The recent discussion with rob neyer on baseball stories was fascinating to me. Not so much the stories, but the questions that came up about how we remember things. The human memory is a fascinating thing, and while I’m by no means an expert on memory, as a doc student in psychology I have an interest in the topic and I wrote a couple papers on memory in undergrad. One thing about memory, as i think larry pointed towards, is it is biased and unperfect. One theory views it in a similar manner to a computer in that there are items on the screen (which is operated by the computer memory RAM??) and items stored in the hard drive (although in human memory there is a middle ground – short term memory, things that are recent and present, but not quite put away in the background) and items stored on the hard drive (long term memory). But, unlike the perfect retrieval process of the computer when we access items and bring them out from storage (long-term memory) we often taint the data in the process. Every time we bring out a memory from the past it is subject to modification based on opinions, biases, events that have happened in between now and then and so on. The psychologist elizabeth loftus has done a career’s worth of work on the topic, demonstrating how subject to influence the human memory is. It’s really fascinating, that we can be convinced that we remember things that sometimes didn’t even occur, or in a much different manner than they actually did. I say all that to introduce the topic I want to discuss.

That intro comes because I have been thinking much about ankiel’s recent slump. It seems thought, based on my recollection that rick was doing better when he was batting in the 2-hole in front of albert. I know the theory he’ll see more pitches to hit, fastballs in particular, because no one wants to walk the batter in front of albert. So, to test my impression, the next step is to examine what the data says…to confirm the accuracy of my memory. The data is pretty interesting. As most of you will already be aware of, we cannot make much at all out of this year’s data due to a small sample size. 25 at bats batting 2nd and 45 batting fourth. I did this yesterday before the game, so the stats are a day behind.

Here are the lines in ab / avg / bb / obp / slg / hr / r / so

2nd: 25 / .240 / 0 / .240 / .560 / 2 / 3 / 10

4th: 45 / .211 / 7 / .333 / .342 / 1 / 5 / 6

My impression was partially / mostly validated. Rick has slugged almost 200 points higher in the two spot. The .342 slugging in the cleanup hole is pretty pathetic and the anemic production from our cleanup hitters has been well documented. The interesting thing, however, is that rick’s obp is appreciably higher in the cleanup spot. He has 7 walks in cleanup vs. 0 batting 2nd. Contrary to what I would think, it seems like rick is hacking more in the 2 spot – and with better results – but getting on-based at a terrible pace. His plate discipline appears to be better cleanup, but he’s slugging like he’s adam kennedy. He has 5 or so at-bats in the 3 and 5 spots, both with terrific numbers, but obviously we can’t make anything of that. I’ve always conceptualized rick as a #5 hitter, where his slugging can produce runs and his on-base abilities won’t be as much as a hindrance.

I’m not gonna go into dunc or ludwick’s numbers but they’re on base and slugging are looking great so far. I wish we could put the two surrounding pujols (most likely duncan 2 and ludwick 4) then let rick and troy bat 5 and 6. The concerns about rick’s psyche run deep and I wonder if there is pressure of being the cleanup hitter. Maybe we should try batting him down in the order and sandwiching albert with our current sluggers ( replacing dunc with barton vs lefties) and see what happens. The problem with that, is that it takes skip out of the lineup. I wish he could still play second base. That leaves us having to put either our ss or 2b in the 1 or 2 spot. Maybe when brendan’s playing, that wouldn’t be such a bad idea. He’s shown a decent ability to get on base. Then there’s the whole "good pitches to hit in front of albert" theory. Still, we can’t play lud, dunc, rick, and skip. Someone has to sit. I’m just hoping rick picks it back up. I’ll be interested to hear everyone’s thoughts.