If I was the manager of a major league team, I would set my lineup using a very simple formula. That formula looks somethiing like this.
- Best OBP guy(unless that guys is 1st or 2nd in OPS)
- 2nd best OBP guy(unless that guys is 1st or 2nd in OPS)
- Best OPS guy
- 2nd best OPS guy
- 3rd best OPS guy
- 4th best OPS guy
- 5th best OPS guy
- 6th best OPS guy
- Pitcher
Pretty simple... I'd find the 8 players I'm going to play on that day, and then user the numbers to fill out my lineup card. If I used this strategy, the Astros lineup would look like this.
- Ty Wigginton - .370 OBP, 2nd on the team only to Berkman's .447
- Kazuo Matsui - .336 OBP(actually Erstad is higher, but I'm not including him since he's considered a bench player)
- Lance Berkman - Highest OBP and OPS on the team with .447 OBP and a 1.143 OPS
- Carlos Lee - 2nd highest OPS at .848
- Miguel Tejada - .776 OPS(Wigginton actually has the 3rd best OPS at .820)
- Hunter Pence - .748 OPS
- Michael Bourn - .608 OPS
- Whoever the catcher is... Towles, Ausmus and Quintero all are withing .011 in OPS ranging from .541 to .552)
- Pitcher
This is actually pretty close to the way I would make out the lineup anyways without even looking at the numbers... obviously Wigginton hitting leadoff isn't very typical... but he's the only player on the team besides Berkman that gets on base anywhere close to what I expect out of my leadoff hitter.