I disagree. His goal should be to cluster the team’s best hitter’s together near the top of the lineup, not enforce a fiction of “stability” based on hitter “type”. There’s no benefit to lineup spot stability if it means crappy hitters are being shoehorned between better ones near the top of the order. Stubbornly batting a hitter in a particular spot isn’t going to magically mold him into the ideal number X hitter.

Whenever Torres plays, it makes sense for him to play CF and lead off based on his skillset. And I think it’s broken Bochy’s brain and made him think CF=leadoff, because Aaron Freaking Rowand has hit leadoff this year.

But sometimes his speediest player isn’t leading off, particularly when Schierholtz is in right and Ross is in center (in 2.5 times the PAs, Ross’s BSR is half of Schierholtz’s). Hell, Beltran is probably a better leadoff option with Ross in center considering the OBP and reduced but still adequate speed.

The theory might make sense if Bochy began thinking like a rational person, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t go “Speed = CF = leadoff”, he thinks “Experience in CF = CF = leadoff”, which is why Aaron Freaking Rowand has played center while Torres is in right, and Nate has never played CF. So your problem in trying to explain his thinking starts with this:

Bochy knows that someone fast enough to play CF might be fast enough to lead off

If he’s aiming to keep the middle-of-the-order guys together, again he has a problem from the beginning: this team doesn’t have middle-of-the-order guys other than Pablo. And hopefully Beltran. But other than that, everyone has been hurt, inconsistent, and/or terrible. So he puts Pablo in the third spot, and Beltran is probably penciled in as the cleanup hitter once he gets back, but after that the lineup is wide open. So players should be moving around, and in and out of the lineup, as they get hot and cool down or whatever the hell goes on inside that giant head. It would have to be the mother of all coincidences that in 120/128 games this season the center fielder JUST HAPPENS to be a player who is the best leadoff option and the best CF option. It would be understandable if we had a consistent CF, but Torres, Ross, and Rowand have all seen PT there and of the three, only Torres makes sense as a leadoff hitter. Rowand should be buried as far down as possible, and Ross’s new-found walk rate may make him the best CF and leadoff guy at times, but not when Schierholtz is also in the lineup, and his career indicates a 5/6 hitter, not a leadoff guy.

None of this matters, though, because I can tell you exactly why Ross and Rowand have been leading off while playing CF: Ross hit that homer in the leadoff spot, so he started there for awhile. And Rowand went on that hot streak awhile ago while batting leadoff, so he gets put back there because Bochy believes it’ll break him out of his two-year “slump” (which is, of course, just Rowand sucking).

The 2B argument is less obvious, since our second basemen have been among our better hitters most of the year, so it makes sense for them to hit in the second spot. But I suspect this is mostly coincidental, and Bochy’s reasoning behind putting the second baseman there is because the 2B is a “professional hitter” (NO SHIT) instead of realizing that that is one of the few positions that hasn’t been an offensive black hole most of the season.

Ultimately, Bochy is either doing something stupid or out of touch with reality and making decisions based on the fantastical delusions that tickle his mind. Either is entirely possible, but in no way does it seem remotely possible to me that in 120 of 128 games this season the best CF in the starting lineup was the best option for the leadoff spot, and in 98 of 128 games the 2B was the best option for the second position. If you ask me, Belt should hit second. Put his OBP in front of Pablo, whose team-leading average provides the best chance to get something going with a runner on base 1/3 of the time.