frankiefranchise

Be careful what you wish for. I have a tenancy to rant (only to my closest friends). I did more thinking about this and decided we should take a look at the numbers. In general, there are three things that stand out to me based on the available statistics. 1. He is having a good year. 2. He doesn't seem to be significantly affected by leading off an inning or having RISP (or runners on base in general). 3. When he is placed at other spots in the lineup, it appears to have a significant effect on his production, though the sample sizes are small. In addition, the results of these lineup changes don't follow a trend (i.e. he crushed it in the 5th spot, but the 3rd spot was a disaster). Some of this could be attributed to his mechanics and state of mind during his time in that spot, however, the cause of that could very well have something to do with his spot in the lineup. (it's a chicken and egg dilemma). I'd summarize this as confusing. The results are mixed. Therefore, I still think it's better to let him really get in a groove before making a change.

I haven't felt compelled to comment on here despite following this site for several seasons - but this week's podcast got me fired up. I side with John on this issue and think that this topic should be discussed further - maybe next week's podcast? If I have one pet peeve with the new data and analytics driven era of baseball (although in general I love it - I'm a math guy) it is that it treats players as a line of data - a collection of numbers that can be moved around the field, and can be moved up and down a lineup, and they will remain the same - given enough time. While I believe this to be true over the course of a decade for a solid player (say Joe Mauer for example). I would argue this is flawed thinking to apply it to all players in all situations. If you look at Joe Mauers career splits, he is shockingly steady. It's difficult to find a meaningful difference in his statistics - the answer is a .300 BA no matter what the situation. Given this knowledge, it's easy to assume that you should construct a lineup ordering your hitters from best to worst and let it play out for 162 games. At the end of the year you get 10 more runs (or one more win) and a pat on the back from your boss. The problem is that players are human. They go through slumps, they may have eaten some bad chicken last night, or didn't sleep well, or they simply don't like the spotlight to be on them, or they feel extra pressure with runners in scoring position. A good manager is one who picks up on these things and constructs a lineup to help his players perform their best. AJ Hinch said about his leadoff hitter George Springer in an SI article, “George’s energy, personality and enthusiasm set the tone for this team” and Altuve was quoted as saying “George is the heart and soul because of who he is on and off the field. We feed off his personality and his energy.” None of these things are included on baseball reference.com and these are the things we lean on our manager to figure out and utilize. Rocco has the home team playing with that "it" factor - call it chemistry - call it whatever you want, but it's noticeable. I think John is right - Rocco is in a position to know where to place guys in the order, let's let it play out longer before we go full nerd and start clamoring about a slight inefficiency in the numbers.