In the early part of the 2010 season, the Boston Red Sox found themselves off to their worst start in the past 10+ years. Every aspect of the game was a struggle for them through the first 13 contests. On April 20th, G.M. Theo Epstein stated, “We’ve played bad baseball… We’re not pitching, we’re not hitting, we’re not playing good defense, we’re not running the bases well. So take your pick.”

While I have little insight on wholesale changes the club could make (especially in April), I do have one suggestion that would spark the offense. It’s an idea that manager Terry Francona tried recently, but he only got it half-right.

Dustin Pedroia should hit in his normal 2nd spot in the lineup and Kevin Youkilis and Victor Martinez need to be switched so that Youkilis always hits behind Pedroia in the #3 spot and have Martinez bat cleanup.

More than anything else, Pedroia and Youkilis are known throughout the American League as tough outs who grind out every single at bat, never giving one away. My theory is that in any inning in which both Pedroia and Youkilis have a plate appearance, the next hitter up (if Youk is not the third out) has the decided advantage of a physically and mentally extended pitcher. In fact, I plan to track every instance of that in 2010 (more on that later).

As mentioned earlier, Francona recently tried hitting the two back-to-back, but from the 3 and 4 spots in the order. Pedroia became overly aggressive from the 3-hole and his strikeouts went up, while his batting average and pitches seen per plate appearance (P/PA) went down. Also, hitting them 3 & 4 substantially diminishes the number of times they will come to the plate in the same inning and not make the 3rd out.

Since taking over as the manager of the Red Sox, Francona has shown an over-whelming tendency to stack his lineups L-R-L-R etc. to make late inning matchups more difficult for the opposing manager. Though Youkilis and Pedroia are both right-handed hitters, my suggestion still accomplishes Francona’s goal.

To begin with, Youkilis hits right-handed pitchers and left-handed pitchers equally well, if anything his numbers are slightly better against right-handers. From 2007-2009, he had a .921 OPS vs. righties and a .916 OPS vs. lefties. Here are the complete numbers:

The same holds true for Pedroia, though his three-year averages favor left-handers slightly.

Though given with a small sample size warning, here are the stats for hitters following Pedroia & Youkilis in the same inning:

PA: 11
AB: 8
H: 3
RBI: 2
BB: 3
Ks – 1

AVG: .375
OBP: .545
SLG: .375
OPS: .920

Currently, Evan Longoria of the Tampa Bay Rays is the 17th best batter in the American League with an OPS of .920. Am I saying that hitting behind Pedroia and Youkilis will turn any hitter into the equivalent of Evan Longoria? No, but I look forward to a full season of stats, and I sincerely hope that Francona will give this idea at least a decent chance to succeed at some point during the season. It might make it a little harder to resign Victor Martinez, but it doesn’t look like the Red Sox were leaning that way to begin with.

Along with improving the hitter behind them, the pitcher burns through quite a pitches in any inning this occurs. So far in 2010, there have been an average of 24 pitches thrown in any inning where Pedroia, Youkilis, and then someone else bats (a high of 37 and a low of 9). In order to allow for a “bad sample” (extended innings which will get to Pedroia, Youkilis, and another hitter will inherently be more than three hitters on average), I also measured he P/PA of each hitter in that inning. Currently, the top hitter in P/PA in the American League is Nick Swisher of the New York Yankees at 4.51. In innings where Youkilis, Pedroia, and then someone else bats, the average hitter is seeing 4.8 P/PA!

This simple switch will lead to better hitting, wearing out the starter and getting into the bullpen quicker, which ultimately leads to scoring more runs. All of this while still maintaining difficult late-inning matchups for opposing managers.

Check back every so often to see if these numbers hold up over the course of the 2010 season. I will update the numbers here at the bottom of this blog post after every game that Pedroia and Youkilis bat back-to-back. Let’s hope I’m updating this post frequently.