall's on-base skills in the 9-hole will make Braun in the 2-hole into a 3-hitter. Dig? All the while asserting, correctly that a move up in the order can give a guy 30-40 more ABs in the course of the season. Which makes me wonder why he's looking to give more at bats to guys like Sheets (.077) and the Suppan (.183 career). The majority of the staff falls closer to Sheets than Suppan on average. Typical of the manager who makes lineup decisions on who's trending most "gritty" and "battling" in a given week.

Posted by: sbmke at February 27, 2008 01:22 PM

Does anyone know the average # of PA/game for pinch hitters specifically hitting for the pitcher in the NL? This lineup would make more sense if one adjusted for the fact that the average performance of the #8 slot is going to be substantially better than the combined offensive performance of the team's pitchers.

Posted by: M. Scott Eiland at February 27, 2008 11:51 PM
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