ALCS Starting Lineups

From the beginning of my baseball statistics analyzing career, I have been compiling a document containing all the starting lineups and rotations of all 30 teams, complete with fantasy points and points per game. With only four teams left and none of them set to be eliminated before tonight, I thought now might be a good time to post the latest editions of these teams' lists. The offensive portions of my lineups consist of the starting nine batters (I include a DH in each league just for the sake of consistency), listed in an approximated batting order, and any bench contributor with more than 200 AB. Starting pitchers need at least 10 games started (and more games started than entered in relief) and at least 60 innings pitched, while relievers have no innings minimum or limit, but they must not have started more than five games or 10% of their appearances. I added a bonus name below the relievers with the intention of featuring the more versatile P position, which I use to note the decreasingly popular but ever important "swing man" or "spot starter." Pitchers are listed in decreasing order of innings pitched.

The Red Sox go first because they just took a lead in the series with last night's nailbiter.

With David Ortiz completely oblivious that baseball players generally slow down at age 37, Dustin Pedroia still excellent on his slow decline from dominant, and Jacoby Ellsbury being just healthy enough, the Sox have an unprecedented three 2,000-pointers in their starting lineup (only the Reds equalled that amount with Joey Votto, Jay Bruce, and Shin-Soo Choo). That is to be expected from a team that led the league in runs scored. I talked about Mike Napoli in my post about 2014 free agents (along with Jarrod Satlalamacchia and Stephen Drew), but suffice it to say he was a welcome source of power and an even more welcome source of beard. The only player in this lineup to be part of a midseason trade (denoted by the *) was slick fielding infielder Jose Iglesias who ironically was dealt to Boston's ALCS opponents to help deal with the hole left by Jhonny Peralta's steroid suspension.

In contrast to the starting lineup, this pitching staff didn't have a single player crack 2,000 points, but it is solid 1-4, now that trade acquisition Jake Peavy (acquired in the Jose Iglesias deal as evidenced by the ^) made Felix Doubront and Ryan Dempster expendable. Looking at the discrepancy between Clay Buchholz's innings total (he pitched the fewest among their five regular starters), point total, and points per game average (the most among any player in all of baseball), it's not hard to arrive at the narrative of a red hot start followed by a long injury, and we'll see if he can regain some of that early-season dominance against another hot starter Max Scherzer in tomorrow's game, but more about him later. Koji Uehara performed well after being thrust into the closer's role following injuries to Andrew Bailey, who played enough to be relevant, and Joel Hanrahan, who didn't.

Now on to the Tigers, who might have just played their last games at home in 2013.

The two numbers that stand out are the insane, out of this world stats of #3 hitter Miguel Cabrera and staff ace Max Scherzer, who were in fact the number two and three scoring players in all of baseball behind tomorrow's starter for the Dodgers in the NLCS, Clayton Kershaw. Cabrera, who is logically baseball's top-scoring hitter, drove in Detroit's first run tonight (his 4th RBI of the series) in the 5th inning against Boston's most consistent pitcher Jon Lester, after showing us again that his lower half is not 100% by getting thrown out easily at the plate four innings earlier. Even though many of Prince Fielder's primary fantasy stats are down from last year, his 2,000+ points of overall production place him just outside the top five at 1B, a traditionally very deep position. On the other end of the batting spectrum we have Alex Avila who hasn't been able to follow up on his lone All-Star season in 2011 (his time spent on the DL accounts for the presence of offseason acquisition Brayan Pena on the bench).

Also, Andy Dirks fell about 300 points short of a league average LF, which explains manager Jim Leyland's urge to have Jhonny Peralta learn how to play the position in the instructional leagues while he was suspended. Speaking of Jim Leyland, if you've been paying attention to the recent Tigers lineup, you'll notice that he has moved Austin Jackson, his leadoff hitter all year, down to the 8th spot in the order, and it's apparently helped with his confidence, as he's gotten two hits in each of the last two games. I guess it's those kinds of decisions decisions like that have allowed Leyland to manage major league baseball teams for 22 years.

The arrangement of these pitchers shows that Justin Verlander was as durable as ever, racking up the most innings on the staff, despite the fact that he was not nearly the pitcher he was in the last couple of years. Scherzer indeed exceeded Verlander's 2012 performance, losing exactly one game before September, while free agent re-signee Anibal Sanchez also exceeded what Scherzer did last year, leading the league in ERA, making this one of the most formidable rotations in the business right now. Like Uehara, Joaquin Benoit also blossomed into a very serviceable, if below-average, closer after the Bruce Rondon experiment failed miserably (the two top projected relievers according to Sports Illustrated combined managed less than 5x Benoit's output: 245 for Rondon, 70 for Phil Coke).

Next time I'll take a look at the lineups of the NLCS participants, hopefully before one of them moves on to the next round.