During Wednesday’s United Cardinal Bloggers Radio show, Nick from Pitchers Hit Eighth and Derrick Goold from Bird Land discussed what the Cardinals’ opening-day lineup might be. With the club seemingly settling into a routine in the last week, we thought we’d revisit a little exercise we tried last year around this time: Based on each player’s number of appearances in each lineup spot during spring, is it possible to project the opening-day lineup?

First, let’s look at the lineup spots each player has seen in games this spring (through Friday 3/27):

If it were simply a matter of most appearances at each position, the above order would pretty much be the regular lineup, subbing in the pitcher spot for Jason LaRue, who kind of hits like a pitcher, anyway. And that may very well be the regular order of things on most days. But specifically versus righthanders, the situation is a little less clear. Here are the splits vs. RHP; boldfaced names are our best guesses for the actual spot "winner":

Spots one through six seem to be set. But, obviously, Colby Rasmus (assuming he makes the team), can’t bat both seventh and ninth at once (where he has had the plurality of games started), and in the first place, he won’t even be in the lineup if Ankiel, Duncan and Ludwick are. So we should assume that Yadier Molina will bat seventh, especially since his relatively few appearances were simply a matter of him playing in the WBC this spring (and, incidentally, why Jason LaRue saw so much action). Despite TLR’s newly fickle attitude about batting the pitcher eighth, we’ll assume that the pitcher will indeed usually bat eighth against righties (for Nick’s sake, if nothing else). But that leaves the nine hole a mystery, other than that it will be whoever is playing third base (as is the case in today’s game against the Red Sox): Mather, Tyler Greene, Joe Thurston, David Freese? Take your pick. In the scenario that Rasmus does start, that lineup might include Thurston batting seventh and Rasmus ninth, as TLR has done three times this spring, with Ludwick being the odd-man out.

As the Cardinals will likely face Pittsburgh lefthander Paul Maholm on April 6, Tony La Russa will probably mix things up a bit. So what has he done in spring when facing a team with a lefthanded starter? The Cardinals have faced only five southpaws this spring, so the sample is limited, but here’s who played:

Ankiel has a career .255 GPA vs. LHP; Duncan a .202. So although Duncan has received more starts this spring vs. lefties, we find it hard to believe that he’ll play much at all against them in the regular season. Rasmus hasn’t had much of a platoon disadvantage in the minors — .288 GPA vs. RHP and .281 vs. LHP — so he’s a legitimate candidate for the ninth spot versus southpaws. And although Schumaker has been working on his approach against lefties this spring, the reality is that he has been awful against them in his major-league career, with a .172 GPA. Whether his veteran status compensates for that and affords him the starts over the rookie Rasmus is of course La Russa’s call. It’s entirely possible, too, that TLR can leverage Joe Mather’s two-way status and put him in the outfield and play the righthanded David Freese (or Barden, whoever makes the team) at third, keeping both Rasmus and Schumaker on the bench. In that scenario, then, Freese might bat eighth and the pitcher ninth.

As a final note, it’s interesting to see how the lineup has evolved over spring. Take Rick Ankiel and Chris Duncan, for example. Here are their game logs (dots indicate a LHP):

Both have jumped up two positions as spring has worn on, with Ankiel starting out as cleanup batter and moving to the two hole and Duncan bumping up into Ankiel’s old cleanup role. The turning point came a couple of days after Duncan tallied five total bases batting second and Ankiel four batting fourth on March 10. It’s a reminder than a lineup is always in some state of flux on a Tony La Russa team. At least this season, the Cardinals seem to have enough interchangeable parts to afford such interesting combinations.

This entry was posted by Pip on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 7:46 pm and is filed under analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.