The Black Hole at the Bottom of the Lineup

That black hole at the bottom of the Phillies' lineup you perceived last year? Well, it wasn't just a bad dream you had starring David Bell, Mike Lieberthal, and your pick among pitchers, Endy Chavez, Tomas Perez, and a cast of other outmakers constantly hitting weak grounders right to the shortstop for an easy out (or two!).

No, it was real. And it was the worst in baseball.

A couple months ago, I looked at batting order data for the 270 individual teams' lineup positions for 2005 and wrote up a couple of neat studies you can find here and here. For this study, I took that data and grouped together the teams' first 6 hitters and their bottom 3 hitters. Then, I calculated the average stats for each group.

The Phillies fared terribly in this study: they had the worst OPS gap (.222), the second worst AVG gap (.063), the worst OBP gap (.089), and the third worst SLG gap (.134). Basically, to put it simply, the performance difference between the Phils' first 6 batters and their last 3 batters was the worst in baseball by a good margin. It was indeed a black hole you witnessed at the bottom of the lineup.

Now, we at the Good Phight are well-versed in the studies that show that lineup ordering is largely irrelevant in terms of overall run scoring. However, we're also aware that at the extremes, lineup ordering can make a difference. Moreover, lineup ordering can certainly affect how opposing pitchers pitch to batters (why not pitch around the 5 and 6 hole hitters if the 7-8-9 guys are atrocious?) and how consistently a team puts pressure on an opposing pitching staff (it's nice for the pitcher to get a breather every 6 hitters). And, from a fan's perspective, lineup ordering can definitely affect how we enjoy the game (who wants to watch three hitters in a row ruin rallies or produce quick innings so frequently?).

But, the conclusion of this study isn't that the Phils need to do a better job dispersing the terrible hitters at the bottom of their lineup throughout the rest of the lineup. Rather, what we can take away from this data is that if the team wants to truly capitalize on the immense talent in the first six spots in the lineup, it needs to put better hitters at the bottom of the lineup as well. This conclusion is not really surprising given that the foibles of this crew are well known, but the numbers show just how badly this team needs to make that improvement rather than acquiring more useless sixth starters or washed-up middle relievers.

Here are some charts with the data for the Phils and all other teams in MLB (ranked by OPS):