Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Team Offense, Pittsburgh Pirates

The 2018 series on team offense continues with the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates finished twenty eighth in the major leagues and thirteenth in the National League in 2017 with 4.12 runs scored per game.

I am using RotoChamp as a source of default lineups. That Clint Hurdle 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 Pirates pitchers in 2017. That information produces the following results (Runs per game):

Best lineup: 4.41
Probable lineup: 4.15
Worst lineup: 3.84
Regressed lineup: 4.05

The LAT could not be in more disagreement with a default lineup. The LAT wants the 3-4 hitters, Starling Marte and Josh Bell batting one two, since they are the best hitters on the team. It wants Corey Dickerson‘s power in the cleanup slot. It wants Francisco Cervelli‘s OBP in the ninth slot.

Sometimes the LAT and the default line disagree, and it’s not a big deal. The Pirates, with a poorly constructed lineup, and leaving 30 to 40 runs on the table. In a year in which they are not expected to play well, four wins could make a big difference between being decent (70 wins) and terrible (66 wins). I suppose if you wanted to accuse a team of tanking, poor lineup construction like this might be a piece of evidence.

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Previous posts in this series:



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