Leyland Lives In La-La Land

Alright, so it's no secret that Jim Leyland is umm, creative in his lineup construction. Any decently informed Tigers fan will tell you as much ad nausuem. My point about bringing this all up is to see what the best Tigers lineup actually looks like. Despite being tied for using the DL the 2nd least times, 3, Leyland has failed to construct the same lineup more than 6 times. All season. As a matter of fact, of the 3 players the Tigers have placed on the DL, only one was a position player, Boesch. This lack of consistency raises questions. Apparently Leyland is a firm believer in the "playing the hot hand."

Anyways, I'll be optimizing the normal Tigers starting position players per their MLB Depth Chart. Now I don't know their standard vs left and vs right lineups, and I couldn't even tell from the Tigers' Baseball-Reference Batting Order page.

So, instead of having 2 ideal lineups, you know, like one vs C.C. and another vs Beckett, I'll only have one. Just using a cursory glance at that B-Ref page, intuitively, I notice the following:
-I hate that Miggy is hitting "cleanup" instead of 3rd.
-Doesn't Austin Jackson have a terrible OBP? Why is he leading off?
-Magglio has the most games played being slotted 3rd in the order, at 61 games. Wow.
-Avila has hit in the 8 hole more times than anywhere else combined.
-Leyland is just a confused old man. I wonder if a Boy Scout helps him fill out a lineup card, does he get the "Helping a Senior Citizen Badge?"

To frame my numbers and tell you where I'm getting everything from, I'm using the Tigers' FanGraphs page. I'll be using numbers only accrued while with the Tigers. That should help Delmon Young, and he needs all the help he can get. To construct the lineup, I'll be using the relatively simple yet tried and true Baseball Musings analyzer (Note: I'll be using the 1989-2002 model). Now that we're on the same page, it's time for some hardcore data. Ages 18+ only.

So far, with Leyland's "help" the Tigers have scored 724 runs in 152 games, for an average of 4.76 runs per game. Sounds good right? Well, lets see if they can improve upon it shall we?

Haha, well, the numbers were about what I expected. The best lineup that Detroit could run out there is:

1 - Miguel Cabrera
2 - Alex Avila
3 - Ramon Santiago
4 - Jhonny Peralta
5 - Victor Martinez
6 - Delmon Young
7 - Wilson Betimet
8 - Andy Dirks
9 - Austin Jackson

That lineup would score an average 5.59 runs per game. Extrapolate that to the current 152 games and you get 849.68 runs so far this year. That is very different than the current 724 with the lineups constructed thus far. Further assuming that the defense and pitching hasn't been effected by the lineup shuffle is when we talk the real big changes. Their current Pythagorean recrod is 82-70. Add in those extra optimized runs and it goes to 94-58. Wow. Worried about home field advantage? Want the most out of your players? Betta check the numbers and do the math before you wreck yoself! Hmm. That doesn't quite roll off the tongue as I hoped it would.

Now I know I'm picking on Leyland, but A. I live in Michigan, so I wanted to show the Tigers could be much better and B. It's really, really easy to pick on Leyland.

If nothing else, this post has shown what a stark difference there is between intellectually theorized baseball and actual real world baseball. And the difference is that the saber nerds are right, and the conventional "wisdom" is wrong.*

*After seeing this, I'm going to run this exercise for all 30 clubs once the season ends, to see which lineup was closest to optimal. I'm going to go out on a limb and say the Yankees, but it could be someone unexpected like the D-Backs. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

Until compared to his peers, I'll reserve total judgement on Mr. Leyland. However, according to these numbers, he can't build a lineup to save his mustache. And what a shame, as it is a very nice mustache. As a matter of fact, his lineup reminds me of something tragically crashing and burning. But what?