The 2016 series on team offense continues with the Washington Nationals. The Nationals finished tenth in the majors and third in the National League in 2015 with 4.34 runs scored per game.
Once again I am using a combination of RotoChamp and USA Today as a source of default lineups. There are minor differences between the two projected lineups, so I’m going with RotoChamp since it has the catcher in the traditional eighth hole. That Dusty Baker lineup is plugged into the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) using Musings Marcels as the batter projections. For the pitchers, I used the actual results for the 2015 Nationals pitchers as hitters. That information produces the following results (Runs per game):
Best lineup: 4.60
Probable lineup: 4.40
Worst lineup: 4.00
Regressed lineup: 4.13
Baker is a traditionalist when it comes to lineups, so he likely won’t go for something as radical as batting Bryce Harper lead-off and the pitcher eighth. It will be interesting to see where Jayson Werth winds up batting. His Marcel projection of a .353 OBP and a .435 slugging percentage would indicate he would be better in one of the top two slots than batting sixth. Werth proved to be injury prone over his Nationals career. That makes batting higher because:
- The people likely to replace him probably won’t get on base as well.
- Changing the batting order to adjust for a Werth injury moves too many people around.
Point one is important even if Werth doesn’t get injured, because one way to keep him healthy is to rest him often. Point two comes into play because players like to know their roles on a team. They don’t want to be a number six hitter one day and a lead-off man the next, because to them it’s a very different mindset at the plate. With Werth batting sixth, tinkering with the bottom of the order isn’t going to make a big difference is Werth is out.
I see the projections of Anthony Rendon and Harper as floors, not ceilings. Both are capable of hitting for more power, and if they do Washington will hold as one of the top run-scoring teams in the league.
You can follow the data for the series in this Google spreadsheet.
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Previous posts in this series:
- Introduction
- Toronto Blue Jays
- New York Yankees
- Texas Rangers
- Boston Red Sox
- Colorado Rockies
- Houston Astros
- Kansas City Royals
- Arizona Diamondbacks
- Pittsburgh Pirates
- Baltimore Orioles
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