January 29, 2008
Team Offense, Tampa Bay Rays
We continue to look at team offenses for 2008 with the Tampa Bay Rays.
Evan Longoria
Photo: Icon SMI
In 2007, the Rays scored 4.83 runs per game.
I plugged in a likely lineup to the Lineup Analysis Tool, using the Marcel the Monkey predictions from Tom Tango. Marcels do not predict players who did not play in the major leagues, so I used Evan Longoria's projection from The Bill James Baseball Handbook 2008. The lineups rate as follows:
- Best: 5.54 runs per game
- Given: 5.45 runs per game
- Worst: 5.21 runs per game
Wow, that's quite a jump! If Longoria lives up to that kind of power, I can see the increase happening. It also depends, however, on Pena's 2007 performance being sustainable. The other boost comes from Jason Bartlett. Not only does he bring a better glove to the infield, he's projected to increase OBA at shortstop by 26 points.
This is another example of the Rays as a team ready to gel. If they can get their young pitching and their offense to hit stride together, this is going to be a scary team.
Previous teams covered in the series: