The U.S. World Baseball Classic Roster

Here was the United States team's lineup from tonight's World Baseball Classic game against Puerto Rico:

Jimmy Rollins, SS, Switch
Brandon Phillips, 2B, Right
Ryan Braun, LF, Right
Joe Mauer, C, Left
David Wright, 3B, Right
Eric Hosmer, 1B, Left
Adam Jones, CF, Right
Giancarlo Stanton, RF, Right
Ben Zobrist, DH, Switch

Here's how the lineup should've looked, with these same nine players:

Rollins
Mauer
Braun
Stanton
Wright
Jones
Zobrist
Hosmer
Phillips

Giancarlo Stanton hit 37 home runs last year, in 123 games; he led the majors in slugging percentage at .608; he'll almost certainly get to 100 career home runs by Memorial Day of this year, at the ripe old age of 23-and-a-half. Not quite the youngest ever to 100 HR's, but if he puts up, say, 47 of them this year, and gets to 140, it'd be the fourth-most ever by a player though their age-23 season. Ahead of him? Eddie Mathews, Mel Ott, and Alex Rodriguez. If Stanton only hits another 37, he'll also be behind Frank Robinson and Ken Griffey, Jr. If he gets hurt, or something, and only hits 27, he'll still be ahead of everyone except those guys and Ted Williams, Orlando Cepeda, Juan Gonzalez, and Mickey Mantle. Oh, and Stanton started in his age 20 season, along with only Mathews, Robinson, Williams, and Cepeda from that list. Point is, the dude's good. And he was hitting eighth. Behind a guy who slugged, yeah, slugged .359 last year, and .411 on his career. This was an insane lineup. I cannot conceive any rational reason to order these nine players as Torre did.

Now, they won, because these are eight very good hitters and Eric Hosmer. Actually they won because David Wright, apparently a.k.a. Captain America, kicked some serious ass. But they did it with some seriously weird lineup ordering. I suppose he put Mauer clean-up because he's a lefty, to break up Braun and Wright. But that stuff doesn't matter as much as the fact that Mauer doesn't hit for much power, while, say, Stanton does.

By the way, I ran these players' career numbers through a lineup analysis tool that only considers OBP and SLG. It spat out the following as the best lineup: Mauer/Braun/Rollins/Stanton/Wright/Jones/Phillips/Hosmer/Zobrist. Now, it doesn't consider stuff about speed, which is why I'd put Rollins lead-off and shift Mauer and Braun down one. Also, apparently the #3 spot in the lineup isn't as important as people think, according to highly advanced statistics? Other than that, the only difference is flipping Zobrist and Phillips, which I'm not committed to. The top 12 lineups all had Stanton hitting clean-up, and Mauer leading off (due to his awesome OBP). Wright and Braun flip-flip between 2 and 5. Hosmer's almost always #8; Zobrist is almost always #9. The rest of it is pretty much tossed around from one to the next. Note that the "best" lineup is projected for 5.758 runs per game, Joe Torre's actual lineup is projected for 5.517 runs per game, and my desired lineup is projected for 5.636 runs per game. Over a 162-game season, that's the difference between 933 runs, 894 runs, and 913 runs. Between best and worst, that's four wins, which is non-trivial (though this lineup would kick some serious ass in the real league, of course).

Just for fun I thought I'd see what happens if I replace Hosmer with, say, Prince Fielder. My inclination in that case would be to go with a lineup of Rollins/Mauer/Braun/Fielder/Stanton/Wright/Jones/Phillips/Zobrist, which they project for 5.886 runs per game, a.k.a. 953 runs per 162. Their favorite lineup would project for 6.034 runs per game, i.e. 977 runs per season. So, with an optimal lineup (according to them), Fielder is a 3.4-win upgrade over Hosmer on offense alone. With my sense of a sensible lineup, he's a 4-win upgrade. Hosmer's an enormous problem on this team, is the basic idea.

Anyway, just some fun with Joe Torre's horrible lineup management skillz on display at the WBC. I'm not the world's biggest opponent of traditionalist lineup-setting philosophies, particularly the idea that you want a speedy leadoff hitter, but I think it's interesting just how bad that lineup was.