Check out what Jim Leyland has to say below about moving Magglio Ordonez and Miguel Cabrera up in the order.
 | Jim Leyland |
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"Two great hitters, I'm going to get them up there more often if I can." My god, Jim Leyland gets it. He understands that a batting lineup is simply a method of distributing at-bats. The guys at the top bat more. Good hitters should bat more than bad hitters. End of story. Well done.
Obviously, it's not quite that simple. Platoon advantages matter to some extent, so you try to avoid stacking same-side hitters, and you have to figure out how to balance OBP and SLG (Frank Thomas, no matter his OBP, shouldn't be hitting first because that's a waste of his power), but as a general matter, this is what the lineup is about, not creating an "RBI spot" and a "contact hitter" spot and so forth.
