The Red Sox have all the pieces necessary in order to boast the league’s best offense. They have the speed demons in Jacoby Ellsbury and Carl Crawford, they have the guys who seemingly always get on base in J.D. Drew and Dustin Pedroia and they have the guys to drive in these base runners in David Ortiz and Adrian Gonzalez.
The next step for the Sox is to strategically place these players in an order in which they will thrive. Before getting into the specifics of who should bat where, let us begin by establishing the ‘definition’ of a batting order.
A batting order should be a cycle, not a list. What this means is that there should be a continuous flow from not only the lead off hitter to the ninth hitter, but from the fifth hitter to the second hitter, and the fourth hitter to the eighth hitter. The reason for this is because in reality, the majority of innings will not begin with the lead off hitter. Therefore, one can not construct a lineup with a one-to-nine mindset. To construct the proper lineup, it is necessary to look at the lineup as a continuous flow.
With that in mind, let me lay out what I think would be the most successful way to position the Red Sox hitters. For the purposes of this article, we will assume that Jarrod Saltalamacchia will be starting over Jason Varitek.