Setting Your Lineup: The Best and Worst of the 2009 Boston Red Sox
April 22nd, 2009 | by Darryl Johnston |
Every night, Tito Francona must decide what his lineup is going to be. More often than not, he uses a pretty set lineup. Typically you see it as follows:
1. Jacoby Ellsbury CF
2. Dustin Pedroia 2B
3. David Ortiz DH
4. Kevin Youkilis 1B
5. JD Drew RF
6. Jason Bay LF
7. Mike Lowell 3B
8. Jason Varitek C
9. Nick Green SS
Now obviously, this is a good order for a lineup and hard to argue with. None of these players are in glaringly out of place orders. This Red Sox lineup is probably going to score about 875 runs in 2009.
Something I found interesting was a lineup simulator put together by baseballmusings.com. It allows you to populate players and based off of the you data input, it will run a series of lineup iterations and give you ‘projected team runs per game’. You enter each player with their assumed OBP and SLG% and the system will give you ideal lineups as well as the projected worst lineups. For this exercise, I used 2009 Bill James projections for each player. According to BaseballMusings.com lineup simulator, Here is the ideal lineup for the 2009 Boston Red Sox:
1. JD Drew RF
2. Jason Bay LF
3. Dustin Pedroia
4. David Ortiz DH
5. Kevin Youkilis 1B
6. Mike Lowell 3B
7. Jason Varitek C
8. Nick Green SS
9. Jacoby Ellsbury CF
And here is the WORST possible lineup for the 2009 Boston Red Sox:
1. Nick Green SS
2. Jason Varitek C
3. Mike Lowell 3B
4. Jacoby Ellsbury CF
5. Dustin Pedroia 2B
6. JD Drew RF
7. Kevin Youkilis 1B
8. David Ortiz DH
9. Jason Bay LF
Thoughts?
Red Sox (7-6)
Darryl Johnston is the Red Sox correspondent for Fanball.com. He has many years of sports writing under his championship belts. Email him – redsoxdj@gmail.com
Tags: Boston Red Sox, Darryl Johnston, Fanball, Terry Francona
