Rand: Twins' ideal batting order seems interchangeable

The Twins' projected starting lineup is one of those great sports talkers that goes around in endless circles before winding up in pretty much the same spot.

It's fun to spin, but will it help the Twins win?

Fans have weighed in. A cadre of Star Tribune writers did the same this week, offering up our ideal Twins lineups.

Even Thursday morning, I found myself diving back into the question in a blog post — first reiterating a confidence in Eddie Rosario to be a future No. 3 hitter despite his free-swinging ways before delving into the notion that a return to health and production by Joe Mauer in that same batting order spot would do wonders for the lineup.

But later in the day, a more basic question came to mind: Does batting order even matter — both in general to baseball and specifically to the Twins? Here's where we find some data that transcends water cooler talk.

The excellent site fangraphs.com has attempted to tackle the general part of the question in various ways over the years, with the most relevant notion being that a team's best possible batting order is worth anywhere between five and 15 runs per year more than an average batting order.

If we can settle on 10 runs, the average of that pretty wide range, that works out to about one added victory per year. One win by itself in a 162-game season sounds like a pretty small number, particularly in relation to how worked up fans get about the batting order.

Getting back to the 2016 Twins and their lineup, however, we are faced with the original question: What is their optimal lineup? And when we look at meaningful numbers like OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage), we find a collection of similar players without natural spots in the order.

Miguel Sano (.916 OPS) was the most productive and powerful hitter on the 2015 Twins, and he should bat in a power spot in the order. Aside from Sano, the Twins last year had seven regulars who had an OPS between .702 and .754 — the very definition of decent since the AL average was .730.

Torii Hunter retired and Aaron Hicks was traded. But five of those players figure to play prominent roles for the Twins this year: Mauer, Rosario, Brian Dozier, Trevor Plouffe and Eduardo Escobar. Newly signed Byung Ho Park could very well fall into that .700 to .750 range.

In short, it might be a lineup without much optimization because so many players are so similar in production — particularly if Mauer doesn't rebound to his old form. Paul Molitor could draw most of the starters' names from a hat and do fine.

And it means all of us could be arguing over a handful of runs and a fraction of a win. It doesn't make it any less fun, but maybe we can do a better job of keeping things in perspective.