Top Heavy Tabs

One must give Leyland credit for sending out the most effective lineup game after game. Here are the Tigers top 5 TB/Out contributors and their most frequent position in the lineup.

PLAYER TB/OUT Batting Pos.

1. Miguel Cabrera 1.10 4TH
2. Brennan Boesch 0.98 5TH
3. Magglio Ordonez 0.90 3RD
4. Johnny Damon 0.85 2ND
5. Austin Jackson 0.82 1ST


As you can see all five of the Tabs best hitters are in the top 5 of the lineup which allows them to get the majority of the team's plate appearances. Although this may seem like it's common sense, it is not always the case for managers to put their best hitters at the top of their order. For some reason that is not known to even the top scientists in the world managers will "go with their gut" and put players with inferior offensive skills in top half of the order while better batters are burried at the bottom of the order. In this aspect, Jim Leyland is thriving as the Tigers manager. I still believe, though, that he should set up the lineup in decreasing order of players' on-base percentage (OBP) as this way the team will make outs at the very slowest rate possible. This is important because outs are the "clock" in baseball and the quicker at team accumulates outs the quicker a team will reach its demise. In the Tigers' case, it would benefit them to bat Cabrera (.418 OBP) lead off, followed by Ordonez (.407), Damon (.393), Jackson (.393), and Ramon "Big Time Charlie" Santiago (.370). Carlos Guillen actually has an OBP of .391 but he is currently on the Disabled List. Leyland slotting Boesch (.362) in the 5th spot in the order can be justified though by his incredible contact to damage ratio which is seen in his amazing 0.98 TB/Out. All in all, I feel that Jim Leyland has set up his lineup to be very efficient in producing runs and keeping the "out clock" from expiring too quickly.

Observation of the day: As I continue to take in data on walks and their effect on winning or losing, a trend has emerged. I have charted 912 Major League Baseball games and the team that took more walks (gave up fewer walks) than their opponent won 620 of those games. That is good for a .680 winning percentage. To put that in to perspective, a team that has a .680 winning percentage for the season would win 110 games. 110 wins has only been achieved six times in the history of Major League Baseball. The ability to take and not give walks is extremely correlated to winning.