March 06, 2009
Team Offense, New York Mets
The series on team offense continues with the New York Mets. I plug the probable lineup from CBSSportsLine into the Lineup Analysis Tool, and fill in the numbers with Marcel the Monkey projections. For pitchers I used the team pitchers line from 2008. The results:
- Best lineup: 4.96 runs per game
- Probable lineup: 4.72 runs per game
- Worst lineup: 4.30 runs per game
- Regressed lineup: 4.48 runs per game
The Mets scored 4.93 runs per game in 2008.
Looking at this probable lineup I was surprised to see Delgado splitting Wright and Beltran. In general, putting two high OBA, high power hitters together is a good thing. Delgado is that hitter when he's at his best, but he's getting old and had his ups and downs the last couple of years. Frankly, I wouldn't mind seeing Beltran and Reyes flip the 1-5 spots.
Daniel Murphy projects to do well, and if he lives up to the .371 OBA the Mets should have a very good pair of table setters. My feeling is Marcel underestimates Reyes a bit, since he came up at a young age and posted a poor OBA for a while.
The bottom of the lineup is very weak. That should give opposing pitchers a break, and it's the big reason the Mets project to score fewer runs than last season. They were even with the Phillies in runs scored in 2009 so the division title came down to pitching. With this lineup, the Mets will need to depend more heavily on fixing the pitching to win in 2009.
Other teams in this series:
Correction: Fixed the value of the Mets regressed lineup.
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