The series on team offense continues with the Oakland Athletics. The A’s finished twenty first in the majors and twelfth in the American League in offense last season, scoring 3.98 runs per game.

Manny Ramirez hopes to be driving in Coco Crisp later this season. Photo: John Cordes/Icon SMI

The CBSSportsline probable batting order is the one manager Bob Melvin is likely to write up this season. The OBP and slugging percentage used come from the Marcel the Monkey forecast system. Plugging those numbers in the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) produces the following results:

• Best lineup: 4.47 runs per game
• Probable lineup: 4.44 runs per game
• Worst lineup: 4.27 runs per game
• Regressed lineup: 4.17 runs per game

Melvin pretty much nails the lineup, as the LAT agrees on the 7-8-9-1 turnaround, and with the players used on the 1-4 and 5-9 split. Note, however, since Oakland has a number of interchangeable parts, there is a very small range between the best and worst lineups. In other words, it would be difficult for Bob to be very far off from the ideal with any lineup. Still, a very nice job.

In the case of Yoenis Cespedes, the Marcel the Monkey projections post him as a league average player. If instead, the PECOTA weighted mean projection of .313 OBP/.479 Slugging is used, Cespedes moves up to fourth in the batting order, switching places with Josh Reddick.

Finally, if you use the PECOTA projection for Cepedes and substitute Manny Ramirez for Josh Reddick (batting third), the runs per game for the Athletics goes up to 4.59 from 4.44. That would be about 17 extra runs for 112 games over the pure Marcel lineup. Oakland should score more this season, although lately batters seem to go to Oakland to wither. The days of picking up good hitters off the scrap heap seem to have passed.

You can see the results of all the teams on this Google spreadsheet as the series progresses.

Previous articles in this series:

• Explanation
• Boston Red Sox
• New York Yankees
• Texas Rangers
• Detroit Tigers
• St. Louis Cardinals
• Toronto Blue Jays
• Colorado Rockies
• Cincinnati Reds
• Arizona Diamondbacks
• Kansas City Royals
• Milwaukee Brewers
• New York Mets
• Philadelphia Phillies
• Baltimore Orioles
• Tampa Bay Rays
• Cleveland Indians
• Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
• Chicago White Sox
• Chicago Cubs
• Los Angeles Dodgers

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