The 2015 series on team offense continues with the Oakland Athletics. The Athletics finished fourth in the majors and third in the the American League in 2014 with 4.50 runs scored per game.

I could not find updated lineups at CBSSports.com, so I am going to use a combination of RotoChamp and USA Today. In this case, I’m going with the lineup that contains Sam Fuld, since the MLB.com depth chart shows Fuld higher than Craig Gentry. That Bob Melvin lineup is plugged into the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) using Musings Marcels as the batter projections. That information produces the following results:

Best lineup: 4.52
Probable lineup: 4.47
Worst lineup: 4.30
Regressed lineup: 4.16

The projections for the players in this lineup are rather poor. No players appears to be headed for a high slugging percentage, and only Ben Zobrist and Billy Butler look to post very good OBPs. Oakland may be banking on Butler and Brett Lawrie improving their power over last season, and maybe Ike Davis reaching his potential. They’ll need all that if they are going to reach their 2014 scoring level.

One thing that fascinates me about this lineup is that the LAT did not put the worst hitter in the eighth slot. The tool agrees with Marcus Semien batting eighth and Sam Fuld batting ninth, despite Semien projecting to be a better hitter. I suspect his higher power is a little more useful in the eighth slot. I can see where Bob Melvin could have a tough time making out the order, since there are no traditional leadoff type hitters and no traditional middle of the order hitters. The good news is that there is very little difference between the best and worst lineups, so Melvin can’t really make a mistake.

You can follow the data for the series in this Google spreadsheet.

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Previous posts in this series:

• Introduction
• Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
• Detroit Tigers
• Colorado Rockies