Everybody Used to Be Stupid. Now Everybody Is Smart.

Picking up on posts by JM and Anon today, I think we are indeed seeing the misuse of statistics—Sabermetriciousness!—on the Yanks, particularly when it comes to the ongoing practice of batting Judge in the No. 2 spot.

Why is it that, for over a century, power hitters like Judge always batted in the 3-5 slots?  Was everybody just stupid then?

The Sabermetricious argument is, hey, put your best OBP hitter up as often as possible.  But this is just how you fool yourself with stats.

Judge has an excellent OBP in part because pitchers are reluctant to pitch to him.  But if you keep him in the 3 or 4 holes, and put good OBP guys ahead of him, it's all the more likely they'll be FORCED to pitch to him, with guys on base.

Put him in the 2-slot, and they'll be all the more likely to pitch AROUND him—PARTICULARLY if there is 1 out and nobody on (the usual state of affairs with Gardner hitting first), and the likes of Voit and/or Bird hitting after him.

Of course, that will make Judge's OBP even BETTER, thereby leading Coops and co. to conclude that they made the right move.

Voila—this is how you lie to yourself with statistics.

In fairness to the Saber-inclined, one of the problems here is the Yanks are going half-Saber.  There's simply no way under any system that Gardy, with his .298 OBP and his 2 stolen bases this year, should be hitting first.

Bird/Voit should not be hitting so high in the lineup either.  BUT, with your big power/RBI committed to the No. 2 hole, the Yanks don't have much choice there.

A much better idea would be to put LeMahieu, who is hot right now and always was a better percentage hitter than Gardy, and maybe Torres in the 1-2 slots, with Judge following.

That will assure Judge of getting many more good pitches to hit, and while his OBP might go down a little, he will produce many more runs.

Why do the Yankees—and so many statheads—have so much trouble seeing this?

The best OBP guys on, say, the 1927 Yankees were Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.  Miller Huggins did NOT bat them 1-2.  Instead, he put Hall of Famer Earle Combs there, a guy with a .414 OBP that year, and a relatively high 62 walks and 15 stolen bases.  Combs scored 137 runs.

True, not everybody was always this smart—or blessed with the likes of Earle Combs.  Marse Joe McCarthy in the 1930s and Ralph Houk in the 1960s insisted on putting guys like Frankie Crosetti and Bobby Richardson, respectively, in the leadoff spot—players who mostly hit singles, for not so high an average (Though at his best, Cro DID draw a lot of walks, and stole a fair number of bases.)

But by the 1980s, the Yanks were back to putting Don Mattingly and the other power bats, such as Winfield and Baylor, in the 3-5 slots, with Rickey Henderson, Best Leadoff Man Ever, leading off.  The results were spectacular.

Similarly, in the Last Dynasty, the Yanks led off with Knoblauch and Jeter, then followed with Paulie-Bernie-Tino.

Sure, this strategy was marred because Chuckie could not resist swinging for the Yankee Stadium fences, but he still drew a relatively large number of walks and stole bases, and scored 117 runs in 1998, and 120 in 1999, before his mind and his game completely blew out.  (I don't mean to be flippant about this; what happened to the Knobber was truly sad.)

So, while even smart baseball guys made mistakes and didn't fully realize what the statistics should have been telling them, were they all stupid?  Are Coops and his minions geniuses?

Look at how this offense functions, and how this Yankees team plays, and you be the judge.