The Ultimate Lineup

Abstract

We explore the optimization of a youth baseball teams batting order, considering each players individual statistics. Specifically, we wanted to see if an alternating batting order of walkers and hitters (e.g. Highest Walk Average, Highest Batting Average, Second Highest Walk Average) would be a better lineup than the conventional batting order by descending batting average. For our calculations, we take into account each individual's Hit Average, On-base Percentage, Walk Average and Strike-out Average. From our simulations, we found that an alternating lineup produces fewer runs at 7.7913 runs per game than a descending lineup which produces 7.9716 runs per game. Although the descending lineup was found to be better than 99% of all possible lineups, our simulation found that the lineups that scored more runs per game on average than the descending lineup shared certain characteristics in the ordering of the lineup.