March 22, 2013

Team Offense, San Francisco Giants

The series on team offense continues with the San Francisco Giants. The Giants finished for twelfth in the majors and sixth in the National League in 2012 with 4.43 runs scored per game.

The CBSSports.com projected lineup that Bruce Bochy may use is plugged into the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) using Musings Marcels as the batter projections. For the pitchers, I used the team results from 2012. That information produces the following results:

  • Best lineup: 4.59
  • Probable lineup: 4.37
  • Worst lineup: 4.03
  • Regressed lineup: 4.15

As in the previous post about the Tigers, the LAT wants to put the two big power hitters 1-2 in the lineup, since Buster Posey and Pablo Sandoval also do a good job of getting on base. If the Giants want to stick with a more traditional lineup, however, I might go with Hunter Pence or Gregor Blanco in the lead-off slot.

Pablo Sandoval

When Pablo Sandoval slides, fielders get out of the way. Photo: Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports

This offense looks a bit better than I thought. While no one but Posey posts a great OBP, only Brandon Crawford projects to be an out machine. Bochy can pretty much move the players around Posey and Sandoval any way he wants and still come up with a pretty good batting order. As long as Buster stays healthy, the team should score enough runs to win with the excellent pitching staff on the mound.

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

Previous posts in the series:

If you enjoy this series, please consider donating the the Baseball Musings Pledge Drive.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *