Tinkering With The 2011 Pittsburgh Pirates Lineup

We took the 2011 ZiPS and then headed to Baseball Musings.  We dropped in the expected OBA and SLG from the ZiPS projections and added Maholm’s stats in the typical nine spot in the order to get a rough idea of how many runs we might expect from the 2011 Pittsburgh Pirates offense. 

Ugh.

Before you bash everything about this system, remember the tool takes quite a few important things out of the mix such as the ability to steal bases, how well a player bunts, runs the bases, so in other words its simply a tool.   Last season this system failed to forecast the Mariners troubles, but did an excellent job projecting the success of the Braves.

So have some fun with it when you have a moment.  We did.

We added Diaz and the lineup maxed at 4.164.  Added Pearce and it didn’t fare much better of course.

For those that buy into such numbers, using the tool in the manner we did, does add up to more runs scored by the Pirates than last season.

If you want to learn more about optimizing the Bucs lineup check out these two links:

Clipped from: www.insidethebook.com (share this clip)

Clipped from: www.beyondtheboxscore.com (share this clip)

Let’s see, we could estimate that the maximum runs the Pirates will be forecasted to score would roughly be, one moment:

162 games * 4.192 = 679 runs

Thats an improvement over 2010 when the Bucs scored just 3.62!   You’ve been warned, the 2011 Pirates will look like an offensive juggernaut when compared to the 2010 version.  Now if the Pirates only we had the Philadelphia Phillies rotation.

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