How Optimal Was The Royals 2014 Lineup

My simulator is a good tool for looking at optimal batting orders.  It can play tens of thousands and even millions (with a smaller set of games) of games while keeping the opponent static which can give you a good idea which lineups win more games.  I am using the Royals most common lineup that they used in the 2014 season and seeing how optimal the simulator thought it was.  After doing this for the Dodgers and Cardinals, I decided to move on to the Kansas City Royals.  I put in some filters to cut down on the number of lineup permutations.  I tried to mimic what the Royals manager tended to do in not hitting lefties back to back other than the 9th then leadoff hitter etc...    Of course you can't expect any manager to be implementing the most optimal lineup but you also don't want him to be giving away fractions of wins each game that can add up over a 162 game season.  So down below, I list the Top 10 lineups along with the most common 2014 lineup in a table sorted by Wins/162 games.  I also list a table showing the frequency of where each player batted in each of the top 50 lineups.  I love the batting order frequency tables as they show you which players have a few dedicated positions in the order they should be hitting in and which players are more versatile in giving you an optimal lineup.  I used 2014 final season stats as the input projections for each hitter because that is for the most part similar to the data that the manager went by.  And I did all the simulations with the opposing team using a right handed starting pitcher.

Before we begin, here is the common Royals lineup that I compared against

Aoki-Infante-Hosmer-Butler-Gordon-Perez-Moustakas-Escobar-Dyson

                                        Top 10 Lineups

Lineup	Wins/162 GB
Aoki-Infante-Moustakas-Perez-Gordon-Escobar-Hosmer-Butler-Dyson	0.000
Aoki-Escobar-Moustakas-Perez-Gordon-Infante-Dyson-Butler-Hosmer	0.065
Aoki-Escobar-Moustakas-Perez-Gordon-Butler-Dyson-Infante-Hosmer	0.111
Aoki-Infante-Moustakas-Perez-Gordon-Escobar-Dyson-Butler-Hosmer	0.143
Aoki-Escobar-Moustakas-Perez-Gordon-Butler-Hosmer-Infante-Dyson	0.164
Aoki-Escobar-Hosmer-Perez-Gordon-Infante-Moustakas-Butler-Dyson	0.166
Aoki-Escobar-Moustakas-Perez-Gordon-Infante-Hosmer-Butler-Dyson	0.207
Dyson-Infante-Moustakas-Perez-Gordon-Escobar-Aoki-Butler-Hosmer	0.238
Aoki-Escobar-Moustakas-Perez-Hosmer-Butler-Gordon-Infante-Dyson	0.308
Moustakas-Escobar-Hosmer-Perez-Gordon-Butler-Aoki-Infante-Dyson	0.354

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             Batting Order Frequency Table

	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	9th
Aoki	30	0	0	0	9	0	5	0	6
Escobar	0	32	0	0	0	11	0	7	0
Moustakas	4	0	26	0	5	0	10	0	5
Perez	0	3	0	39	0	5	0	3	0
Gordon	9	0	0	0	30	0	10	0	1
Infante	0	14	0	0	0	19	0	17	0
Hosmer	2	0	24	0	6	0	10	0	8
Butler	0	1	0	11	0	15	0	23	0
Dyson	5	0	0	0	0	0	15	0	30

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Note:  The most common lineup ended up 0.56 wins per 162 games behind the most optimal lineup.  Not too bad.  The simulator liked batting Perez cleanup which the Royals did not do.  The simulator also liked hitting Escobar second instead of Infante (basically switching them).
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Angels vs Royals, Opening Day Simulation

Now let's look ahead for the Angels. It is March 31st, opening day and the Angels are on the road playing the Kansas City Royals. The opening day starters are likely to be Jered Weaver vs Luke Hochevar. Lineups and depth charts are taken from MLBDepthCharts.com and I know that some players (K.Morales) may not be ready by opening day. I ran the likely lineups through my baseball simulator for 100K games. Below are a detailed look at the results for us baseball starved fans.

Player	Pos		Player	Pos
Angels			Royals
Maicer Izturis	3B		Melky Cabrera	CF
Bobby Abreu	DH		Mike Aviles	3B
Torii Hunter	RF		Billy Butler	DH
Kendry Morales	1B		Kila Kaaihue	1B
Vernon Wells	LF		Alex Gordon	LF
Howie Kendrick	2B		Jeff Francoeur	RF
Erick Aybar	SS		Brayan Pena	C
Jeff Mathis	C		Chris Getz	2B
Peter Bourjos	CF		Alcides Escobar	SS

... And now the results!

Away	Home			Favorite	Win Prob	Over/Under
LAA	KC	Jered Weaver	Luke Hochevar	LAA	59.07%	8.55

No surprise as it looks like the Angels will be a solid favorite on the road in the season opener, but of course anything can happen.

Here is the hitters boxscore(s)

Name	AB	Hits	H1	H2	H3	HR	RBI	BB	SO	wOBA	BABIP
Maicer Izturis	4.533	1.329	0.781	0.412	0.033	0.102	0.478	0.363	0.704	0.353	0.329
Bobby Abreu	4.231	1.264	0.755	0.329	0.024	0.156	0.547	0.592	0.928	0.385	0.352
Torii Hunter	4.343	1.246	0.775	0.303	0.007	0.16	0.606	0.359	0.826	0.352	0.323
Kendry Morales	4.208	1.265	0.751	0.338	0.017	0.159	0.657	0.386	0.681	0.372	0.328
Vernon Wells	4.182	1.202	0.68	0.319	0.025	0.178	0.68	0.304	0.682	0.359	0.308
Howie Kendrick	4.158	1.311	0.804	0.373	0.051	0.082	0.532	0.214	0.7	0.362	0.364
Erick Aybar	4.004	1.15	0.761	0.259	0.079	0.052	0.446	0.262	0.637	0.333	0.331
Jeff Mathis	3.889	0.909	0.584	0.238	0.015	0.072	0.417	0.268	0.825	0.283	0.28
Peter Bourjos	3.866	1.023	0.647	0.256	0.061	0.06	0.414	0.185	0.726	0.307	0.313
Melky Cabrera	4.263	1.14	0.698	0.327	0.057	0.059	0.358	0.305	0.756	0.319	0.314
Mike Aviles	4.237	1.244	0.831	0.297	0.021	0.095	0.435	0.21	0.727	0.334	0.336
Billy Butler	4.049	1.177	0.716	0.332	0.004	0.126	0.505	0.33	0.764	0.353	0.333
Kila Kaaihue	3.963	0.999	0.678	0.209	0.014	0.098	0.429	0.359	0.917	0.31	0.306
Alex Gordon	3.806	1.002	0.627	0.237	0.014	0.124	0.472	0.413	0.928	0.337	0.319
Jeff Francoeur	3.824	1.017	0.672	0.22	0.015	0.11	0.437	0.23	0.825	0.316	0.314
Brayan Pena	3.676	0.907	0.65	0.223	0.005	0.028	0.288	0.268	0.822	0.283	0.311
Chris Getz	3.607	0.932	0.597	0.236	0.048	0.052	0.347	0.267	0.693	0.309	0.308
Alcides Escobar	3.549	0.905	0.616	0.198	0.053	0.038	0.323	0.181	0.681	0.291	0.306

And the pitchers boxscore

Name	IP	SO	BB	Hits	HR	PC	FIP
Jered Weaver	6.396	5.274	1.652	6.738	0.545	99.864	3.434
Fernando Rodney	0.481	0.36	0.181	0.49	0.03	7.691	3.657
Scott Downs	0.404	0.288	0.104	0.426	0.025	6.231	3.353
Kevin Jepsen	0.602	0.484	0.252	0.614	0.033	9.812	3.565
Jordan Walden	0.297	0.249	0.129	0.31	0.028	4.901	4.058
Hisanori Takahashi	0.433	0.316	0.159	0.477	0.043	7.003	4.141
Rich Thompson	0.216	0.134	0.079	0.251	0.023	3.496	4.47
Bobby Cassevah	0.016	0.008	0.007	0.018	0.001	0.261	4.256
Luke Hochevar	5.9	4.097	1.755	7.014	0.696	94.648	4.238
Joakim Soria	0.39	0.418	0.073	0.357	0.023	5.929	2.372
Blake Wood	0.451	0.322	0.144	0.523	0.051	7.259	4.202
Robison Tejeda	0.759	0.675	0.272	0.806	0.069	12.341	3.673
Tim Collins	0.453	0.321	0.19	0.534	0.053	7.547	4.568
Jeremy Jeffress	0.914	0.641	0.385	1.053	0.08	15.143	4.203
Jesse Chavez	0.332	0.232	0.112	0.405	0.049	5.435	4.749
Kanekoa Texeira	0.005	0.003	0.002	0.006	0	0.087	3.739