The 2015 series on team offense continues with the San Francisco Giants. The Giants finished twelfth in the majors and fifth in the the National League in 2014 with 4.10 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 as Brandon Belt was to be given the chance to hit in the third slot. That Bruce Bochy lineup is plugged into the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) using Musings Marcels as the batter projections. For the pitchers, I used the Giants numbers from last season. That information produces the following results:
Best lineup: 4.35 runs per game
Probable lineup: 4.11
Worst lineup: 3.81
Regressed lineup: 3.89
Like the Indians, the Giants lineup uses a number of similar players. Angel Pagan, Casey McGehee, Gregor Blanco, and Joe Panik post very similar OBP and slugging numbers, and if you look at the top lineups generated by the LAT, they move around quite a bit. What the LAT likes, and what Bochy doesn’t do, is bat Buster Posey higher in the order. I suspect they want Posey behind Belt for protection. Fourth isn’t a bad slot for Posey, but if they put him there, they are better with Belt’s high OBP in the second slot. That would mean putting a non-traditional hitter in that slot.
Based on projections, substituting Hunter Pence for Nori Aoki hurts the offense.
You can follow the data for the series in this Google spreadsheet.
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