Just Don't Bat Izturis Fourth

David Pinto over at BaseballMusings has a pre-season project going where he takes the projected starting line-up for each team and inputs the players’ Marcel predicted stats (OBP & SLG) into his line-up analysis tool, which gives the number of runs per game the line-up should score, as well as the best and worst configurations using those players.

He has the O’s probable line-up as

Brian Roberts
Melvin Mora
Nick Markakis
Aubrey Huff
Adam Jones
Luke Scott
Gregg Zaun
Cesar Izturis
Felix Pie

scoring 4.93 runs per game, which is equivalent to 799 runs for the season.

Putting in my projections and a line-up of

Brian Roberts
Nick Markakis
Melvin Mora
Aubrey Huff
Luke Scott
Adam Jones
Gregg Zaun
Felix Pie
Cesar Izturis

results in 5.07 runs per game. Dropping Zaun from 7th to 9th would up it to 5.10 runs per game (since his solid OBP skills would be well utilized ahead of the top of the order). That’s 821 and 826 runs, respectively.

The line-up I’ve heard Dave Trembley kicking around

Brian Roberts
Adam Jones
Nick Markakis
Aubrey Huff
Melvin Mora
Luke Scott
Gregg Zaun
Felix Pie
Cesar Izturis

would be 5.02 runs per game, or 813 runs on the season.

Now lets throw Matt Wieters in there instead of Zaun:

Brian Roberts
Nick Markakis
Melvin Mora
Aubrey Huff
Luke Scott
Adam Jones
Matt Wieters
Felix Pie
Cesar Izturis

That’s an increase to 5.223 runs per game (846 for the season) and would be even higher if Wieters was hitting higher in the line-up.

Back to Pinto:

“The Orioles may hold the record for actual lineup closest to the ideal lineup in terms of run production. If you look at the Lineup Analysis link above, the bottom lineup in the top 20 matches the Orioles lineup in five spots. One change that makes sense is moving Luke Scott ahead of Adam Jones. Jones, however, is still young, so I can believe he might exceed this projection, and that would certainly give the Orioles a boost.
Like last season, this is a good offensive team. The bottom of the lineup isn't great, but they do have enough near the top put some runs on the board. They need to find pitching in order to compete.”

They’re working on it David, they’re working on it.