The 2023 series on team offense continues with the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Diamondbacks finished fourthteenth in the majors and ninth in the National League in 2022 with 4.33 runs scored per game.
This season I am using FanGraphs Roster Resource Depth Charts* as the source of default lineups. That Torey Lovullo 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: 4.54
- Probable lineup: 4.50
- Worst lineup: 4.34
- Regressed lineup: 4.28
The Diamondbacks are another team with similar talent throughout the lineup, resulting in a small spread between the best and worst batting orders. They do manage to get 80% of the optimum lineup as Jake McCarthy and Ketel Marte are paired together near the top of the order in most of the best lineups.
One project in projecting the Diamondbacks lineup comes from three of the starters owning little major league playing time. Corbin Carroll, McCarthy, and Alek Thomas all accrued less than a year of service time. Thomas, who plays the season as a 23-year-old, put up excellent numbers in the minors, especially at AAA. McCarthy was a rung below that level of hitting. Carroll, the youngest of the three blew up both AA and AAA.
That gives the Diamondbacks a ton of upside this season. If the three develop their OBP and slugging skills further, Arizona could be looking at scoring much closer to five runs a game this season. I would take the Musings Marcels projections in these cases as a floor.
You can follow the data for the series in this Google spreadsheet.
Previous posts in this series:
- Introduction
- Los Angeles Dodgers
- New York Yankees
- Atlanta Braves
- Toronto Blue Jays
- New York Mets
- St. Louis Cardinals
- Philadelphia Phillies
- Houston Astros
- Boston Red Sox
- Milwaukee Brewers
- San Francisco Giants
- Texas Rangers
- San Diego Padres
*This is the best version of this information I’ve seen, with everything you might want to know on one page.