Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 02, 2009
Team Offense, Texas Rangers

I delayed my team offense reports this season as I waited for the free agent market to shake out. With Orlando Cabrera signing today, we're a little closer to completion, and the start of the regular season is only a month away. I'll cover the teams based on their 2008 finish in runs scored, starting with the Texas Rangers.

I use the probable lineup published at CBSSportsline, and plug OBA and slugging percentage from the Marcel the Monkey projections into the Lineup Analysis Tool.

In addition to posting runs per game for the best, probable and worst lineups, I'll also post the regressed value of the probable lineup. In general, teams do not keep the probable lineup on the field the whole season, and this formula should help adjust for that.

Here are the results (Elvis Andrus's projection is from Baseball Prospectus.):

  • Best lineup: 5.23 runs per game
  • Probable lineup: 5.13 runs per game
  • Worst lineup: 4.91 runs per game
  • Regressed lineup: 4.73 runs per game

There's really not much for Ron Washington to do with this lineup. Texas projects to play eight hitters with good but not outstanding OBAs. It's a team that might lead the league in OBA, not because anyone is outstanding, but only Andrus is below average.

Still, that's a big falloff from 2008. The projections show a huge drop in OBA from the fourth slot and in the ninth slot. Andrus's glove better be as good as the Rangers hope, since he'll need to save a ton of runs to make up for his lack of batting prowess.

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Posted by David Pinto at 03:32 PM | Offense | TrackBack (0)
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