Does familiarity breed contempt? As the game progresses, who has the advantage in the batter/pitcher confrontation: the batter or the pitcher? Conventional wisdom tells us that the second time (and later) through the order the batters have the advantage, as they have had time to see the pitcher's stuff. On the other hand, conventional wisdom also tells us that at least some pitchers need time to get in the groove. Let's see which, if either, of these theories is true.

Going back to the 1999–2002 data, we will look at all starting pitchers and starting batting lineups, and throw out any IBB or bunt, as well as any pitchers batting. This leaves us with 469,721 PA.

The first time through the order, the resulting wOBA was .345. What was our expectation? The pitchers in this situation had an overall wOBA of .349, the batters were .347, and the league-average for these pools of players is .344. This gives us an expectation of .353 (.349 + .347 – .344 = .352 plus a rounding error). With 163,900 PA, this 8-point advantage (an expected .353 compared to an actual wOBA of .345) for the pitcher is highly statistically significant. How about the second time through the order? The expectation is .353, and the actual performance is .354. The third time through the order shows an expectation of .354, but the actual performance was .362, or an 8-point advantage for the hitter. The progression each time through the order is eight points below expectation, followed by one point above, followed by eight points above (remember these numbers, –8, +1, +8, as we'll reference them later on in this chapter).

We're going to split up the data by each batting slot, to see if there's anything interesting or peculiar in the data. Our first step is to see if there are any advantages to hitting in any of the batting slots. (See Table 79.)

Based on the hitters and pitchers involved in the leadoff slot, our expectation was a wOBA of .340, and the actual performance was a .340. So, we can say that there's no overall advantage or disadvantage to hitting leadoff. But, check out the #5 hitters. Hitters in those slots enjoy a 7-point advantage in that slot. And hitters in the bottom of the order perform worse in those slots, especially the last hitter in the lineup. Number nine hitters hit eight points below expectation. As we will see in our chapter on intentional walks, protection isn't the reason for this difference, so perhaps it relates to how much energy the pitcher had to exert facing the previous batters. In other words, the pitcher may be fatigued from facing very good #3 and #4 hitters and thus be more hittable by the #5 hitter; likewise after cruising through the #7 and #8 hitters, he can pitch well against the #9 hitter. At any rate, we need to revise our expectation for player performances by also including the batting slot the hitter finds himself in.