American League Lineup Analysis
After just going over the National League lineups, it’s time for the American league. Again, my analysis was to focus on the lineups used, not manager speak.
Note: This article was submitted late on Wednesday for editing so the second Oakland-Seattle lineups were not available to analyze.
Baltimore
- The Orioles will have Cedric Mullins II and Jonathan Villar in the top two spots. The other spots are a mess of unrosterable players.
Boston
- With Devers hitting a .975 OPS in Spring Training, the Red Sox have been batting him 2nd or 3rd in the lineup. The rest of the lineup seems similar to last season.
Cleveland
- With Francisco Lindor out, there is quite a bit of Hanley Ramirez (.621 Spring Training OPS) near the lineup’s top couple spots.
- Kevin Plawecki has been consistently batting 5th or 6th. He could be a sneaky catcher buy.
Chicago
- Leury Garcia (.900 Spring Training OPS) has been leading off for the White Sox with Yoan Moncada batting second and Jose Abreu third.
- Weirdly, James McCann has been batting 5th.
- Tim Anderson is getting buried in the lineup’s last couple spots.
Detroit
- The top-four spots for the Tigers are Josh Harrison, Nicholas Castellanos, Miguel Cabrera, and Jeimer Candelario. They are the only four mix-league relevant hitters besides John Hicks.
Houston
- The Astros lineup is stacked and seems to be trending towards an order of George Springer, Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Michael Brantley, Carlos Correa, and Yuli Gurriel for the top six spots.
Kansas City
- Another team trending towards a set lineup of Whit Merrifield, Adalberto Mondesi, Alex Gordon, Jorge Soler, and Ryan O’Hearn/Hunter Dozier (first base platoon).
- Billy Hamilton seems to be batting 9th.
Minnesota
- The only consistencies seem to Max Kepler leading off, Nelson Cruz batting third, and Eddie Rosario as the cleanup hitter.
New York
You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.
- With Aaron Hicks missing some time, Brett Gardner has been leading off with Aaron Judge batting second and Giancarlo Stanton batting third. The rest of the lineup never seems to be the same.
Oakland
- With the A’s, a regular season lineup exists against a lefty:
- Some intriguing takes such as Stephen Piscotty batting 3rd, Chad Pinder batting 5th, Jurickson Profar batting 7th, and no Robbie Grossman.
Orange County
- There are some unknows for sure with Justin Upton not being available but on Tuesday he led off. Check up on it in a few days to see any consistency emerges.
Seattle
- Besides Oakland, the Mariners have given everyone a peek under the curtain sans Mallex Smith lineup.
- I’m not really surprised by anything.
- Possibly Gordon and hold the leadoff spot this year.
Tampa
- I hate figuring out the Rays this year is no different. Only Tommy Pham is set in the #2 spot.
Texas
- The Rangers seem to be settling in on a Joey Gallo-less lineup of Shin-Soo Choo, Rougned Odor, Elvis Andrus, Nomar Mazara, Asdrubal Cabrera, and Ronald Guzman with Delino DeShields battling 9th.
Toronto
- The Blue Jays seem to only have Teoscar Hernandez batting 3rd and Justin Smoak set as the cleanup hitter.
Every other spot seems completely random with even Dalton Pompey leading off a few games.
Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.
For the A’s Matt Olson is now out with hamate surgery for about 7 weeks. Mark Canha is expected to take his slot and play first. You’ll see more Grossman because the A’s lost their only LH hitter. They might call up Fowler for another lefty bat.
Minnesota – Polanco will bat second. He’ll get pitches to hit with Cruz behind him.
What’s good about managers now is lineup spots don’t matter as much as in the past. If a guy is a hitter and buried in the lineup eventually the front office or manager will notice and move them up whereas in the past they might have stayed buried. Buy talent. Only spot this matters is some borderline speed guys like a Tim Anderson and that’s only because SB are down so much around the league.
*Unless Mike Scioscia gets another managing gig and decides to give the rotting carcass of a future HOF’er 1,100+ PA in the #3/#4/#5 spots for two solid years.
Haven’t checked Orange County Angels games in @ a week, but then it looked to me like the 39-year-old (coughcough) Ancient Albert was again batting in the middle of the order. I think that’s been on Artie rather than Scioscia the last few years.
Have you seen the Indians projected opening day lineup? I cannot stop from laughing. I don’t get why anyone expects this team to run away with the division:
Martin – average
Bauers – average to below
Hanley – lol
Santana- average
Naquin – below
Miller – below
Perez – below
moroff- fringe 5!
stamets- who?
That team really, really sucks. I get that losing your 2 best players to injury, and the 3 next best to free agency isn’t going to help anyone, but I feel like people are massively overrating that team. They are going to compete in their division. But I don’t think they are a lock. Kluber lost many a tick at the end of last season and the results this spring look like more ticks lost. Bauer can’t not give up HRs, ever. Carrasco and Clevinger are good pitchers, but as a fantasy baseballer they are pretty hard fades at current adp. Writing this just convinced me to drop $500 on indians not winning division. Got good odds. Indians were 2/9!
Thanks for sharing. I found a lot of interesting information here. A really good post, very thankful and hopeful that you will write many more posts like this one.