March 28, 2015

Team Offense, Arizona Diamondbacks

The 2015 series on team offense continues with the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Diamondbacks finished twenty fifth in the majors and eleventh in the the National League in 2014 with 3.80 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. The RotoChamp lineup seems to be more in line with recent spring training games, as I’ve seen boxes with A.J. Pollack leading off. That Chip Hale lineup is plugged into the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) using Musings Marcels as the batter projections. For pitchers, I used the Diamondbacks actual averages from 2014. That information produces the following results:

Best lineup: 4.28 runs per game
Probable lineup: 4.09
Worst lineup: 3.69
Regressed lineup: 3.87

One thing to keep in mind is that Marcel assigns league average to Yasmany Tomas, as he’s never played in the majors before. If he turns out to be more of a power hitter, he probably belongs in the fifth slot. If he turns out to be better at getting on base, then a table setting position might be fine. The LAT puts him ninth since his OBP works well there, and he’s not projected to have power. The projections at FanGraphs show him as an out machine with power.

If that turns out to be correct, the middle of the DBacks order isn’t that going to be too difficult the navigate. If both Mark Trumbo and Tomas post OBPs near .300, they will need to supply a lot of power to make up for the outs. Paul Goldschmidt may find himself left on base quite often.

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

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