The 2015 series on team offense continues with the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates finished tenth in the majors and fourth in the the National League in 2014 with 4.21 runs scored per game.
I could not find updated lineups at CBSSports.com, so I am going to use a combination of RotoChamp and USA Today. In this case, I’m going with the USA Today lineup since what I’ve read is that Gregory Polanco is batting low in the order. That Clint Hurdle lineup is plugged into the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) using Musings Marcels as the batter projections. For the pitchers, I used the Pirates actual numbers from 2014. That information produces the following results:
Best lineup: 4.56 runs per game
Probable lineup: 4.25
Worst lineup: 3.91
Regressed lineup: 3.99
Andrew McCutchen projects so much better than any other Pirates hitter in terms of OBP that he is the LAT’s favorite for the top of the order. With Josh Harrison projected to have a rather low OBP for a lead-off hitter, this projected lineup generates just 52% of the best lineup (based on the distance between the best and worst lineups). A big reason for that, I believe, is that the Marcels may be underestimating Josh Harrison’s OBP. His OBP jumped last season, so it’s quite possible as he reaches the peak of his career that his OBP comes in much closer to .350. If that’s true, I like this order a lot more.
A big problem with this batting order is Francisco Cervelli. His projected OBP of .348 should place him much higher than eighth in the lineup. It’s also quite possible he’s not that good, as his career as a backup provides a small sample size of batting numbers. In fact, with Harrison, Cervelli, Polanco, and Jordy Mercer, there’s a lot of uncertainty in this lineup. I suspect the batting order might look very different at the end of the season. There’s a lot of upside and downside on this offense.
You can follow the data for the series in this Google spreadsheet.
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