The 2018 series on team offense continues with the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Diamondbacks finished eighth in the major leagues and fourth in the National League in 2017 with 5.01 runs scored per game.
I am using RotoChamp as a source of default lineups. That Torey Lovullo order is plugged into the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) using Musings Marcels as the batter projections. For the pitchers slot, I used the actual values produced by the Diamondbacks pitchers in 2017. That information produces the following results (Runs per game):
Best lineup: 4.87
Probable lineup: 4.69
Worst lineup: 4.33
Regressed lineup: 4.40
I thought the default Arizona lineup was pretty good. If Alex Avila played something other than catcher, he would lead off. The LAT handles these players differently than what I expected. I assumed it would take the same bottom three, Ketel Marte, Nick Ahmed, and the Pitcher and arrange them Ahmed, Pitchers, Marte. That would take advantage of Marte’s projected .331 OBP in front of Goldschmidt. The LAT unwittingly solves the catcher lead-off problem by batting Avila ninth in front of Paul Goldschmidt in the lead-off slot. It’s brilliant.
Goldschmidt projects to a .401 OBP, the highest on the team by a wide margin. He also projects to a .418 slugging percentage, also quite high for the team. Batting him lead-off gives the best player on the team about 20 more plate appearances during the season, but having him get come to the plate more often also expands the offensive context for the rest of the team, so everyone bats more. The trade-off is that he doesn’t get to use his power to drive in as many runs.
By batting Avila ninth, instead of an okay OBP player like Marte, Goldschmidt will have chances to bat with men on base. In addition, it keeps a catcher’s legs fresh by limiting his plate appearances in a game. For this group of batters, it’s a great lineup.
You can follow the data for the series in this Google spreadsheet.
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Previous posts in this series:
- Introduction
- Houston Astros
- New York Yankees
- Colorado Rockies
- Chicago Cubs
- Washington Nationals
- Cleveland Indians
- Minnesota Twins
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