March 29, 2015

Team Offense, San Diego Padres

The 2015 series on team offense finishes with the San Diego Padres. The Padres finished last in the Majors and in the the National League in 2014 with 3.30 runs scored per game.

RotoChamp and USA Today disagreed on some of players in the starting lineup. USA Today has Will Middlebrooks starting at third base, and that seems to be the way the Padres are headed, so I’ll use that batting order. That Bud Black lineup is plugged into the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) using Musings Marcels as the batter projections. For the pitchers, the actual averages for the Padres staff from 2014 was used. That information produces the following results:

Best lineup: 4.18 runs per game
Probable lineup: 3.98
Worst lineup: 3.65
Regressed lineup: 3.79

The Padres offense was the worst in the majors by a long shot. Their moves this winter project to improve the team. They are not, however, turning this into a super lineup. They may be lucky to crack 4.0 runs per game in 2015.

The LAT likes Derek Norris in the lead-off slot, but he is a catcher, and that’s a tough assignment for a back stop. There is one lineup in the top 30 that shows Wil Myers leading off, and it’s not that far from the default order. Norris should be hitting higher than seventh if his OBP is going to be around .345. It seems a bit useless to surround him with players who project to be on base about 30% of the time. Batting him fifth gives him more PA, and with a good OBP he’ll expand the offensive context for the poorer hitters and give them some opportunities to drive in runs.

Despite the improvements the Padres could easily finish near the bottom of the league in runs again.

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

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