The Strategy of Ron Washington

Scott Lucas at Ranger Rundown disagrees with the following comment by Ron Washington in regards to Josh Hamilton's spot in the batting order:

"The No. 4 guys gets off-speed stuff, look back and Milton handled more off-speed stuff than fastballs. Hamilton handled more fastballs than breaking balls because they didn't want to put Hamilton on base and let Milton hurt them."

Now, even Lucas himself notes that multiple studies have shown batting order to be mostly negligible. All the same, using fastball percentage data from FanGraphs.com, Lucas does "look back" to find not only does he disagree with Washington, but Washington is in fact wrong. Last year, Hamilton (usually hitting third) saw 53.4% fastballs, while Bradley (usually hitting fourth) saw 65.9%.

This provides more evidence that Washington relies more on his conventional wisdom and common sense to decide things of this nature rather than relying on statistical fact. I often have similar disagreements with Washington's strategic moves, particularly with his use of the intentional walk and sacrifice bunt. Even Baseball Prospectus 2008 notes that "Washington only made things worse [in 2007] by trying to bring small ball to a park designed for big ball."

Makes me wonder if the occasional small ball that Washington played last year held us down offensively, even though our offense scored 901 runs.