The 2016 series on team offense continues with the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox finished fourth in the majors and the American League in 2015 with 4.62 runs scored per game.
Once again I am using a combination of RotoChamp and USA Today as a source of default lineups. The two sources agree on the lineup. That John Farrell lineup 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: 4.88
Probable lineup: 4.84
Worst lineup: 4.63
Regressed lineup: 4.44
I have a pretty good sense of how close a lineup will be to what the LAT likes, and as I looked at this Red Sox lineup, it looked close to optimal. I figured the LAT would flip Black Swihart and Jackie Bradley, Jr. at the bottom and it might flip Mookie Betts and Dustin Pedroia at the top. I also thought Xander Bogaerts was a good choice for the third hole, a good but not great hitter.
Indeed, it was close. The LAT likes Bradley eighth, and it indeed flipped Pedroia and and Betts. The bit of a surprise was that it bats Swihart third and Bogaerts ninth, getting the better projected OBP as the secondary lead-off hitter. In reality, catchers should probably bat lower in the order to give them more rest. Note that the best Red Sox order is projected to score 4.88 runs per game, just like Texas, but with better optimization, the projected lineup for the Red Sox scored 0.02 runs more per game.
Boston has a very nice mix of young and old players, with three still approaching their primes. That gives the offense a good bit of upside.
You can follow the data for the series in this Google spreadsheet.
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Previous posts in this series:
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