Re: Ryan Braun named Baseball America ROY
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I wouldn't get too caught up in this, the batting order doesn't make that much difference. In fact, I think the most significant impact the BO is to get your better hitters more PAs, so having Young bat leadoff probably is better than having a worse hitter with a better OBP leadoff. There's value to getting the HR hitter more PAs overall.
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I know studies say that order doesn't matter much but my mind has trouble accepting this. Maybe I should read some of those studies so I can refute or accept their conclusion.
But either way, if you believe OBP = 3*SLG, or at least that OBP is much more important than SLG for scoring runs, CY was not even one of our top 5 hitters this year so he should bat 6th.
I would think an optimal lineup would be close to
Batter OBP/SLG
Orlando Hudson .376/.441
Conor Jackson .368/.467
Mark Reynolds .349/.495
Eric Byrnes .353/.460
Chris Young .295/.467
Of course next year it's reasonable to assume that CY's OBP will be close to .350, so you can start batting him higher. But not lead-off.
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