Traditional cleanup hitters batting leadoff

OBP

It gives your best hitter more at-bats.

My son is the best hitter on his little league team. His coach has him lead off.

Makes the opposing team pitch to him.

Getting the best batter the most opportunities to bat.

The Sabremetrics guys think Babe Ruth should have batted leadoff.

LINK

First they analyzed the GOAT leadoff hitter and see if it compares to GOAT sluggers.

They looked at the greatest leadoff hitter of all-time...and found that it didn't really matter where he hit in the line-up.

So after almost 2000 games (more than 12 full seasons), it didn’t significantly matter where Rickey batted in the lineup. Each team’s win total was no different than what you might expect from flipping a coin 2000 times.


We did the same for Babe Ruth. With Ruth, we found different results.

Hitting Ruth leadoff resulted in a significantly greater number of wins than expected by chance, due to the number of additional plate appearances by the leadoff hitter (4.66 PA/game as a leadoff hitter compared to 4.46 in the #2 spot, decreasing steadily down to 3.81 in the #9 hole).

Most importantly hitting him in the leadoff spot might have meant even more wins for the Yankees.

and the fact that it gives them a chance for more AB's over the course of the season, you're lead off ONCE, I've always said that "cleanup" was beyond over-hyped. Larussa was first to bounce the lead off guy obv batting 1st one day and then 9th the next.

If a player is in a slump a manager might move him around. That's why Giancarlo Stanton hit 2nd most of last year. He was slumping then caught fire at the 2nd spot. Mattingly never moved him after that.