Batting Lineup Builder & Optimizer

Rate each player 1 to 5 for speed, contact and power, pick a strategy, and get a batting order with a one-line reason for every spot. Built for youth and amateur coaches. It also splits a group into fair teams.

I coach youth teams, and setting the lineup on game day is usually a rushed scribble. This tool uses the same rules the research on batting order recommends, and lets you tilt them toward the kind of team you actually have: fast, powerful or contact-heavy.

How it works

Your ratings are the only input, so the lineup is only as good as they are. "Contact" means the player gets on base and rarely strikes out (a stand-in for on-base percentage). "Power" means extra-base hits. "Speed" is speed on the bases.

Balanced (the default) follows the lineup guideline from The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball by Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman and Andy Dolphin. As quoted by The Hardball Times and Bluebird Banter (page 132): "Your three best hitters should bat somewhere in the #1, #2 and #4 slots. Your fourth- and fifth-best hitters should occupy the #3 and #5 slots. The #1 and #2 slots will have players with more walks than those in the #4 and #5 slots. From slot #6 through #9, put the players in descending order of quality."

So the tool ranks hitters (contact counts most, then power, then speed), puts the top three at 1, 2 and 4 (the one with the most power bats cleanup, the one with the best contact and speed leads off), and the next two at 3 and 5. The rest go in order of quality, with faster runners ahead of slower ones when two hitters are close. Co-author Mitchel Lichtman notes that The Book also suggests putting good base stealers in front of singles-and-doubles hitters.

Speed / small ball puts your fastest players who also make contact at 1 and 2, your best power-and-contact bats at 3, 4 and 5 to drive them in, and another fast, high-contact runner in the last spot as a "second leadoff" ahead of the top of the order. The Book tested the second-leadoff idea and found it exists, but is worth only a couple of runs a year in MLB (The Hardball Times).

Power stacks your four best power-and-contact bats back to back in 2 through 5, with the biggest power at cleanup and the best contact of the group at #2. The best on-base hitter left over leads off so there's someone on when the big bats come up.

Contact puts your three best contact hitters at 1 to 3 (the fastest of them leading off), then your two best power bats at 4 and 5, so the power hitters come up with runners on.

Alternate L/R only kicks in on near-ties: if two hitters score within a fraction of a point, the one who bats from the other side of the hitter ahead gets the spot. Random order shuffles everyone, for practice games or when you just want it to be fair.

Youth fair mode and continuous batting orders

Many youth leagues use a continuous batting order, where every player on the roster bats in turn, whether or not they're in the field. In Little League it's a local league option in most divisions, and Rule 4.04 makes it mandatory for Tee Ball and Minor League. Little League also requires it for tournament play in every division except Senior. Check your own league's rules.

The tool always bats everyone you've marked as here, so it works for 9 to 15+ players. Turn on Youth fair mode to get a note on the lineup card and a Rotate for next game button that moves the top three hitters to the bottom, so different kids get the top spots from game to game.

Embed this tool

Run a league or team site? You're welcome to put this lineup builder on it. Copy the code below and paste it into your page's HTML. It's free and loads from this site. Each visitor's roster is saved in their own browser.

More tools

All the tools live on the tools page, including the pitch speed equivalent calculator. Want real numbers for the speed and power ratings? See our radar gun guide, the best radar guns under $100, and how to increase bat speed.