Matches Malone wrote:
Are your philosophies on what winning Baseball is or should be, a direct result of the era in which you first starting watching? I starting following baseball in the mid 80's, so much as I might not want to, I'm still of the (meatball?) belief that you need team speed at the top of the order because hey, that's what the Cardinals had and they always beat the Cub. Why wasn't OPS or WHIP thought of more highly back then? See part of me still looks to AVG., HR & RBI first because that's what WGN gave me as a yute. I guess my question is, are we better fans now or when we were kids?
I'm sure to some degree I'm a product of my time. But I don't think speed is required at the top of the batting order. In fact, I suspect the batting order is nearly irrelevant and there's a lot of evidence to support such a conclusion. I think you should try to get the best hitters the most at-bats. That's a pretty sensible and simple philosophy.
One major belief I have is that there is no such thing as "run support". My view is that the heart of each game is the competition between starting pitchers. Yielding the first run is clearly critical. And yes, I know there is a difference between facing the Yankee lineup and the batting order of the Mariners. However, in the space of a single game, what is obviously a huge difference in offensive capability is nearly negligible. And should be especially so when one team is facing The Great Felix Hernandez and the other is facing the broken down Freddie Garcia or the wildly inconsistent A.J. Burnett.