March 09, 2009
Team Offense, New York Yankees
The series on team offense continues with the New York Yankees. I plug the probable lineup from CBSSportsLine into the Lineup Analysis Tool, and fill in the numbers with Marcel the Monkey projections. The results:
- Best lineup: 5.72 runs per game
- Probable lineup: 5.64 runs per game
- Worst lineup: 5.42 runs per game
- Regressed lineup: 5.05 runs per game
The Yankees scored 4.87 runs per game in 2008.
Brett Gardner is having a better spring than Melky Cabrera, but Melky projects slightly better for the regular season so substituting Gardner into the lineup makes little difference. We do want to see what happens with Cody Ransom, however, since A-Rod will miss the start of 2009.
Ransom's projection is pretty good, .351 OBA, .450 slugging. Most teams would be happy to get that from a third baseman. The Yankees best lineup drops to 5.52 runs per game with Cody, and with him batting sixth it would be 5.44. So the Yankees would drop 0.2 runs per game with Ransom instead of Rodriguez, but they would still score a high number of runs per game.
The real danger to the Yankees, however, is that Rodriguez is the start of the injuries, not the end. Damon, Jeter, Posada and Matsui are all older players projected to put up good stats. Injuries to any or all will put the Yankees closer to their 2008 level. Swisher gives them a little depth in the outfield, so they could probably handle one outfielder and one infielder out at the same time.
So this is a high scoring team if they can stay healthy. With a likely improved pitching staff, anything above five runs per game should put them in an excellent position to make the playoffs.
Other teams in this series:
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David, I tend to trust the projections... but Ransom's OBA projection doesn't pass the instant-WTF?! test.
http://minors.baseball-reference.com/players.cgi?pid=11890
.394 in 36 games in the PCL in 2004, when he was 28. Next best above low-A is .345, again in the PCL, in 2006. So now he's in his age-33 year, in the majors, and he's gonna on-base .351? No.
I'd guess the system is too-heavily weighting his partial major-league seasons in 2007/2008 (97 PA total) where he somehow got to .400+ in the majors while not cracking .340 in over 900 PA in the minors. That would seem to be a rather significant systemic flaw.
In his minor league career, he has a .322 OBA. Save for a fluke, he's not gonna crack .300 in the majors in any significant playing time. It would be difficult for a versatile infielder with power *not* to become a full-timer in the majors by age 33 if he could get on base worth a damn, wouldn't it?
I tend to agree with you that the system ranks Ransom too high. However, Marcel is a good system, and Ransom's playing time is so low that pretty much anything can happen. I don't have the data in front of me, but I'd guess that Marcel will rate the probability of that projection being correct as pretty low.
Ransom's projections are unfortunately ridiculous.
I'm ashamed to admit that I've never spent any time on the Marcel system. Didn't know they rate the correct-projection probabilities. Cool.
Translation: I don't know what I'm talking about. Oh, except about Ransom not topping a .300 OBA. Take that to the bank.
