Brewers Open vs. A's

Ah, Spring Training is officially upon us.  The Milwaukee Brewers will take on the Oakland A’s starting at 2pm central time.  The batting order for the Brewers is very interesting.  I’m reluctant to read too much into it, as it’s just the first game, but it seems like Yost was not just kicking ideas around fruitlessly.  Here’s the lineup today:

2B - Rickie Weeks
CF - Mike Cameron
1B - Prince Fielder
LF - Ryan Braun
RF - Corey Hart
3B - Bill Hall
SS - J.J. Hardy
DH - Gabe Gross
C - Jason Kendall
P - Claudio Vargas (not batting)

As you can see, Yost has Cameron batting 2nd and moved Hardy down to the 7th spot in the order.  He had talked about doing that, and it does make a lot of sense because Cameron sees a lot of pitches per at-bat.  Prince Fielder is third in this lineup, batting in front of Ryan Braun.  Yost is committed to freeing up Ryan on the base paths a bit and letting him steal more to utilize his speed.  Batting in front of Prince hinders this ability because if Braun steals second, the opposing team would usually just walk Prince.  With this lineup, teams have to pitch to both monsters.

Jason Kendall is batting in the 9th spot, just as Yost talked about.  It is a little too early to get too excited about this because there is no pitcher’s spot in the order, but it could be signs for things to come.  Maybe Kendall will bat 9th in the regular season.  If you would like to read it, David Pinto from SportingNews believes this to be a good idea for the Brewers.  In his analysis, the advantage in switching Kendall to the 9th spot is only 0.1 runs per game, but he applauds Yost for doing anything to make his team better and thinking out of the box.

Do you all want Kendall in the 9th spot in the batting order?

Jim Breen covers all the important news and rumors concerning the Milwaukee Brewers at his site, BrewersNation.

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