The 2018 series on team offense continues with the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers finished twelfth in the major leagues and sixth in the National League in 2017 with 4.75 runs scored per game.
I am using RotoChamp as a source of default lineups. That Dave Roberts order is plugged into the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) using Musings Marcels as the batter projections. For the pitchers slot, I used the actual values produced by the Dodgers pitchers in 2017. That information produces the following results (Runs per game):
Best lineup: 5.09
Probable lineup: 4.89
Worst lineup: 4.49
Regressed lineup: 4.53
There is a big disagreement between the LAT and the Dodgers default lineup over Chris Taylor. That is due to the Marcels knocking his projection down from his 2017 campaign due to poor play his previous two years. With a .337/.455 OPB/Slug, the LAT sees him as the lowest performing offensive player in the starting nine and bats him seventh. He makes a lot more sense batting lead-off if his OBP is going to be in the .350s, as it was in 2017. Taylor will play as a 27-year-old this year, which is often a peak age for players. I suspect his high OBP of 2017 is repeatable.
Still, there is quite a bit of agreement between the LAT and the Dodgers default order. It likes Corey Seager followed by Justin Turner. It likes Cody Bellinger in the clean-up slot, with Yasiel Puig fifth. It puts Logan Forsythe at the bottom of the order, but bats him fifth with the pitcher eighth.
Note that Yasmai Grandal brings up the rear with a .327 projected OBP. If that’s the lower end of the scale, the Dodgers are going to have tons of runners on base, and tons of runners tend to lead to tons of runs.
You can follow the data for the series in this Google spreadsheet.
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Previous posts in this series:
- Introduction
- Houston Astros
- New York Yankees
- Colorado Rockies
- Chicago Cubs
- Washington Nationals
- Cleveland Indians
- Minnesota Twins
- Arizona Diamondbacks
- Texas Rangers
- Boston Red Sox
- Miami Marlins
Correction: Logan Forsythe, not Logan Morrison.