All this talk about lineups has gotten me interested in how thinking about lineups has changed over the course of baseball's history. Turns out, Darwinian evolution does not seem to apply inthe insular world or professional baseball. Just looking at wOBA as a function of lineup position at various years shows how little lineup construction has changed in the last 100 years.
In the above plot, the horizontal dashed line is the league-average wOBA, so this is showing player performance relative to the league's overall performance. Each year is shifted up by 20 points to keep all the plots from lying on top of each other. Leadoff and 2nd-hole players tightly correlated to league average. Third and cleanup are the big bats, and the rest of the lineup degrades monotonically. You can see the advent of the DH in the interval between 1964 and 1976.
To see just how much these numbers have (or haven't) changes since 1913, take a look at wOBA and OBP as a function of year for the first four lineup positions:
If you read this blog (both of you), you know that the leadoff spot is the most important spot in the lineup. The third spot, surprisingly, is the least important of the top 5. But for 100 years the leadoff batter has strayed--on average--within a narrow range of the league average. In fact, the era where the leadoff hitter had his highest wOBA was the early 1910's.
The idea that any batting event (walk, double, triple, etc) is more valuable in the leadoff spot than in any other spot (once adjusted for plate appearances) is a fairly new concept. Getting on base, one would think, was an antecedent to that notion, something that came into the fore in the early years of the Bill James revolution.
But getting on base--in fact, taking pitches and working the walk--was a very early requirement for a good leadoff hitter. Searching back issues of the New York Times starting 1900, the earliest mention I find of "leadoff man" is from July 16, 1919, after the Yankees manager decided to shake up his lineup with his team mired in a slump:
But after 1920, both wOBA and OBP of leadoff hitters declined, and other than a brief period around 1990, never reached the same levels. The grumbling about Joey Votto not realizing that a sacrifice fly is better than a walk just shows that baseball thinking hasn't just not-evolved, it's devolved. Votto may not be a leadoff hitter but the argument still applies.
My purpose in looking into these results is to find how many runs baseball teams have wasted by putting middling players at the top of the order. More on this later.
In the above plot, the horizontal dashed line is the league-average wOBA, so this is showing player performance relative to the league's overall performance. Each year is shifted up by 20 points to keep all the plots from lying on top of each other. Leadoff and 2nd-hole players tightly correlated to league average. Third and cleanup are the big bats, and the rest of the lineup degrades monotonically. You can see the advent of the DH in the interval between 1964 and 1976.
To see just how much these numbers have (or haven't) changes since 1913, take a look at wOBA and OBP as a function of year for the first four lineup positions:
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| OBP as a function of year for different slots in the lineup. The leauge OBP is shown in the bottom panel. The tick solid lines, showing OBP relative to league OBP for slots 1-4, are boxcar smoothed over a 5-year window. The individual yearly results are shown with the thin solid cuves of the same color. |
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| Sam as OBP above, but now for weighted on-base average (wOBA). |
If you read this blog (both of you), you know that the leadoff spot is the most important spot in the lineup. The third spot, surprisingly, is the least important of the top 5. But for 100 years the leadoff batter has strayed--on average--within a narrow range of the league average. In fact, the era where the leadoff hitter had his highest wOBA was the early 1910's.
The idea that any batting event (walk, double, triple, etc) is more valuable in the leadoff spot than in any other spot (once adjusted for plate appearances) is a fairly new concept. Getting on base, one would think, was an antecedent to that notion, something that came into the fore in the early years of the Bill James revolution.
But getting on base--in fact, taking pitches and working the walk--was a very early requirement for a good leadoff hitter. Searching back issues of the New York Times starting 1900, the earliest mention I find of "leadoff man" is from July 16, 1919, after the Yankees manager decided to shake up his lineup with his team mired in a slump:
Roger Peckinpah was put at the head of the list in place of Sam Vick. The latter has not been getting on the bases often enough for a leadoff man…. His trouble was inability to wait out the pitchers. Sam wanted to smack the ball every time he had a chance.And later that same year, the Times had an article about the Washington Senators manager predicting that the Chicago White Sox would beat the Reds to win the "world's series":
"When I pick the White Sox to win the world's series [sic], don't think I have just had a guess… Just take the batting order of the Chicago outfit. Nemo Leibold is a leadoff man of great ability. He is hard to pitch to and has a good eye. If the balls are bad he won't take a swing at them."And indeed, Nemo Leibold had a .404 on-base percentage in 1919, roughly 80 points higher than the league average, with a 14% walk rate.
But after 1920, both wOBA and OBP of leadoff hitters declined, and other than a brief period around 1990, never reached the same levels. The grumbling about Joey Votto not realizing that a sacrifice fly is better than a walk just shows that baseball thinking hasn't just not-evolved, it's devolved. Votto may not be a leadoff hitter but the argument still applies.
My purpose in looking into these results is to find how many runs baseball teams have wasted by putting middling players at the top of the order. More on this later.
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