#2 is your third best hitter If you take another look, I believe The Book has the #2 hitter ranked right up there with #4. It gets a bit confusing because it has a lot of "The Book says" boxes, and some of them conflict. You kind have to get into the paragraphs, and once you've done that, draw some conclusions on your own. I believe it mentioned qualitative factors for determining which hitter would go in each of those spots: walks for #2 and extra base hits for #4. That would seem to suggest that the Brewers might want Fielder at #2 and Braun at #4. Fielder has the definite walk edge and they're pretty close in extra base hits. I think the bottom line, though, is that no team is going to have a complement of players that match up exactly to the descriptions in The Book, and that we can be a bit flexible. If someone wants to use protection as the reason to bat Fielder #2 and Braun #4, I'm fine with that. If someone else wants to use speed to bat Braun #2 and Fielder #4, I'm fine with that, too. And if another person's gut says that Prince is a prototypical cleanup hitter and defaults Braun into #2 on that basis, I'm also fine with that. Basically, I believe the bottom line is that one of those guys should bat #2 and the other should bat #4. If that happens, even if you disagree with the explanation behind it, you're still getting a good thing.