However, this won’t always be of any concern to fantasy owners as the reason for the selection bias also means that we won’t have to worry about it much; these non-boppers won’t be moving into the cleanup spot. Still, if a borderline player gets moved into the spot ever, or if we look at murkier situations like the #2, #5, or #6 spots, we might run into some trouble.

Still, very interesting stuff, Rudy.

As for RBI, one way would be to look at RBI opportunities. I’ve never seen that data in aggregated form by lineup position, though. So I went with (RBI-HR)/(H-HR) which assumes that getting a hit during non-RBI opportunities is the same skill as getting a hit during RBI opportunities. AL cleanup hitters have a ratio of .53 RBIs/Non-HR Hits while leadoff hitters have a ratio of .31. While speed of baserunners and double/triple-rates play small roles that I was unable to factor, I think this disparity is near exclusively driven by lineup position.

As for Granderson, you’re completely right. Hitting 5th will knock his Runs down considerably (25%). And Granderson is an average OBP guy (~.360) so he won’t outperform at that lineup position (his speed should help a little). On the positive side, it’s always easier to trade HR/RBI than it is to trade R/SB. So if Granderson keeps up his crazy HR pace, you’ll have no shortage of buyers….

Unfortunately, your findings are making me feel like my newly-acquired Curtis Granderson is not going to be the savior for my Runs deficit, now that Leyland is talking about keeping him in the #5 spot for a while.

@Prince: You’re welcome. And I wouldn’t drop any of those 3 for Galarraga unless you’re talking about somehow resurrecting Andres Galarraga when he was mashing in Colorado…

Question: Drop any of Kershaw, Jurrjens, or Wandy for Galarraga?

@jsp2014: Thanks!

@Paulie Allnuts: Ha. I never really excelled in math after Algebra 2 and Prob/Stats. Trig and Calc weren’t my thing. Guess you can just take my word for it on the math and use the indexes to upgrade/downgrade Run and RBI projections…

Amazing, but I don’t know … these sounds like real leaps. I’m going to need much more research and evidence before I am convinced that all of the above is true.

J/K. Good work.

Fantastic post, but I had to get that out of my system.

One question that is left for me: weren’t the brewers and cardinals hitting their pitchers eighth occasionally last year? I don’t know if they are still doing it, but I would imagine that would sort of throw a wrench in these numbers for 5, 6, or 7 hitters.

AL: 7.5% Non-Intentional BB/Plate Appearance; 0.64% IBB/PA, 8.1% BB/PA

NL: 7.7% BB/Plate Appearance; 1.5% IBB/PA, 9.2% BB/PA

In both cases, the IBBs are counted within the BBs.

So, basically, 8th hitters walk at about the same rate in both leagues if you factor out IBBs but an NL 8th hitter is almost 2.5x more likely to get intentionally walked than an AL 8th hitter.

This approach cannot work for SB/AVG/HR as these are largely skill-dependent vs team-dependent. You would have to use players who hit at different lineup spots and that, in itself, is going to prove problematic because of small sample sizes and circumstantial differences (maybe a lefty is moved from leadoff to 7th when facing a lefty so the average decline has nothing to do with lineup slot). So not sure how successful I’ll be in that analysis…

The bigger problem is trying to figure out what the hell Torre’s going to do on any given night. Hudson seems pretty entrenched in the 2nd spot, circling the bases for Manny. However, those darn 4th-7th spots seem sorta up in the air. Kemp appears to be moving up to the 5th spot when Manny or Ethier take a day off… but that doesn’t happen incredibly often, or at least often enough to make an appreciable difference in Kemp’s value right now.

If you’re targeting Kemp and figuring on a Dodgers lineup shift, I wouldn’t hold your breath, despite Kemp’s potential.