Lineup Slots: Using Sabermetrics for 2023 Fantasy Baseball

February 7, 2023

Rick Lucks breaks down how to use a player's spot in the order to predict their counting stats for fantasy baseball as his series on making adavanced stats more accessible to fantasy owners continues.

You may be wondering why there aren't any advanced stats aimed at predicting a player's counting stats like runs and RBI. The answer is simple: modern sabermetrics reject the idea of a "clutch RBI guy" and therefore do not bother inventing predictive metrics for it. Runs and RBI are team-dependent stats and are unhelpful in ascertaining a given player's real value.

That might work for statheads, but fantasy managers frequently see 40% or more of a player's value tied to his RBI and run totals. We have to care about them. Drafting hitters from strong offenses can help pad the totals, but as you'll see, an even bigger advantage can be found by looking at a player's slot in the batting order.

Don't believe it? Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Kyle Schwarber slugged 46 HR in a lineup good enough to reach the World Series last year but managed only 94 RBI since he generally led off (123 games) or hit sixth (17 games). Here is a closer look at how to analyze a batter's lineup slot for fantasy purposes.

Lineup Slot & Counting Stats

In the table below, each batting order slot's PA, Runs, and RBI are presented from the 2022 season. The final number is simply R + RBI, an approximate measure of that slot's overall value to a fantasy team.

Each batting order slot loses around 500 PA compared to the slot before it. If we divide this total by the 30 current MLB clubs, we get a difference of around 17 PA between consecutive hitters on one team. That may seem insignificant, but it compounds. For example, there is an average of 34 PA separating a team's leadoff man from the three-hitter. Counting stats like Runs and RBI requires an opportunity to accumulate, and hitters earlier in the batting order have more opportunities.

RBI is highest from the 3 and 4 spots, and trends downward in both directions from there. Leadoff hitters only get more RBI than the guys at the bottom of the order despite the largest PA total. This is because they never have runners on base before their first PA of the game, and need to rely on the weaker eighth and ninth hitters to get on in front of them after that. Since good hitters are usually clustered early in the order to maximize their PAs, leadoff men get minimal help from their teammates in producing RBI.

Runs peak at the leadoff slot and mostly decrease from there. This decrease is not linear, as 258 separate second and third while only 93 separate sixth and seventh. For this reason, fantasy managers want to stick to the early batting order slots where teams cluster their best hitters if possible. Leadoff guys have the most opportunity and the team's best hitters hitting behind them, so they score a lot of runs for the same reason they do not register many RBI.

Finally, the R+RBI column refutes the idea that a team's heart of the order is 3-4-5. It is actually 2-3-4, the only lineup slots to eclipse 5,000 combined R+RBI. The first slot is great for runs scored, and the fifth spot offers a respectable 4,593 R+RBI. After that, production falls off a cliff even among strong offenses.

This means that a player in the middle of a weaker offense is likely to outproduce a player on the periphery of a stronger one. Platoons, injuries, and lineup shuffling can change these numbers, but in general, the earlier the slot, the better for fantasy purposes.

Conclusion

To conclude, counting stat production depends on opportunity and team support. Players that bat early in the order tend to get more of both, though leadoff men give up RBI potential for increased runs scored. If you would like to learn more about how to apply sabermetrics within a fantasy context, stay tuned!

More Sabermetrics & Statcast for Fantasy Baseball