The 2017 series on team offense continues with the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Diamondbacks finished fifth in the National League and eleventh in the majors in 2016 with 4.64 runs scored per game.
I am using RotoChamp as a source of default lineups. That Torey Lovullo order is plugged into the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) using Musings Marcels as the batter projections. For the pitchers, slot, I used the actual values for the Diamondbacks in 2016. That information produces the following results (Runs per game):
Best lineup: 4.69
Probable lineup: 4.45
Worst lineup: 4.07
Regressed lineup: 4.21
The 0.62 R/G spread between the best and worst lineups is the largest seen so far in the study. That means there is plenty of room for the new manager to make errors. While the default order appears to be very different from the optimum order, Lovullo gets the groupings right by threes. The manager and the LAT agree on the first three batters, but not the order. They agree on the four through six batters, but not the order, and they agree on the seven through nine hitters, but not the order. A.J. Pollack is the only player the two agree on, both have him batting second.
Overall, getting the grouping right gets Lovullo pretty far toward the optimum order. Lovullo is open to his pitchers batting eighth:
“I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been reading up on it. I’ve been looking at some of the data,” he said. “I don’t have a chase mentality. My mentality is more like, let’s just keep plowing forward and I know that if the pitcher hits eighth that some of the numbers show you got to do it all year. It might be more productive. I don’t know. I do know this: we have a very strong group of hitting pitchers, so that might change our equation.”
Just flipping Chris Owings and the pitchers brings the default lineup up to 4.57 runs per game, which would be good for an extra win over the full season.
Lovullo has a reputation of being a very smart tactician, so I can’t wait to see what he does with this offense.
You can follow the data for the series in this Google spreadsheet.
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Previous posts in this series:
Lots of HS coaches with whom I have coached and against whom I have coached have always batted the worst hitter 8th, dating back to the early 80s (and I am sure that we didn’t invent that either. Of course substitution rules are different in HS, but the premise of a better hitter 9th to start setting the table seemed common sense even in the pre computer days (apologies to Steve Boros). I am sure someone could run a simulation with game results from past seasons and lineups, and then flip the 8th/9th hitters and see what the results might be. If this has been done, it would be interesting to see the results. Obviously in reality the mere flipping of results would not be totally accurate as there are so many variables involved..pitch selection, relief pitchers now brought in, or not etc etc..but still it seems that given a large enough sample size some idea might be derived from this..