Boy, was last night’s lineup brutal.  It makes one wonder how Dusty gets paid so much money.

But it got me thinking about batting orders.  I know batting order doesn’t matter much – The Book says so – as long as you have the right people in the order (another discussion altogether).  But they only looked at 2 things:  the optimum order, and what would happen if you put the worst hitter in any spot.  The optimum would look something like this:

2nd best hitter (or best, if nearly equal to #1 and high OBP)

3rd (or 4th, if great baserunner)

5th

Best (or 2nd, if high SLG)

4th (or 3rd, again if high SLG)

6th

7th

8th

9th

Dusty’s lineup last night, though, looked like this (by OPS vs. RHP):

8th

7th

Best

6th

3rd

4th

5th

2nd

9th

In the end, it probably didn’t matter much last night, but this is the type of batting order Dusty uses repeatedly.  So you have to wonder – how many runs is Dusty costing this team by turning the batting order almost completely upside down?