When the hoard of Phillies beat reporters tweeted that Laynce Nix, Ty Wigginton, and Carlos Ruiz would be out of the lineup Wednesday evening due to injuries, my first thought was that the Phillies’ three best hitters were unavailable. So I surfed on over to Fangraphs and confirmed that I was correct for two of the three—Nix and Ruiz are the top Phillies hitters by OPS and wOBA, while Wigginton comes in seventh.

While I had the Phillies roster sorted by wOBA, I began thinking about what it would really take for Charlie to put the best offensive lineup on the field, and it turns out it isn’t that difficult—as long as the Phillies’ ace lefties can fill in at shortstop on the days they aren’t pitching.

Here are the top nine Phillies by OPS and wOBA :

(Statistics as of May 10, 2012)

By the way, the optimal lineup according to the Baseball Musings Lineup Analysis tool: Pierre, Nix, Lee, Ruiz, Wigginton, Pence, Orr, Victorino, Hamels. Cliff Lee batting third? Whatever.

So Cole, maybe you could use some of the time off during your suspension to field a few grounders.