Best Dodgers Lineup

Every season there is much talk about lineups. Which lineup will score the most runs and win the most games. There are many theories about how the batting order should be constructed. Speed and on base guy(s) near the top followed by your best power hitters. I have put this theory to the test using my simulator, which plays 100K games using different lineups to see which one produces the most runs and wins. In this exercise I made the Dodgers the away team, always giving them 9 at bats in every regulation length game. I kept the home team constant, and in this exercise I had the Dodgers facing the Washington Nationals. I had the Nationals throw (LHP) Gio Gonzalez and (RHP) Jordan Zimmerman in an attempt to find the Dodgers best lineup to use against both left handed and right handed pitchers. Of course I did not run through every single permuation of lineup possibilities, but after a while you can easily hone in on the best ones. And without any further ado, here is the Dodgers best lineups vs LHP and RHP. Note that in this exercise, I used the 2012 Zips Projections for all Dodgers hitters.

vs LHP Lineup	vs RHP Lineup
A.J. Ellis	A.J. Ellis
Andre Ethier	Andre Ethier
Matt Kemp	Matt Kemp
Juan Rivera	James Loney
James Loney	Juan Rivera
Juan Uribe	Juan Uribe
Mark Ellis	Mark Ellis
Dee Gordon	Dee Gordon
Pitchers Spot	Pitchers Spot

Notes: Zips loves A.J. Ellis' OBP and hates Dee Gordon's OBP. The simulator is pretty consistent on which lineup it likes the best facing both a LHP or a RHP pitcher with the only difference being the swap of Loney/Rivera in the number four and five holes. Facing a RHP the Dodgers did score slightly more runs with Adam Kennedy playing 2B instead of Mark Ellis, but the runs were more than lost on the defensive side. How much does it hurt the Dodgers batting Gordon and M.Ellis at the top of the lineup as opposed to what the simulator says is the best lineup? Against the LHP around 1 win and against the RHP lineup around 0.15 wins. Probably not enough to get red in the face about, especially against RHP.

www.onlinecasinoclub32.com

The Ichiro Lineup Shuffle

There has been much discussion about the Seattle Mariners recent decision to drop Ichiro Suzuki down in the lineup from leadoff to the number three spot. Is it a good decision? Will the Mariners offense benefit? It is difficult to say as Ichiro claims that he can change his approach and hit for more power while giving up batting average points at the plate (due to more strike outs). Any change in approach is likely a push when you look at how it will likely effect his wOBA. More power and more strike outs will likely keep his wOBA numbers around the same, at the very least still within the noise.

What I have done is run the Mariners lineup through my simulator with a couple of different lineups. In this exercise I want to see what kind of lineup the Mariners would score the most runs with. And today I take a look at the Mariners lineup against a RHP. To give the Mariners 9 (or more) innings worth of at-bats in every game I made them the away team and picked the Chicago White Sox and Phil Humber as their opponents. I ran my simulator with four different Mariner lineups, keeping all other variables the same and take a look at how many runs they scored per game (100K games simulated) and average win expectancy. Here are the lineups and the results.

Lineup #1	Figgins	Ackley	Suzuki	Carp	Montero	Smoak	Gutierrez	Olivo	Ryan
Lineup #2	Suzuki	Gutierrez	Ackley	Montero	Carp	Smoak	Olivo	Figgins	Ryan
Lineup #3	Figgins	Suzuki	Smoak	Montero	Carp	Ackley	Gutierrez	Olivo	Ryan
Lineup #4	Ackley	Suzuki	Smoak	Montero	Carp	Figgins	Gutierrez	Olivo	Ryan

And now the results...

Lineup	Runs/Game	WPct
Lineup #1	4.05113	47.430%
Lineup #2	4.05001	47.261%
Lineup #3	4.03139	47.161%
Lineup #4	4.02156	47.020%

So as you can see, there is no difference between a lineup that bats Figgins leadoff and Ichiro third than one that bats Ichiro leadoff. The difference is so minimal that the team is likely better off just letting players bat where they are the most comfortable at. Feel free to tweet or email me your own lineup (vs RHP, LHP), I will gladly run it through my simulator and post the results in the table here. Next up I will look at a vs LHP lineup.

... And here is Part II, vs LHP lineup (Danks)

Lineup #1L	Figgins	Ackley	Suzuki	Carp	Montero	Smoak	Gutierrez	Olivo	Ryan
Lineup #2L	Suzuki	Gutierrez	Ackley	Montero	Carp	Smoak	Olivo	Figgins	Ryan
Lineup #3L	Montero	Carp	Suzuki	Smoak	Figgins	Ackley	Gutierrez	Olivo	Ryan
Lineup #4L	Ackley	Figgins	Suzuki	Montero	Carp	Smoak	Gutierrez	Olivo	Ryan
Lineup #5L	Suzuki	Smoak	Figgins	Montero	Carp	Ackley	Gutierrez	Olivo	Ryan

And now the results...

Lineup	Runs/Game	WPct
Lineup #3L	3.96294	46.1844%
Lineup #1L	3.95466	46.0012%
Lineup #5L	3.95412	46.1896%
Lineup #4L	3.95362	46.0384%
Lineup #2L	3.9322	45.8776%

Skinny: So the best lineup vs left handed pitchers was just one that was sorted from highest wOBA to lowest wOBA vs LHP with the lineup that was tops against the RHP coming in 2nd. Makes me wonder if the lineup sorted from highest to lowest wOBA would also come out on top vs the RHP. Guess I will have to run that one again and see.

Well, as it turns out the same lineup (Lineup #3L) also has the same wOBA order against RHP as it does against LHP. Lineup #3L against RHP (Humber) scored 4.0517 runs per game which also puts it first in the vs RHP list. So there you have it. According to my simulator the Mariners would actually be best off by just ordering their lineup from best to worst hitters. In other words, give your best hitters the most plate appearances. But we are only talking around two tenths of a win over 162 games vs the wOBA sorted lineup and the (Figgins, Ackley, Suzuki) lineup. Worth worrying about? Nope!

Here are the output wOBA's for each Mariners player in this exercise. Keep in mind this is different than the input wOBA used. The output wOBA is effected by the quality of opposing starting pitcher and relief pitcher as well as the the park the player is hitting in, if he is at home or away and the handedness matchup.

Player	Output wOBA vs Humber	Output wOBA vs Danks
Figgins	0.327	0.323
Ackley	0.328	0.317
Suzuki	0.334	0.329
Montero	0.349	0.361
Carp	0.337	0.332
Smoak	0.335	0.329
Gutierrez	0.303	0.307
Olivo	0.297	0.303
Ryan	0.292	0.298

Note: My own set of proprietary hitter and pitcher projections were used.

Winning Time

Here is a preliminary look at 2012 MLB win totals from my simulator. I say preliminary because I am still only going five starting pitchers deep on each team as rotation depth is still shaking out for many teams. Feel free to dock or add a few wins here and there for teams that may or may not have healthy arms in their rotation. Along with my win numbers, I have listed a few other sources who have put out 2012 win totals. They are the Replacement Level Yankees Weblog and the Atlantis Sportsbook in Reno Nevada. Below are the results for four of the sources used. If you know of any other sources, please feel free to drop me a line and let me know. Along with the win totals, I listed the average and standard deviation of each team's projection along with the standard deviation of each projection source.

Team	Dodger Sims	RLYW Cairo	RLYW Marcel	Atlantis Casino	BetOnline	Average	Standard Dev
Arizona Diamondbacks	81.03	84	85	84.5	84.5	83.81	1.59
Atlanta Braves	83.3	85	89	86.5	83.5	85.46	2.36
Baltimore Orioles	76.39	70	70	70.5	71	71.58	2.72
Boston Red Sox	87.57	92	90	87.5	87.5	88.91	2.03
Chicago Cubs	73.82	71	70	73.5	73.5	72.36	1.74
Chicago White Sox	78.48	74	79	76.5	77.5	77.10	1.98
Cincinnati Reds	86.59	87	89	86.5	87	87.22	1.02
Cleveland Indians	76.96	84	83	75.5	75.5	78.99	4.17
Colorado Rockies	87.88	81	85	82.5	81.5	83.58	2.86
Detroit Tigers	90.81	88	84	94.5	94	90.26	4.38
Houston Astros	65.35	60	66	62.5	62.5	63.27	2.43
Kansas City Royals	74.69	74	79	78.5	78.5	76.94	2.39
Los Angeles Angels	91.37	91	87	89.5	89.5	89.67	1.72
Los Angeles Dodgers	78.93	75	76	81.5	81.5	78.59	3.03
Miami Marlins	82.41	82	80	82.5	82.5	81.88	1.07
Milwaukee Brewers	83.23	86	81	82.5	81.5	82.85	1.96
Minnesota Twins	72.61	67	68	74.5	74	71.22	3.49
New York Mets	73.2	75	74	74.5	74.5	74.24	0.68
New York Yankees	91.34	97	92	93.5	93	93.37	2.20
Oakland Athletics	71.37	76	82	72.5	73	74.97	4.28
Philadelphia Phillies	92.69	92	90	95.5	95.5	93.14	2.37
Pittsburgh Pirates	73.17	68	72	73.5	73	71.93	2.27
San Diego Padres	69.44	76	75	70.5	70.5	72.29	2.98
San Francisco Giants	85.28	85	85	87.5	87.5	86.06	1.32
Seattle Mariners	71.09	74	76	72.5	72.5	73.22	1.86
St. Louis Cardinals	94.29	90	84	87.5	87	88.56	3.85
Tampa Bay Rays	83.1	92	88	87.5	87.5	87.62	3.15
Texas Rangers	97.61	92	87	94.5	94	93.02	3.92
Toronto Blue Jays	74.16	78	81	81	81.5	79.13	3.11
Washington Nationals	81.85	86	83	80.5	81	82.47	2.19
Standard Deviation	8.32	9.12	7.11	8.32	8.16	7.86

Note: Last updated 2/21

It's Time For Blogger Baseball

This Saturday February 11th I will proudly be playing in the first annual, Dodgers Blogger Softball Tournament at the beautiful Big League Dreams replica fields in the not so beautiful city of West Covina put on and hosted by the wonderful Left Field Pavillion blog.

I will proudly be playing for the Dodger Thoughts team, coached by King Daddy of all the Dodger blogs Jon Weisman. The tournament is for charity, most notably it is for the Los Angeles Food Bank. All entry fee money will be going to the Food Bank and players will be donating food items at the tournament. Our not so star studded team will be playing games at 9AM (Fenway Park), 11AM (Tigers Stadium) and 2PM (Dodger Stadium).

Jon Weisman may be live tweeting from the tournament. So feel free to follow him at @DodgerThoughts for the live play by play blows.