The 2020 series on team offense continues with the Houston Astros. The Astros finished third in the majors and third in the American League in 2019 with 5.68 runs scored per game.
I am using RotoChamp as a source of default lineups. That Dusty Baker 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: 5.91
- Probable lineup: 5.79
- Worst lineup: 5.53
- Regressed lineup: 5.11
Baker takes over a team mired in controversy due to sign stealing. The Astros projections should be taken with a grain of salt, but the talent is there and they may wind up honestly leading the majors in scoring.
It looks like Baker will make a couple of tweaks to the lineup, moving Jose Altuve into more of a table setter role and Alex Bregman into the clean-up role. The LAT agrees with Altuve batting second and Michael Brantley batting third, as well as Carlos Correa in the seventh slot. This lineup moves away from Josh Reddick batting ninth, opting instead for the worst hitter on the team, Martin Maldonado, finishing the order. Given the more traditional roles at the top of the order, that likely makes sense.
Yordan Alvarez projects to be the star of the team. Please remember this is a low confidence project due to the small sample size of his career. Other, more refined projections still show him as a star, but not at this level. If he continues to hit with that kind of power, I can see this lineup being revamped to get Alvarez more plate appearances.
You can follow the data for the series in this Google spreadsheet.
Previous posts in this series: