Projecting Tampa’s Lineup

Every week, I try to go through each team’s lineups and when I get to the Rays, I just want to quit. It allows a mess and there needs to be a reason behind the actions. My plan was to just dig in until I found a better answer than a shrug. I feel somewhat confident with my answer, but now need to find and track starters with reverse platoon splits.

I’m going to start with these two guidelines.

1. I ignored the catchers.
2. The following rules can completely go out the window if/when injuries occur. There are always exceptions but most of the ones I found involved an injured player.

With those disclaimers out of the way, here is how the lefty lineup is determined.

Lineup Versus Left-Handed Starters

This one is pretty much these eight hitters:

1. Randy Arozarena
2. Wander Franco
3. Yandy Díaz
4. Harold Ramirez
5. Taylor Walls
6. Kevin Kiermaier
7. Manuel Margot
8. Brandon Lowe (Isaac Paredes)

If anyone sits, it’ll usually be one of those last three. Brett Phillips snuck his way into two lineups even though he’s left-handed. The two opposing starters, Hyun Jin Ryu 류현진 and Eduardo Rodriguez, have performed better against righties than lefties. Ryu has a career .294 vs wOBA against righties and a .302 vs wOBA against lefties. For Rodriguez, it’s a .305 vs wOBA against righties and a .335 vs wOBA against lefties.

The key factor to take into account is that it seems like Tampa doesn’t just use standard handedness splits. They have determined if the opposing pitcher has a reverse-handedness platoon split.

I reached out to Dan Szymborski and Derek Carty and asked them about pitchers reaching a projectable reverse split when creating their projection systems (ZiPS and THE BAT). Both said that it’s nearly impossible for hitters to achieve a reverse split, it’s fairly common for pitchers.

While Dan and Derek know the reverse splits exist, the projections aren’t publicly available, just each pitcher’s historic differences. One possible way to find such pitchers is to check when Tampa deviates from the normal handedness splits.

Lineup Versus Right-Handed Starters

First, these five are always in the lineup against righties.

1. Randy Arozarena
2. Wander Franco
3. Manuel Margot
4. Brandon Lowe
5. Ji-Man Choi

There are no real surprises in that list. Two three-player groupings will finish the lineup. If the starter doesn’t have a reverse handedness split, the following three players start.

1. Taylor Walls
2. Kevin Kiermaier
3. Brett Phillips

If the starter does have a reverse handedness split, it’s one of the following three players in the lineup.

1. Yandy Díaz
2. Harold Ramirez
3. Josh Lowe/Vidal Bruján

That last spot seems to be the most fluid and one of the first three could start instead.

I expected the process and result to be a little muddier, but I like how the results ended up. The next step to use the above information to determine upcoming playing time.