In a column I wrote for Sunday’s Post—[here] if you are interested—I advocated that the Mets bat David Wright second in their order.
There was one other reason that I had that I could not get into for space reasons. It has to do – for lack of a better term – with Rule 38. It is not my rule. It is a piece of data that I learned from Mets pitching coach Rick Peterson.
He showed me how dramatically the winning percentages of major league teams change when they reach 39 plate appearances for a game. If you do the math, that reflects whether the No. 3 hitter in a lineup comes to the plate for a fifth time in a game. There is a certain amount of obvious logic. The No. 3 hitter is often the best hitter in the lineup, so getting him more at-bats can only be a good thing.
But Peterson’s theory goes deeper then that, in particular showing the relevance of getting through the bottom of the lineup efficiently so as to avoid facing the No. 3 hitter for a fifth time. I will not delve deeper except to say that this his work shows just how often the No. 2 hitter has a pivotal at-bat in the final inning, and the frequency that it comes with two outs. So the No. 2 hitter can regularly be all that stands between the No. 3 batter even getting a chance to hit a fifth time in a game or not.
So the better the No. 2 hitter, the better the chances to win the game. Thus, in such a pivotal position would you rather have Wright or Paul Lo Duca batting?