January 22, 2008
Team Offenses, Boston Red Sox
We continue to look at team offenses for 2008 with the Boston Red Sox.
Jacoby Ellsbury
Photo: Icon SMI
In 2007, the Red Sox scored 5.35 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:
- Best: 5.86 runs per game
- Given: 5.78 runs per game
- Worst: 5.54 runs per game
That's pretty impressive. Even the worst lineup shows improvement over the 2007 runs per game. The Red Sox did nothing over the winter to alter their offense. Giving Ellsbury a full time job, an expected improvement in Pedroia's OBA and overall improvement in the stats of Manny Ramirez, Julio Lugo, and J.D. Drew after off years makes a big difference. This very well be one instance when resting on your laurels was the right move.
An improvement in Pedroia's OBP? I'll take the under on that I think. Ortiz had a great year in terms of producing runs, via his career high in OBP, and Lowell was uncharacteristically good - both in general, and with men on base. I'm really surprised about these projections - but if they end up accurate, with their pitching staff... wow.
yeah the guy was .380 OBP last year.... you really think he's going to get better there? I'd be surprised if he doesn't come down a bit considering what his Home/away splits looked like last year.
this was Dustin Pedroia outside of Fenway last year
.282/.349/.380 . now i know that Fenway is a big hitter's park and he's a style of hitter that should be very adept at exploiting it. but still. the park factor in fenway last year was nutty. it's almost suerly going to come down some.
he did play pretty well last year, but the other end of the spectrum is, he was a rookie and he should improve. you never know how these things will turn out. i think there is plenty of reason to believe this will be a fairly accurate prediction.
