Batting
Order
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But first you must get there. One of the first steps a manager takes to get ready for the season is organizing his players into a nine-person batting order. This is the queue that players wait in each game to have a chance to bat. Knowing who is coming up to bat will help you know why the stadium is starting to buzz with anticipation. If Babe Ruth were coming up with three on base and only one out, you’d have reason to be excited, too—and probably a little freaked out, since he’s been dead for more than fifty years. As for the managers, we would completely understand if, after taking a look at all the different players on his twenty-five man roster, one of the first things he did was roll his eyes and head for the movies. After all, there are millions upon millions of ways to organize a baseball roster into a starting lineup. And most of those permutations aren’t going to win any championships. That is, unless you are the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, whose team was so good that it probably wouldn’t have mattered had the mascot batted.
In fact, organizing batting orders has become such a compelling topic that an entire school of thought exists, which is dedicated to researching lineups and their ensuing destruction or vindication. High school math students are given batting order problems to solve and dissertations are written about how to rearrange teams. What researchers can’t pinpoint, however, is this: When is the lineup tweaked because the manager just has a gut feeling about something? Jimmy’s mom is in the stands? Let him play! A rookie got lucky last night? Bench him. Maybe one-time Red Sox manager Joe Morgan got wind that Wade Boggs was served tofu instead of his usual chicken dinner before the game. Oh my. May the heavens open up and bring a rainout!. . . .
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