Talk:Batting order (baseball)

#2 hitter should be good at bunting so he can sac the leadoff over to 2nd?

MLB and lower teams have been statistically proven to score more runs on average with a runner on 1st base with no outs than with a runner on 2nd with one out. However, the former scenario is more likely to result in one run being scored.

Thus, the #2 hitter rarely puts down sacrifice bunts anymore. But the article still says that the #2 hitter "The second batter is usually a contact hitter with the ability to bunt or sacrifice a baserunner over or get a hit. His main goal is to move the leadoff man into scoring position..."

Is there any reason why it says this or should I just remove it?

Sas3301 (talk) 20:32, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

On a team with a weak offense, the #2 hitter might bunt a lot. On a team with a good #2 hitter, the #2 hitter puts down few sacrifice bunts. One-run strategies are far more likely in the late innings of close games, especially pitcher's duels. The typical sacrifice bunt comes from someone who must be kept in the lineup for his defensive value, but who is suspect as a hitter. Bunts as sacrifices might occasionally become singles, and those are particularly valuable for keeping an inning alive and advancing a base runner. But if the #2 hitter is Robin Yount, Ryne Sandberg, or Joe Morgan, then that hitter is going to try to hit at the least a single to the outfield which is more valuable than a bunt single (and might be an extra-base hit which is even more precious). Under some circumstances, bunts may be desirable as means of avoiding double plays.

So this is how your #2 hitter is:

BA .287 HR 19 RBI 88 BB 65

That hitter is trying to hit to the outfield if there is a runner on base.

Consider this fellow:

BA .246 HR 7 RBI 55 BB 32

A sacrifice might be a good idea if you are stuck with him as the #2 hitter.

Of course this might fail to take into account platoon advantages and the situation in the game.

The usual hitter to lay down lots of sacrifice bunts is a #7 or #8 hitter... or the pitcher.

Average at bats

I'm wondering, as an average, how many at bats each position gets over a season. Is there a big difference between say #1 and #4.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.234.4.92 (talk • contribs) Revision as of 15:17, 23 January 2006.

re: the first comment

The difference is usually around 60 AB's. Leadoffs get around 660 while cleanups get around 590 or so.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.63.253.204 (talk • contribs) Revision as of 06:53, 8 June 2006.

More significantly, the difference is between plate appearances, which include walks, hit by pitch, and sacrifice bunts or flies which do not constitute at-bats. For a batter who takes an unusually-high number of walks, like Rickey Henderson or Joe Morgan, a total number of at-bats can be deceptively low. Pbrower2a (talk) 16:43, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

The math goes something like this. To begin, you assume that each of the spots in the batting order will make the last out of the game 1/9 of the time, thus depriving the next batter of an additional plate appearance. Over the course of 162 games, this gives each slot 162/9 = 18 additional plate appearances as compared to the next lower slot. Thus, if your #4 slot accumulates 600 plate appearances, you’d expect 618 for #3, 636 for #2 and 654 for #1. In practice, there will certainly be nonrandom variation as to how many last outs each player will make, as the better hitters make fewer outs in general. WHPratt (talk) 18:20, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Request for further discussion of the overall importance of batting order

I came to this page as a casual baseball fan who doesn't quite understand the fuss made over batting order. Or more precisely, I get that having batters arranged in a certain sequence can help score more runs, but I don't understand why it matters that the player who the manager wants to serve as the "leadoff man" occupy the first spot in the batting order — surely this matters only in the first inning? Couldn't a manager who wanted to score more runs in, say, the third inning, start the rotation with weaker hitters and then put stronger hitters toward the bottom of the lineup? I'm sure there has been discussion of this issue that could be added to the article... Charolastra charolo (talk) 19:23, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure how it would fit into the article, but if another editor has any ideas, go ahead. To answer your question, it matters because of the number of plate appearances a player gets - players at the top of the lineup will get more plate appearances over the course of a season (say the #3 batter makes the final out of the game - he (and the #1 and #2 batters) will have gotten one more plate appearance than any of the #4-9 batters). This is the main reason why the best hitters go at the top, rather than at the bottom - to give them more opportunities to produce. Tejastheory (talk) 07:04, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Illustrative example

I believe that it would be appropriate to show box scores of illustrative games, most likely World Series games. Ideally one would use a DH and another wouldn't. Pbrower2a (talk) 17:36, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Chase Headley

I have deleted the references to Chase Headley as a model of a #3 or #4 hitter. He has yet to show himself as a high-average slugger as is typical of such people as Ruth, Williams, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mays, Mantle, Aaron, McCovey, Pujols, Cabrera, etc. He could yet become such a player but he has yet to become one. "Hall of Fame" or "can't-miss active or recent player" is a good control, as every team has a #3 or #4, but clearly a huge proportion of Hall of Fame players are or were #3 and #4 hitters for significant parts of their careers.

I have been leery of adding more people than others already have here because they might not fit the the pattern in one way or another. For example, George Brett and Al Kaline never had the power stats that one associates with such a hitter, and such people as Mike Schmidt and Harmon Killebrew -- all Hall of Famers -- never had the gaudy averages characteristic of a #3 or #4 hitter.Pbrower2a (talk) 16:48, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Batting around

See discussion of "batting around" here. --Epeefleche (talk) 20:39, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

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Speed and the batting order

If anything, speed might be more valuable "late" in the batting order -- such as #6 or #8 (#7 is often a very slow catcher). Here is where the batting averages, on-base percentages, and power states are lower. How fast someone gets around the bases matters little in the wake of a home run, but in those parts of the line-up in which the offense is likely to be singles and sacrifices, speed may be more desirable. It may also be available in a weak hitter who should never be pressed into a #1 or #2 spot in the batting order.

At times (depending on the situation in the game) a pinch-runner may be used for a #4 or #5 hitter if such offers a far greater chance of scoring a run, especially if the #4 or #5 hitter is (as is usual for such hitters) unusually slow, and has a high likelihood of being put out on a double play. Pbrower2a (talk) 06:58, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Contrast with cricket

This paragraph seems off:

   The concept of a batting order in baseball is "profoundly democratic; no matter how good a hitter you are, you have to wait your turn."[11] In that respect, although baseball, like cricket, "may have begun as a gentlemen's game," Americans gravitated toward baseball as a better embodiment of the country's egalitarian ideal, and as a symbol of cultural as well as political independence from the British colonial legacy.[11]

The issue is that in both sports, good hitters are put near the top of the order, and once they finish batting, must wait for the rest of their teammates to bat before batting again.

• Where baseball could probably be considered more egalitarian than cricket is that it forces the best hitters to let everyone else in the lineup have a chance to bat every time they themselves bat.
  • Whereas in cricket, a perfect batter could theoretically face half or all of the deliveries thrown to his team. GreekApple123 (talk) 20:04, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Do we need this section on cricket at all?

We have seven paragraphs plus several bullet points that summarize a standalone article, Batting order (cricket), which has no real pertinence to this topic Batting order (baseball), which by its title is exclusive to baseball. I think we could do away with this portion altogether? Kane5187 (talk) 00:44, 19 October 2023 (UTC)