The mood among Mets fans today is more pessimistic than it was just a week ago, due to the news about Jacob deGrom being out for at least a month and Max Scherzer now questionable for Opening Day. It’s certainly right to be depressed about the news about the starting pitchers. Perhaps this is the time to see if we’re being properly optimistic about the team’s offense.
Because the rotation looked like it might be the best in MLB, the lineup was taking a back seat. And that certainly made sense, given the sub-par seasons of four players from 2021 and the relative unknowns of how the new hitters will perform in Queens this year. But for argument’s sake, let’s say the nine projected starters each give their average performance over the last five years. What would that be like?
First, let’s show what the mean OBP and SLG for the players from the 2017-2021 time frame:
Pete Alonso – .347/.543
Mark Canha – .356/.435
Eduardo Escobar – .316/.470
Francisco Lindor – .338/.487
Starling Marte – .346/.455
James McCann – .305/.394
Jeff McNeil – .364/.459
Brandon Nimmo – .395/.452
Dominic Smith – .312/.441
Baseball Musings has a calculator where you input the players’ OBP and SLG and it spits out what the optimum lineup would be and how many runs per game that lineup would score, based on historical trends for 46 years. Additionally, it gives you the 30-best and 30-worst lineups you could create. According to the calculator, the ideal lineup would average 5.394 runs per game, which would be quite a nice upgrade from the 3.93 runs per game of the 2021 squad. The ideal lineup would be:
Nimmo
Alonso
Marte
McNeil
Lindor
Smith
Canha
Escobar
McCann
Of the 30 lineups that would score the most runs, Nimmo bats leadoff in all 30. Alonso bats second in 26 of those, with McNeil being in that spot for the other four. It’s zero surprise to me that Nimmo bats first in each of the 30-best lineups. It’s the most painfully obvious thing imaginable to do. However, it surprises me that Lindor doesn’t place second in some lineups. His relatively poor OBP the past five seasons makes him ill-suited for the second slot.
Five different players occupy the third slot in our 30-best lineups. While Marte bats third in the ideal lineup, Lindor slots in the third spot 11 times, compared to Marte’s nine appearances. Escobar and McNeil show up in the third slot four times each, while Smith grabs the other two spots.
The cleanup spot also shows a lot of variety, although with a clear favorite for the spot. McNeil is the leader, batting fourth in 18 of the 30-best lineups. Marte (5x), Lindor (4x) and Alonso (3x) also show up in the fourth slot.
Conventional wisdom is that you bat your best hitter third. Yet the top 30 lineups have five different people hitting third, compared to just one hitter in the leadoff spot. Now, that may be because the Mets just have a terrific option to hit first. Or maybe the first, second and fourth slots in the order are all more important than who bats third.
Now, for the worst lineup the Mets could utilize:
Escobar
McCann
Marte
Smith
Canha
McNeil
Lindor
Nimmo
Alonso
Escobar bats in the top spot in 25 of the 30-worst lineups, with Smith being in the top spot in the other five. McCann bats second in 27 of the worst lineups, with Smith being second the remaining three times. It’s pretty clear who shouldn’t bat at the top of the lineup. Just like with the best lineups, the worst lineups also feature multiple players in the third and fourth spots, showing who bats there is less important than who occupies the top two spots.
You can see the 30-best and 30-worst lineups here.
The calculator shows the best lineup being worth 5.394 runs per game and the worst delivering 5.140, which over 162 games would be 874 runs for the best and 833 runs for the worst. With 10 runs equaling a win, the difference is 41 runs, or four wins. There are 362,880 combinations you can order nine hitters in a lineup. It’s kind of remarkable with that many combinations that the spread of outcomes is just 41 runs over 162 games between best and worst.
It could be that the Mets have a nice balance of OBP and SLG in the lineup, with no obvious sinkholes if everyone performs to their five-year MLB average in the two OPS categories. Or it could be that lineup construction doesn’t matter a ton, making the idea that Terry Collins spent hours agonizing whom to bat where even more ridiculous than originally thought.
This is very interesting. Thanks alot Brian.
Obviously Alonso should be batting second and Nimmo first. Alonso will get more at bats and he is an elite homerun hitter so he could put more runs quickly on the scoreboard.
The third lineup listed is very appealing than the best one. It is only one run difference in the season. By switching Lindor and Marte will make the lineup an alternating righty/lefty lineup. The fourth spot is a good place for the “first pitch hitting” McNeil, especially with Lindor at first base as a base stealing threat. McNeil should get more fastballs to ambush. Canha and his high OBP batting in front of Escobar and his SLG should generate more runs.
Making the lineup is always the most fun. But only a 41 run difference with the worst lineup?… that’s only a run every three or four games… really shocking.
My takes:
OK, I’ll relent… Nimmo leads off.
Marte looks to me like their most dependable hitter. Call me old school, but I want him on base in front of Alonso.
Lindor looked very vulnerable to the breaking ball from the left side… we’ll see if he gets abused by it.
Hate to say it, but there’s no way the Mets will remove Lindor from the three hole… It’s a conservative team in a conservative game, and he’s their 340M guy.
Escobar looks like a 30 HR guy… I like him in the top 5, number 6 if Cano or JD are hot.
Canha and McNeil (he has to prove again he can mash) live near the end of the order with Nido (not McCann).
(After Terry did the color on a game last week, I am sooooo glad he doesn’t do it more often. How many times does a person need to say “Guess what?” in a paragraph? Drove me crazy.)
I had an interesting thought pop into my head.
Conventional lineup theory says that you should bat your better guys higher in the order because they’ll receive more chances and thus the team will get more runs. So for 100+ years that’s what manager have done. The only tinkering and debating that has been done is within the top of the lineup, things like #3 vs #4 or #1 vs #2, and we have lots of data to glean over on these points.
But what we don’t have any real data on is what happens when you shift your best players down in the order. And what could possibly be a good reason why you would want to do that you might ask? Well, right now your best hitters are facing the starter in innings #1, 3 or 4, and possibly the 6th/7th. That means they are facing them when they are super fresh, only slightly tired, and if they get to face them a 3rd time, that means the pitcher is doing well and cruising. But if we shifted them down the order, maybe we could time it so that the best hitters and facing the starters at a point where they are tiring which could translate into more runs? Or maybe this strategy could be used to counteract the opener, because the reasoning for that is that you have your bulk guys skip the top of the lineup the first time thru. So maybe the best hitters should be 3-7 or even 5-9. The problem is, because no one has ever tried this in real life, there is no empirical data to prove or disprove this theory.
I like the idea of possibly doing it against an opener.
I did a fairly extensive look at Pete Alonso’s HR last year, which was posted a few months ago. Among many things, I looked at the inning, pitch count, and starter v reliever. For what its worth, there was no packing HR v relievers, or more generally in innings 1-3, 4-6, or 7-9
“The Book” by Tom Tango holds that batting order doesn’t matter all that much, but, to the extent it does, the most productive order goes from highest OBP to lowest. Tango tells the story of the time Billy Martin set his Tigers lineup by picking player’s names from a hat to shake things up during a losing stretch. They won the game against Gaylord Perry. Here’s the story: https://tht.fangraphs.com/tht-live/40th-anniversary-billy-martin-picks-batting-order-out-of-hat/
That said, I’d be very pleased with 5.4 runs a game.
Loved the data on Nimmo. All he needs to do is stay on the field and we would realize how good he can be. If we are not returning to the two table setters in front of the RBI bats mentality, then Alonso batting second has merit. To make that work you need a strong bat behind him so he sees more strikes. Lindor likely due to the $$$ but what if you have a hot McNeil who used to be around .300, or perhaps Smith at DH if he is about to return to his 2020 form. Seems teams are putting some big bats in the first two slots. The Angels spoke about batting Trout lead off which is counterintuitive until you just step back and think how many more ABs he would have during the season.
I truly believe that if each player had just an average year, we would be in a great place. Then if you have a few bats like Marte and Escobar or Canha or JD at the DH
then you can score more than 5 runs again and make up for some struggles with the Jake and Max storylines.