January 22, 2008
Team Offenses, Detroit Tigers
We continue to look at team offenses for 2008 with the Detroit Tigers.
In 2007, the Tigers scored 5.48 runs per game.
I plugged in a likely lineup to the Lineup Analysis Tool, using the Marcel the Monkey predictions from Tom Tango. The lineups rate as follows:
Miguel Cabrera
Photo: Icon SMI
- Best: 5.75 runs per game
- Given: 5.58 runs per game
- Worst: 5.40 runs per game
The Tigers did a nice job of improving their offense this year. The worst lineup they could put on the field would finish third in the majors in 2007. However, this also shows how difficult it is to increase scoring. The lineup the team is likely to use is predicted to score 0.1 more runs per game, or about 16 runs more than last season. Part of that is Ordonez coming back to his averages after a career year and Gary Sheffield continuing to age. Dombrowski not only compensated for that loss, he actually improved the offense. With a team that good, it would have been easy to do nothing. The Tigers instead acquired a cornerstone in Cabrera that improves the team now, and likely makes Detroit an offensive power house in the future.
