We can all agree that the Indians have had trouble coming up with a working lineup, right?  I'm hardly the first person to think about it, or write it, and I mean, come on, when Jamey Blake Carroll has the plurality of AB's out of the 2 hole (heh), there has to be a problem.

I've seen a couple other fanposts with their own modest proposals for how to arrange the lineup, and I didn't want to be left out, so here's mine:

Organize the lineup by OBP, from top to bottom.  That is, the hitter with the highest OBP on the team hits leadoff, the second highest hits in the two hole, etc....

The Indians don't have a collection of players that fill out a traditionally arranged lineup card.  Other than Grady, who's a fine traditional leadoff hitter, nobody else's placement in the batting order makes any particular sense.   Is Jhonny a 5 hitter?  Why?  Because he'll occasionally go through a hot streak and pop off some home runs?  Can anyone provide a good reason to hit any Tribe player in any particular slot?

Probably not.  And since the Tribe is struggling mightily to score runs, there's even less reason to be constrained by traditional thinking about lineups.  The concern is to get runners to cross the plate.

Obviously, there's no way to guarantee that a run scores in any scenario, so what you want to do is maximize the chance that you'll score a run.  What detracts from scoring runs?  Making outs.  Who's good at not making outs?  Players with a high OBP.  A player's OBP is also indicative of the probability that he'll reach base.  If a player has a .400 OBP, you know that there's a pretty good chance that he'll get on base about 40% of the time. Of course, that's not a rule, obviously, and there are streaks and slumps, but I think you can adjust for that by doing the lineup based on OBP over the past 10 games or so.

It comes down to this: you have a better chance of scoring a run by sending up a guy with a .400 OPB followed by a .380 OBP than you do by follownig with a guy with a .350 OBP.

Now, one obvious problem with my idea is that it only maximizes the possibility of scoring ONE run, as opposed to maximizing the total runs scored in a given scenario.  A better way to organize your lineup is probably by OPS, since that combines your ability to not make an out with the number of bases you're likely to pick up in the course of not making that out.  However, I'm not sure where the sweet spot is, where it becomes worth it to increase the risk of an out for the reward of an increase in the output.  If anyone else has an idea, that'd be excellent.

Please poke holes in this idea, I'm curious as to how well it holds up to scrutiny.