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
I decided to dive into the latest Spring Training lineups to see if any possible trends are emerging. Today, I’ll start with the National League.
Note: I just looked through the lineups and didn’t read up on each team. There is probably a good chance the manager has stated a different plan during the season.
Arizona
It is projection churning season and today, I’m going to investigate hitters in the top-200 who have the largest variation in projected plate appearances. I’m trying to see who seems off and any adjustments I’d make to their projections.
Normally, I just use a plate appearance average of several unique sources for my projections. I don’t have time to adjust each player. For now, I’m using five sources who constantly update their projected playing time. One is FanGraphs but I’m not going to reveal the other four as I don’t want to debate their merits. More importantly, it’s tough to know for sure who is wrong and who is right. In most instances, a reasonable explanation can be drawn for any total. Besides the players with the larger variation, I’ve included my top-300 hitters at the article’s end with their plate appearance differences.
Note: I ignored catchers and will look at them in detail at a later date.
Eloy Jimenez
Range: 336
Standard Deviation: 238
Average: 446
I’m not surprised with Jimenez being divisive. I sort of expected projections to have him being promoted either in mid-April (extra year of service) or early June (miss July two cutoff). One source was extremely low with a sub-300 value increasing the range. For me, I’d split the possible callup dates and go with a 525 plate appearance total and adjust it as more news becomes available.
The 2018 season opened my eyes to the risk of young players losing playing time because of massive platoon splits. Usually, it’s the established major league veterans like Matt Adams who get platooned. Manual Margot was such a player who usually led off against lefties but was dropped in the batting order or even to the bench against righties. Those lost plate appearances can add up over the course of a season whittling away a hitter’s value. Today, I’m going focus the most talented hitters who are most like to be platooned.
For Tanner’s and my book, The Process, Steamer projections were kind enough to include every hitter’s projected OPS versus right and left-handed pitchers. From the book’s research, we found teams have historically started platooning hitters when one side of the platoon’s OPS drops below .650 and definitely at .600. Here are some the hitters who may end up in a platoon situation if their team decides to go that route. Besides the risk of sitting out games, some teams move these players up and down the lineup based platoon differences. I’m likely going to give some of these hitters a playing time adjustment.
Note: The projected platoon OPS are league and ballpark neutral and may seem off compared to the current projected OPS.
Taking a look at the recent trends in the Senior Circuit lineups:
(Check out Jeff’s work on the AL here)
Braves
Brewers
Cardinals
Angels
Braves
Brewers
With many hittes returning from the DL after the All-Star break, I decided to examine American League lineups today and the National League ones tomorrow.
Angels
Astros
Athletics
Blue Jays