One thing the sabermetric revolution has taught us is that batting order doesn’t matter all that much. At least, not in the traditional sense of putting a speedy runner at the the top, someone who can handle the bat and move him over second, and power hitters in the middle. The general consensus now is that a team’s best hitter should hit second with a high-OBP hitter in front of him. But, ultimately, batting order doesn’t have a significant impact on the number of runs a team scores over the course of the season, and the best thing a team can do is arrange the lineup such that its best hitters get as many at-bats as possible.
Roman Anthony is the best hitter on the Red Sox, and he did spend most of last season in the leadoff spot, a strategy that works pretty well for the defending champions. While Alex Cora hasn’t said whether he’ll repeat that this season, he did speak on batting order yesterday, saying that Willson Contreras will bat cleanup. He further implied that Anthony, Jarren Duran, and Trevor Story will occupy the top three spots, though it sounds like he hasn’t yet decided in what order.
Assuming that Cora will want left-right balance at the top of the order — and conceding that Story doesn’t have the OBP chops to leadoff — that really only leaves one possibility:
Hitting Anthony second would force Duran and Anthony (both lefties) to hit back-to-back, while hitting Anthony third will inevitably result in a lot of first inning at-bats where he finds himself up with two outs and nobody on, which is exactly what the theory that says your best hitter should bat second tries to avoid.
So what do you think? Do you want to see Anthony in the leadoff spot again or do you have something else in mind?
Talk about that and whatever else you want and, as always, be good to one another.
