Mets new lineup order of Castillo, Beltran, Reyes?

[kenny1234]

Does it matter? Absolutely.

Sorry, I realized that it probably matters in real life - I was interested in the sensitivity of the Analysis tool. My feeling is that such a tool is far too imprecise to be useful - the difference of 10 runs a year is worth it, but just using OBP and SLG isn't going to provide results that are accurate enough to differentiate lineups that are within 10 runs of each other.

What this tells me is that everytime a manager says that they are going to make a particular lineup choice based on player preferences, such as Soriano hitting leadoff, that the difference in productivity may easily be less than the unmeasurable boost caused by player happiness.

[HoustonGM]

Sorry, I realized that it probably matters in real life - I was interested in the sensitivity of the Analysis tool. My feeling is that such a tool is far too imprecise to be useful - the difference of 10 runs a year is worth it, but just using OBP and SLG isn't going to provide results that are accurate enough to differentiate lineups that are within 10 runs of each other.

Of course, it's just a tool that produces a VERY rough estimate.

What this tells me is that everytime a manager says that they are going to make a particular lineup choice based on player preferences, such as Soriano hitting leadoff, that the difference in productivity may easily be less than the unmeasurable boost caused by player happiness.

Perhaps.

[oriole^]

The difference between those 3 lineups and some of the other ones is in the order of .001-.002 runs or so, well within any margin of error.

Which misses the point completely. When numbers are produced which have no basis in objective reality, and you aren't in a math or an astrophysics course, then it doesn't matter what the margin of error is, nor any optimization, nor any conclusion made from it. You simply discard the numbers, and disregard the tool.

This isn't something that produces a "very rough estimate"...it produces obvious nonsense.

[HoustonGM]

It provides an estimation of a lineup order's run scoring ability based on its players' on-base percentages and slugging percentages. It's not "nonsense."

[oriole^]

It provides an estimation of a lineup order's run scoring ability based on its players' on-base percentages and slugging percentages. It's not "nonsense."

No, I'm sorry, it is, and you are wrong. If something tells you to bat a pitcher sixth, it's clearly, obviously, and unequivocally incorrect, and therefore unreliable as a means of predicting or estimating anything.

[HoustonGM]

No, I'm sorry, it is, and you are wrong. If something tells you to bat a pitcher sixth, it's clearly, obviously, and unequivocally incorrect, and therefore unreliable as a means of predicting or estimating anything.

It's not "telling" you to bat a pitcher sixth. It does not know what positions the players are. The only things it knows are 9 pairings of OBP and SLG. It just gives you an estimation of how many runs a specific ordering of the 9 OPS's would score per game. You're free to think that the entire tool is nonsense because of one result related to one group of players, but the tool has its uses for providing a rough estimation.