The 2015 series on team offense continues with the Kansas City Royals. The Royals finished fourteenth in the majors and ninth in the the American League in 2014 with 4.02 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 USA Today lineup as it looks much closer to what the Royals are using in spring training. That Ned Yost lineup is plugged into the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) using Musings Marcels as the batter projections. That information produces the following results:
Best lineup: 4.39 runs per game
Probable lineup: 4.35
Worst lineup: 4.20
Regressed lineup: 4.07
I like that the Royals take advantage of Alex Gordon‘s OBP by batting him second. The LAT does put Alcides Escobar in front of Gordon, but 9-1 instead of 1-2. The LAT and the Royals agree on three slots. Both have Lorenzo Cain batting third, Kendrys Morales batting sixth, and Mike Moustakas batting eighth. The main difference between Yost and the LAT is where to bat Alex Rios, the LAT liking him higher in the order.
The Royals do have a number of okay OBP, low slugging players, so most reasonable lineups work well. A number of hitters can be easily moved around without hurting the offense much, which means the manager can make hitters happy by batting them where they feel comfortable. Don’t look for a huge improvement in run scoring this season.
You can follow the data for the series in this Google spreadsheet.
Please consider donating to the Baseball Musings Pledge Drive.
Previous posts in this series: