The 2022 series on team offense continues with the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles finished twenty sixth in the majors and fourteenth in the American League in 2021 with 4.07 runs scored per game.

This season I am using FanGraphs Roster Resource Depth Charts* as the source of default lineups. That Brandon Hyde batting order is plugged into the Lineup Analysis Tool (LAT) using Musings Marcels as the batter projections.   That information produces the following results (Runs per game):

• Best lineup: 4.88
• Probable lineup: 4.81
• Worst lineup: 4.58
• Regressed lineup: 4.48

The dream team of Mike Elias and Sig Mejdal leads the Orioles front office for the fourth season. In their time, the Orioles own a 131-253 record, .341, the worst record in the majors by far. (The Tigers are next at .386.) When does the progress appear?

This lineup looks like it might be an improvement. The order bunches together three of their better hitters at the top of the order, and three poor hitters at the bottom of the order. Seven of the nine starters play in their prime years, so they are likely to have good seasons. There is a wild card in Ramon Urias, who had a long minor league career and finds himself a sophomore at seasonal age 28. Note the Musings Marcels projection for him tends to be higher than the ones at FanGraphs, although he has a good minor league history of getting on base. I suspect the Orioles believe that projection is high, also, otherwise they might bat him higher in the order.

So the team may improve, but this still is not the team Baltimore will be. When we start seeing the lineup dominated with pre-prime players, like we recently saw in Toronto, then we’ll know better days are on the way. This may be a better placeholder offense, but there is nothing exciting here.

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

Previous posts in this series:

• Introduction
• Houston Astros
• Tampa Bay Rays
• Toronto Blue Jays
• Los Angeles Dodgers
• Boston Red Sox
• San Francisco Giants
• Chicago White Sox
• Atlanta Braves
• Colorado Rockies
• Oakland Athletics
• Philadelphia Phillies
• Minnesota Twins
• San Diego Padres
• Washington Nationals
• Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
• Cleveland Guardians
• New York Yankees
• St. Louis Cardinals
• Chicago Cubs
• Seattle Mariners
• Detroit Tigers
• Kansas City Royals
• Arizona Diamondbacks

*This is the best version of this information I’ve seen, with everything you might want to know on one page.