There’s a statistic floating around the airwaves over the last few days [readers have reported hearing it on WIP-610 and Comcast Sportsnet] that the 9th position in the Phillies lineup is actually outperforming the 1st slot. Most, including me, have found that hard to believe, but, if you consider OPS [on-base average plus slugging average], which you should, because it correlates much higher with run production than batting average, then it is indeed true.
Take a look:
| Batting Avg | On-base Avg | Slug. Avg | |
| Batting 1st | .192 | .238 | .290 |
| Batting 9th | .168 | .258 | .283 |
Now, a couple of caveats apply. First, in the 9th slot, you don’t just have pitchers batting. In late innings, you get a lot of pinch-hitters coming into the game, so the Matt Stairs’ and Greg Dobbs’ of the world are going to drive those numbers up. To give you a sense of how much they are helping, the Phillies’ pitchers by themselves have a batting average/on-base average/slugging average line of .086/.189/.129.
Nevertheless, caveats or none, I think this is something we can add to the list of “Things That Need to Change”.
