March 16, 2023

Team Offense, Cincinnati Reds

The 2023 series on team offense continues with the Cincinnati Reds. The Reds finished twenty third in the majors and twelfth in the National League in 2022 with 4.00 runs scored per game.

This season I am using FanGraphs Roster Resource Depth Charts* as the source of default lineups. That David Bell 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: 4.64
  • Probable lineup: 4.60
  • Worst lineup: 4.39
  • Regressed lineup: 4.34

Like so many lineups this series analyzed, the Reds have a very homogenous set of batters, so the lineup doesn’t matter that much. as you can see by the number of players that occupy various slots, any number of combinations work very well, as there is not that much difference between the run generation of the best lineup versus the worst lineup, just .25 runs per game.

The Reds do manage to get their four best OBPs at the top of the order, and their four worst OBPs at the bottom. There’s no true power hitter on the team right now. Maybe Spencer Steer swerves in that direction, but at the moment, none of the low MLB experience players showed lots of power in the minors.

That said, this squad looks poised to improve offensively, which would be a nice treat for Reds fans after a disappointing 2022.

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.

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