Team Offense, Texas Rangers

The 2015 series on team offense continues with the Texas Rangers. The Rangers finished seventeenth in the majors and tenth in the the American League in 2014 with 3.93 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. Neither of these lineups look particularly right to me, so I’m going with the USA Today one that has Shin-Soo Choo leading off. That Brian Bannister lineup is plugged into the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) using Musings Marcels as the batter projections. That information produces the following results:

Best lineup: 4.75 runs per game
Probable lineup: 4.62
Worst lineup: 4.37
Regressed lineup: 4.27

I’m not quite sure why the LAT puts Rougned Odor fourth in the top lineup, rather than Prince Fielder, but I assume it wants Fielder’s power behind Odor and Leonys Martin.

The predicted 4.62 runs per game for the probable lineup would represent a huge improvement over 2014, worth about 11 wins. That’s with Michael Choice playing to his poor projections. Choice showed the ability to get on base in the minors, so I suspect his projection has a ton of upside, especially as he enters his peak years. If the older players stay healthy, this could be one of the top offenses in the AL.

I also like what Prince Fielder is doing. Via The Big Lead, here’s Fielder bunting against the shift:

Your browser does not support iframes.

Notice how Fielder squares up fairly early. I would like to see him and players like him choke up on the bat, and try to swat the ball down the third base line. That would be a double, and would do a lot more than bunt singles to stop teams from using the shift.

You can follow the data for the series in this Google spreadsheet.

Please consider donating to the Baseball Musings Pledge Drive.

Previous posts in this series:

March 25, 2015

Leave a Reply