February 08, 2008
Team Offense, Washington Nationals
We finish the look at team offenses for 2008 with the Washington Nationals.
Wily Mo Pena
Photo: Icon SMI
In 2007, the Nationals scored 4.15 runs per game.
I plugged in a likely lineup to the Lineup Analysis Tool, using the Marcel the Monkey predictions from Tom Tango. The numbers for pitchers are based on the team averages from 2007. The lineups rate as follows:
- Best: 4.72 runs per game
- Given: 4.44 runs per game
- Worst: 4.08 runs per game
That looks like a decent improvement for the Nationals. A full season of Wily Mo Pena in left, Milledge in center, and a bounce back from Zimmerman should make this a better scoring year for the Nationals. Note, too that Nick Johnson projects to a much better season than Dmitri Young.
Previous teams covered in the series:
I'd bet the over on those.
The monkey looks like he forgot to factor out the move from RFK!
But you can't factor in a ballpark where no one has played yet. The site of the new park is subject to a fair amount of wind, and since the new park will not be closed in like RFK, hard to figure how that will affect scoring. I am certainly looking forward to seeing games there, I just wish ownership would spend some money on some starting pitching.
you can factor it in to some extent. sure, the wind may affect things, and how much it will affect things will change every year for the next few years as the surrounding area is built up.
but the reality is that the stadium will have a smaller outfield, and it's unlikely that the wind will be more of a factor than the OF distances.