My dad and I had been discussing the concept of lineup optimization recently, so just now I did a little fooling around with an online lineup optimizer tool. I put in the players for an all-time Mets team as I conceive it (Piazza [C], Hernandez [1B], Alfonzo [2B], Reyes [SS], Wright [3B], Jones, Cleon [LF], Beltran [CF], Strawberry [RF], Johnson, Howard [DH]) with each player's stats from their Mets tenure. And it spat out the following lineup: Wright/Piazza/Alfonzo/Strawberry/Beltran/Johnson/Reyes/Jones/Hernandez. Uhhh.... what?!
Here's the thing about these online lineup optimizer tools that shocks me: all they use is on-base percentage and slugging percentage. Seriously? Is anyone seriously asserting that nothing matters in constructing a lineup except OBP and SLG? Not speed? Not contact hitting? Nothing about the difference between two doubles vs. a home run? Not keeping a nice alternation of left- and right-handed hitters? And that's conceding that we ignore the effects of who protects whom in the lineup, or of players' psychological inclinations to bat in certain spots (for instance, don't bat Jose Reyes third!). Nothing about the statistics of baseball matters except OBP and SLG? Another simulator I saw seemed a bit more nuanced, asking for percentages for all four kinds of hit, walks and hit-by-pitches combined, and then outs. Still, we're caring awfully little about anything except the exact result of an individual at-bat. I find it extremely hard to believe that nothing else matters.
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