re: Should a team’s worst hitter bat 9th?

The Cardinals moved the pitcher to 8 during the home run chase.

Unpopular opinion here... I wish they would get rid of the DH altogether. I liked seeing a good hitting pitcher.

One of my favorite moments was when Bartolo Colon hit a home run after playing for 20+ years.

I think the idea is throughout the game do you want to put your 2 most likely outs in front of your best 3 hitters?

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I wish they would get rid of the DH altogether. I liked seeing a good hitting pitcher.

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This. The DH is the only rule in the history of any sport made because players couldn’t compete in a part of the game

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This guys says they should bat 7th.


This was a thing no less than like 15-20 years ago

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They should bat him 1st so he gets more at bats and gets better.

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Players also get hurt more,

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that maybe true but in the only study that looked at this, the injuries from 1998-2015 increased yearly. I would be willing to bet, they also increased the 18 years prior on year to year basis and we know they have increased since 2016-2024 on year to year basis

so it was happening before the nerds took over and has been happening since they removed amphetamines from the equation, started sitting guys for injuries more and started medical screening.

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there’s less balls in play

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that is a two fold reason

1) pitching is much better than ever and as velocity goes up, BAA goes down and velo has increased year over year for a long time. Also as vertical & horz break has increased...BAA has once again gone down. Movement and spin rate are also at all time highs.

2) because of the "nerds" we saw the shift increase. this caused the other nerds to realize that simply putting the ball in play was not much better than strikeout when it came to % increase of moving runner or scoring a run. the increase in overall speed/range and increase in arm strength also played a part in this so the hitters try and hit the ball hard no matter what and not just poke it.

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players have shorter careers either through injury or because they can’t hit certain metrics anymore

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or because teams understand value more now in terms of production. They are not going to keep the expensive aging vet on the team just for name sake anymore.

and if they cant hit metrics, they cant be productive in todays game.

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That then makes players more replaceable and thus teams don’t have to pay them as much.

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correct...if you dont produce, you are out in todays game. the past is the past, only the present and future matter to teams now.

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If you ask Grok it will tell you analytically that the 7th hitter gets an avg 29 more at-bats than the 9th hitter in a 162 game season.

I feel like you want you better hitter at bat more than your worst.

So in a one game scenario or a 7 game series maybe you try it. But over the long haul I don’t know that you do.

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is the goal to score runs and win....or get someone more at bats?

last time i looked the goal is to score runs, if your 7th hole comes up a ton with 0 runners on and 2 outs....it would be better from run producing standpoint to bat the better person at 8 or 9 even with less overall at bats.

assuming the difference in hr over those 29 at bats is not more than the difference in run producing scenarios

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What's the thought process with 7th?

9th hole gets fewest PAs per game. There's an art to putting together a lineup, but you can also run the danger of overthinking things.

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The thought is because it's really only "7th" the first time through the order. After that it loops back around. If you have your worst hitter at 9 then he is always hitting right before your best hitters. Ideally you would like to have the person in 9th be able to reliably get on base so that your best hitters 1-3 can hit 2 singles and score him. The same basic thought is for batting 8th as well because it is close enough to your good hitters.

Tony Larussa would bat the pitcher 8th