Alvin Dark, Giants' Shortstop and Manager, Dies at 92

Alvin Dark, who was an All-Star shortstop and captain of the New York Giants' pennant-winning teams in the 1950s and later managed the team to a pennant in San Francisco, but who later found himself shadowed by controversy over his attitude toward black and Latino players, died on Thursday at his home in Easley, S.C. He was 92.

Well, when you've got guys like Mantle and Maris hitting behind them, you can still score a lot of runs.

I don't know if any teams still use the old paradigm of if the first guy got on base, the second guy would bunt him into scoring position. Bill James pretty destroyed that paradigm that teams had used for about one hundred years. But it used to be automatic that if the first guy up got on first, the second guy would "sacrifice" him to second to get him, first guy, into scoring position. According to James teams would score more runs by having a good hitter batting second and trying for a base hit. Outs are very valuable according to James, and a team should never deliberately give up an out.

I grew up as a Milwaukee Braves fan, and I used to wonder after reading James how the Braves would have done with Billy Bruton leading off, Hank Aaron batting second, and Eddie Mathews batting third. Both Bruton and Aaron were both good base stealers. If Bruton got on base, and Aaron singled him to second, the Braves could have pulled many double steals. That would mean the other team would probably walk Mathews to load the bases and play for a double play. But the Braves had a lot of other good hitters like Joe Adcock, Wes Covington, and others.

James maintains that the best hitter on each team should bat first, the second best hitter second, and so on. I don't know if any teams do that.

I think I read that in the mid-1960s, Braves manager Bobby Bragan used to bat Aaron 2nd, and when he was fired in 1966 (team's first year in Atlanta), new manager Billy Hitchcock restored Aaron to 3rd, and they started scoring more runs.

What's neat about the Internet is, BaseballReference.com has all those box scores, so you can check it out if you get ambitious.

I do look at old box scores. In 1964, the Phillies had only two power hitters, Callison and Richie Allen, and Gene Mauch used to bat them 2-3, the order depending on whether the pitcher was left- or right-handed. That was unusual for the time. Nowadays, some sabremetricians say bat your best hitter 2nd, and Trout does bat 2nd.

Billy Bruton in his early years with the Braves didn't get many walks, so he wasn't too good of a top-of-the-order hitter, but he used to bat there because of his speed. Later, and after he got traded to the Tigers, he started to get more walks.

My own rule for making a line-up is, DON'T have a guy hit 2nd who hits into a lot of double plays. Double plays are devastating. People complain about strikeouts, but I'll take a strikeout over a double play any day. It's awful when the lead-off hitter gets on base, only to have him erased when the 2nd hitter grounds into a double play.

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