Hardball Geek-Out

Hey boys,

With spring training under way, I again ask my baseball gurus to enlighten me about a subject I am woefully under-informed about: Batting order.

Beyond the obvious (batting a fast lead-off hitter) I don't understand why a manager pays so much attention to who bats when. Is it good statisical baseball, or is it all about massaging your hitter's ego?

I came across a super nerdy article(http://www.retrosheet.org/Research/RuaneT/lineup_art.htm) that concludes:

"...batting orders matter even less than people have believed. You would think that with such complicated forces at work here, some truly bizarre lineups might have been more efficient than the obvious ones used throughout the years, but if they exist, the methods described in this article didn't find them...There are lots of instances of very different lineups producing almost identical results. But if the normal lineups do almost as well as these creative ones, is there any percentage in straying from conventional wisdom? I don't think so. And I guess that's the real conclusion of this article: since all but the most pathologically weird lineups produce just about the same number of runs, I might be inclined to select the lineup that makes the most intuitive sense to the players and fans. Simply put, it's not worth all the fuss you'd cause trying to be clever with lineups."

Please explain.