He's playing as loose as ever, he's not pressing, he's batting .371, and he's comfortable

So let's put 100,000 times more pressure on him and move him to the cleanup spot, am I right? Apparently so, because after hitting seventh for the first 10 games of the season (and getting at least one hit in every one of them), Matt Kemp has been shifted up to fourth.

Now.

A fair number of wise, statistically-minded fellows (mother's-basement-dwelling stat geeks, for the Jon Heymans of the world) will read this and respond angrily. They'll hit me with, "Are you seriously complaining about Joe Torre trying to maximize the number of ABs that his hottest hitter is getting?" to which I will respond, "Yes, you Star-Trek-loving know-it-all. Go have your mom make you an egg-white omelette so you can draw math formulas into it, loser." 

But on a more serious note: I think Kemp is a different case than most. He's had a ginormous amount of pressure on him ever since his 7-HR-in-his-first-15-ML-games explosion in 2006, and basically from then until the end of the 2008 season he's been pressing at the plate; taking huge home run swings no matter the count, biting on 3-2 curveballs in the dirt, etc. Through sheer talent and tools alone, he put up a great 2007 season in limited action and followed it up with a decent 2008, but the flaws in his offensive game were evident.

2009 seems different. I've watched pretty much every inning of every Dodger game so far this year, and whether it's the calming presence of Manny Ramirez, the new contact lenses he got in the offseason, or simply experience, Matt Kemp is a completely different hitter. He's still somewhat of a free swinger, but he's seeing more pitches (4.33 P/PA compared to 3.72 last year) and having many more productive ABs. It's still very early, of course, but this version of Matt Kemp looks a lot like the guy everyone thought he'd become when he was tearing up the minors in 2005. And honestly, I think it's because he's comfortable hitting seventh. He knows he doesn't have to do too much and that he can just relax and not worry about hitting home runs every time. Bump him up to fourth, and it's possible that he starts pressuring himself to be a "true" cleanup hitter, which will lead to worse ABs and, therefore, inferior production. Numbers-wise, the move makes sense, but contrary to what you may have heard from 75-year-old beat writers that just lost their newspaper jobs to 30-year-olds who know what "VORP" means, baseball isn't now being organized and played by a bunch of computerized automatons; there is still a human element to it. And I wonder if this lineup change might affect Kemp negatively.

Of course, if he goes 5-for-6 tonight with three homers, forget I ever brought it up.