March 10, 2009
Team Offense, St. Louis Cardinals
Kahlil Greene
Photo: Icon SMI
The series on team offense continues with the ST. Louis Cardinals. 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's 2008 numbers. The results:
- Best lineup: 5.05 runs per game
- Probable lineup: 4.97 runs per game
- Worst lineup: 4.39 runs per game
- Regressed lineup: 4.63 runs per game
The Cardinals scored 4.81 runs per game in 2008.
This is pretty cool. The bottom four of La Russa's lineup match the bottom four of the best lineup calculated by the Lineup Analysis Tool. La Russa might do better batting Albert Pujols in the leadoff spot, but there's no way Albert would do that. Still, but splitting the batters correctly top five vs. bottom four, this lineup comes very close to the optimum.
The wild card in the Cardinals order looks like Khalil Greene. His numbers are projected to be very low, but the move out of PETCO could really help his power. PECOTA has him at .311/.429. That would bring the probable lineup to 5.1 runs per game. An even better year from Greene takes some pressure off the Cardinals pitchers.
Other teams in this series:
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I wonder how different those numbers would look with Schu at 2B and Colby Rasmus taking the outfield slot?
Great work, as always.
