The best way to promote success for a hitter in the lineup.

Many coaches have decisions to make when writing the lineup. A necessary decision must be where do you hit your best hitter. Typically, the best hitter hits in the 3 spot in the lineup. For many reasons this makes the most sense.

One item that coaches then must decide is how do you protect your best hitters. This doesn't necessarily have to be the 3 hitter. This could also apply to the the 4 hitter, the 5 hitter. Really, it's anyone that could be pitched around with runners in scoring position.

Here's the best way to do that.

1) Put speed in front of the hitter. A hitter should always prefer hitting behind speed. Pitchers have more of a tendency to throw fastballs to hitters when speed is on the bases. Also, middle infielders tend to shorten up to the 2nd base bag even more when speed is on base. Fastballs and open holes is a great recipe for a hitters success.

2)Be willing to run that speed in disadvantage counts with 2 outs for the hitter. So many times managers say that they don't like to run in front of big bats. It opens up a base to pitch around the batter. But, this is important to "promote success" for the hitter. When you run with two outs you provide opportunities for the hitter's at bat to start over. I know this involves the runner getting thrown out but the heading is to "promote success," not score runs.

3) Place a big bat behind the batter. This is an obvious one. If there is a good hitter hitting behind you, there is a chance they will throw you hittable pitches in those advantage counts. If there is a marginal stick behind you, breaking balls and slop are still in play for the pitcher.

4) Alternate sides in the lineup. In other words, don't put lefties on top of each other. It's harder to do the same with right handers but it's worth noting anyway. What this does is it makes the opposing manager think twice before matching up a same side matchup(left on left / right on right). If you're a lefthanded hitter and there is a lefty behind you, the other manager might not hesitate to create a difficult lefty, lefty matchup.

An observation- there is no way that Ryan Howard should hit cleanup behind Chase Utley. Howard doesn't hit for a high enough average to effectively protect Utley and since Howard is also a lefty there are way too many tough lefty, lefty matchups down the road for both Utley and Howard.