Where To Bat Your Best Hitter - Part II

In Part I of this exercise I looked at the best lineup construction for a team that had one Albert Pujols and eight Michael Bourn's.  I then plugged these lineups, using Bill James player projections into my baseball simulator.  The lineup that won the most games had Albert Pujols batting third.

In the next step of this exercise I replaced one of the Michael Bourn's with another Albert Pujols.  What lineup with two Albert Pujols' in it would win the most games?  Logic would tell you that one of the Albert Pujols' should be batting third, right?  If so, then where would you slot in the second Pujols?  Let's take a look at the 36 total permutations of lineups and see which ones did best.  Once again, one million games were simulated.

Rank	Location	Wins
1	3,4	516706
2	3,5	511683
3	1,3	510708
4	3,6	510632
5	3,7	510251
6	2,3	509860
7	4,5	509778
8	2,4	509761
9	4,6	509586
10	1,4	509485
11	3,8	509416
12	3,9	509403
13	4,9	508286
14	4,7	508221
15	4,8	507957
16	2,5	504511
17	1,5	504278
18	5,6	503953
19	5,7	503684
20	2,6	503585
21	2,7	503331
22	1,2	502535
23	5,8	502533
24	1,6	502452
25	2,8	502426
26	5,9	502345
27	1,7	502286
28	6,7	501978
29	2,9	501777
30	6,9	501361
31	6,8	501349
32	1,8	501145
33	1,9	500610
34	7,9	500166
35	7,8	499817
36	8,9	498778

So yes, batting Pujols in the #3 spot still pays off as the top six lineups all bat him there.  Batting the two Pujols' in the #3 and #4 spots is by far the best lineup construction, while batting him 8th and 9th are the worst.  Interestingly, batting Pujols 1/2 ranks fairly far down the list, proving that putting your sluggers in RBI positions is more important than giving them the most plate appearances of any hitters.  The difference between the best and worst lineups on this list is 2.9 wins per 162 games.  Of course an actual lineup would be constructed of pretty much nine unique plate skillsets, but in general this type of lineup construct wins out.

Part I