Lineups: Part 3

So could the Noles have gotten a little more out of their lineup last year? My answer is yes, definitely. How much more, you ask? That's a little bit harder to pin down. I'm basically applying major league criteria to college baseball in order to optimize our batting order. While certain aspects of the game are always the same, it's entirely possible that players in college are placed into the lineup in order to mould them into the types of players they ought to be. For example, if you see a guy that might make a good leadoff hitter, maybe you put him in the 1 spot in order to teach him to develop his innate plate discipline. College baseball can afford to be an "instructional league" of sorts- in fact it has to be. Even your most grizzled college veteran has only been with the team 4 or 5 years. Development is key.

Players can improve a tremendous amount in just one year, but they've got to get playing time in order to make those leaps. Unlike the Major Leagues (which produce much larger samples sizes with typically older players), a college player's numbers from one year aren't all that indicative of his future production. With that said, I still think that there are trends and tendencies that should not be ignored when constructing a lineup.

Anyway, here's last year's typical batting order:
1. Tyler Holt .324/.471/.416
2. Jason Stidham .322/.430/.518
3. Buster Posey .463/.566/.879!
4. Jack Rye .371/.478/.526
5. Dennis Guinn .322/.430/.641
6. Tony Delmonico .374/.455/.529
7. Tommy Oravetz .361/.456/.550
8. Mike McGee .344/.427/.544
9. Stuart Tapley .383/.472/.592

Going by the tenets laid out in "The Book" (and statistcal knowledge in general), I probably wouldn't have batted Tyler as the leadoff guy. Our 4th best OBP'er without much power, he probably should have been down toward the bottom of the order. We've already discussed how batting Buster 3rd was a waste of a phenomenal hitter. The following might have been a better balance of OBP and Power in the appropriate places:
1. Jack Rye (Great OBP, good power)
2. Stuart Tapley (I still have no idea why this man batted 9th)
3. Mike McGee
4. Buster Posey (On Base a lot, ungodly power)
5. Dennis Guinn is fine here
6. Oravetz (still great numbers, just less power)
7. Delmonico
8. Stidham
9. Holt

For more quantifiable results, I used Cyril Morong's "Lineup Analysis" tool, which generated this lineup as optimal.
1. Rye
2. Posey
3. Delmonico
4. Guinn
5. Tapley
6. McGee
7. Oravetz
8. Stidham
9. Holt

I ultimately disagree with Buster batting 2nd because of his power, although maybe such a great hitter deserves as many plate appearances as possible. The calculator says that the above lineup would score 8.888 runs per game (RPG), as opposed to the 8.569 it estimates for the real lineup (actual values would be higher in the more offensive college run environment). That's a difference of .319 wins per game, which comes out to a ridiculous 18 more runs over an almost 60 game regular season. Would the gains be this great in practice? Probably not. Again we're not generating this with NCAA Run Expectancy numbers (although if someone knows where to find this information, by all means send it my way), and there can be a psychological effect to moving hitters around. But I feel that in terms of optimization, .319 RPG is just too big a number to ignore.

So, now that we've gone through all that, what would be an optimal lineup for the 2009 FSU baseball team? After seeing the first four games of the season, here's my take.
1. Tyler Holt (who has matured and may now be well suited to this role)
2. Oravetz or Cardullo
3. McGee
4. Danesh or Tapley (I know it's early, but Danesh has been beastly good so far)
5. Tapley or Danesh
6. Stidham
7. Cardullo/Oravetz
8. D'Vontrey Richardson
9. Rafael Lopez

Now, immediately after writing this, I realize that I am a world class fool for making such predictions this early, and with so many young players to boot. Maybe Stidham can become an offensive leader and produce enough to warrant the cleanup billing he's been receiving. Lopez seems to have great offensive potential and should maybe be much higher. Plus, I still no clue about what kind of player D'Vo will be this year. There are so many players on this roster with unknown potential that it is difficult to accurately assign batting positions at this point. I'll hopefully return to the question of optimal lineup once we've gotten a little bit better idea of our player's tendencies and current abilities.

P.S. I'm curious to know what Whelk and anyone else has to say about the Noles and batting order.