Team Offense, Oakland Athletics

The 2017 series on team offense continues with the Oakland Athletics. The Athletics finished 15th in the American League and twenty ninth in the majors in 2016 with 4.03 runs scored per game. (Both Atlanta and Oakland round to 4.03, but Oakland’s actual ratio is lower.)

I am using RotoChamp as a source of default lineups. That Bob Melvin order is plugged into the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) using Musings Marcels as the batter projections. That information produces the following results (Runs per game):

Best lineup: 4.61
Probable lineup: 4.53
Worst lineup: 4.32
Regressed lineup: 4.26

The LAT and the Oakland default lineup match at four slots, four, six, seven and nine. The big argument between the two appears to be over Rajai Davis. Melvin bats him lead-off. The LAT bats him eighth, the slot for the worst hitter on the team. Davis posted OBPs of .320, .306, and .306 the last three seasons, but he led the American League with 43 steals in 2016, making 49 attempts. I have to assume the Athletics see that quantity and quality of base stealing as valuable enough to put Davis at the top of the order.

The batter to watch appears to be Ryon Healy, who knocked out 33 extra base hits in just 283 PA as a rookie in 2016. That was good for a .524 slugging percentage and a projection of .343/.500. He and Khris Davis should supply plenty of power in the middle of that order. Of course, that’s another reason to have batters on base more often in front of them, as opposed to farther along the base path.

If the projections hold, Oakland should put up much better offensive numbers in 2017.

You can follow the data for the series in this Google spreadsheet.

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Previous posts in this series:

March 25, 2017

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