Monday, March 11, 2019

Team Offense, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

The 2019 series on team offense continues with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The Angels finished fifteenth in the majors and eighth in the American League in 2018 with 4.45 runs scored per game. That was also the major league average.

I am using RotoChamp as a source of default lineups. That Brad Ausmus 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: 5.07
  • Probable lineup: 4.97
  • Worst lineup: 4.67
  • Regressed lineup: 4.58

The lineup is reasonable, and captures 75% of the optimum. Three individuals strike me as interesting, however.

I’m surprised to see Kole Calhoun in the lead-off slot, and the LAT tends to put him in the lower third of the order. The fact that the Angels would try him there leads me to believe that they project him with a much higher OBP. In fact, that may be based on him posting a higher rate in the second half of the 2018 season. We will see.

Mike Trout‘s projection is unbelievable, .305/.434/.587. I think all the teams are not spending on free agents now for the privilege of playing Trout $60 million a year at some point.

At the other end, Albert Pujols‘s number are dreadful. For most of his career he was an on-base machine, but two sub .300 years gives him a .294 OBP projection for his age 39 season.

The good news is that even with Pujols, the Angels project to score much more than they did in 2018. If Shohei Ohtani heals and replace Pujols as DH, the Angels offense should be better still. This is looking like a very good offense.

You can follow the data for the series in this Google spreadsheet. If you like this series, consider a donation to the Baseball Musings Pledge Drive.

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