The 2023 series on team offense continues with the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals finished tied for fifth in the majors and tied for third in the National League in 2022 with 4.77 runs scored per game.
This season I am using FanGraphs Roster Resource Depth Charts* as the source of default lineups. That Oliver Marmol batting 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: 5.15
- Probable lineup: 5.08
- Worst lineup: 4.85
- Regressed lineup: 4.65
The default Cardinals order and the LAT disagree on the placement of Tommy Edman. The Cardinals slot him as a lead-off hitter, while the LAT bats him eighth, a slot reserved for the worst hitter on the team. Whenever something like this happens, I assume I’m missing something.
Edman posted a .350 OPB in his rookie season of 2019, but has not come close to that number since. None of the many projections at FanGraphs shows him with a good OBP. He owns a decent batting average but walks very little. His power is nothing to write home about. Of the nine starters, he owns the second lowest projected OBP and slugging percentage. That makes him the worst hitter on the team.
The one thing he does do well is steal bases, 62 for 70 over the previous two seasons. So when he gets on base, he can turn a one-base reach into a two-base outcome. He can’t steal first, however, and there’s enough power coming up behind him that he shouldn’t risk the much anyway.
That said the Cardinals project to be near the top of the league in runs scored. The spread between their best and worst lineups is just 0.30 runs, meaning there is not a lot of consistency among the batters in the lineup. Many of them work in multiple slots just as well as their assign spots. Nolan Arenado batting fourth and Edman batting eighth as the only players the LAT consistently puts in the same slot.
Many of the hitters batting lower in the default order are just entering their prime years. If they prove they can hit consistently well in the majors, we will likely see the lineup shuffled to better take advantage of their strengths.
You can follow the data for the series in this Google spreadsheet.
Previous posts in this series:
*This is the best version of this information I’ve seen, with everything you might want to know on one page.