The 2023 series on team offense continues with the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates finished twenty seventh in the majors and fourteenth in the National League in 2022 with 3.65 runs scored per game.

This season I am using FanGraphs Roster Resource Depth Charts* as the source of default lineups. That Derek Shelton 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: 4.39
• Probable lineup: 4.23
• Worst lineup: 4.05
• Regressed lineup: 4.10

Most of the time when the default lineup gets compared to the optimum LAT lineups, one see justifiable reasons for the default batting order. Not so with the Pirates lineup this season.

On the positive side, the Pirates do bat their best hitter, Bryan Reynolds, second. That agrees with the LAT. Part of the Zen of the LAT, batting a hitter like Reynolds second is not only to get that player more plate appearances, but to set up the player for more RBI by putting two good OBPs in front of him with a decent number nine hitter and a high OBP lead-off hitter. The Pirates bat their worst hitter, Austin Hedges, ninth. He projects to a god awful .256 OBP. They bat Oneil Cruz first. Cruz projects to a .309 OBP. While that number has a low confidence due to Cruz’s limited time in the majors, his minor league statistics indicate that his strength is power, not getting on base.

The LAT picks up those trends. It bats veteran DH Carlos Santana ninth. Santana’s power is gone, but he can still reach first base better than most on the Pirates. Ji-Man Choi or Ke’Bryan Hayes gets the top spot, with their better OBPs. Cruz bats fourth, taking advantage of his power, which does the most good with people on base!

To me, this is the useful way to use the LAT. You may see a player as a certain type, and that player might be a certain type, but in the context of your team that type may fit in a different place.

The upshot is that the optimum lineup for the Pirates is better than the Nationals optimum, but the default for the Pirates is worse than the Nationals. That’s something easily fixed.

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
• Arizona Diamondbacks
• Cleveland Guardians
• Colorado Rockies
• Minnesota Twins
• Seattle Mariners
• Chicago White Sox
• Baltimore Orioles
• Tampa Bay Rays
• Chicago Cubs
• Cincinnati Reds
• Kansas City Royals
• Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
• Washington Nationals

*This is the best version of this information I’ve seen, with everything you might want to know on one page.