Just how realistic is the offense's start?

[JL21]

Let's take a quick and dirty comparison of the offense's OPS+ for their career, their OPS+ from last year, and their OPS+ this season.

In short, I'm going to illustrate that even though the offense is supposed to be bad to mediocre this year, there's not a chance they'll continue to perform this poorly, even if there's an injury to anyone besides Albert.

PLAYER: career OPS+/'06 OPS+/'07 OPS+
Albert: 170/ 180/ 97
Rolen: 129/ 127/ 57
Edmonds: 136/ 111/ 39
Kennedy: 91/ 90/ 38
Eckstein: 87/ 81/ 59
Wilson: 103/ 84/ 34
Molina: 65/ 54/ 88
Speizio: 95/ 121/ 56

Molina's the only one above his career average and the others aren't just below their career averages- they're WAY below their career averages.

Gripe all you want, but this offense is not going to continue to perform this way. It will come around.

[Radbird]

It will come around.

Hopefully this weekend.

[Popeye_Card]

Gripe all you want, but this offense is not going to continue to perform this way. It will come around.

Nope. I think it's obvious that things will not improve.

(Psst...you forgot Duncan as a guy who will likely tail off.)

--P--

[skmsw]

Gripe all you want, but this offense is not going to continue to perform this way. It will come around.

I wasn't aware anyone was expecting it to perform "this way" all year.

Is there a thread where someone is suggesting they'll hit .235 all year??? Bounce into 200+ double plays on the season? hit ~80 homers in 2007?

RC, when you suggest they will "come around," what level of offense are you expecting over the course of the year? When I've asked you before, you've said things like "more than this;" any more specific notion of what we're looking at RC-style?

[Jocephus]

Gripe all you want, but this offense is not going to continue to perform this way. It will come around.

I wasn't aware anyone was expecting it to perform "this way" all year.

have you read some of the posts here?

[JL21]

(Psst...you forgot Duncan as a guy who will likely tail off.)

--P--

Yes, and just to clarify, it was only because his "career" number is basically one season. But yes, there's no doubt in my mind he'll tail off.

[Bo Hart]

Post from the other topic, since it is relevant:

We are, right now, averaging 2.82 runs per game. TWO POINT EIGHT TWO! The most anemic offense in the league last year was the Pirates. Their average? 4.26 runs a game.

But hey, maybe we're historically bad? During the worst offensive season of all time, the Dodgers managed just 3.38 runs per game (548 runs) over the course of an entire season.

Of the 16 players that logged over 100 at-bats, just five of them had an OPS over .700; Brett Butler led the team with an OPS of .804.

.804 was their team-high OPS. Pujols will eclipse that. Duncan will eclipse that. Rolen will eclipse that. Edmonds is a good bet to be around that, if he doesn't eclipse it.

Currently, we have four position players who will get 100 or more at-bats that have an OPS over .700: So Taguchi, Chris Duncan, Gary Bennett and Albert Pujols.

Our offense will improve. Significantly. Maybe it will at / below league average when it is all said and done, but from our current state its going to improve big-time. And yes, our pitching will fall back to Earth... but the fall its going to have is less than the leap our offense is going to make, I think.


The point I'm trying to make is that its too early to be especially pessimistic. Barring Rolen, Edmonds, Duncan and Pujols all experience monumental drop-offs in production from their career, thereby leading this offense to become historically unrivaled, things will improve and we will at least show semblance of competitiveness -- something that doesn't really seem to be existent right now.


I am frustrated like everyone else, but I'm also aware that we aren't even 10% done with the season.


You have to take the entire Dodgers comparison with a grain of salt because the league OPS in 1990 was .704; by comparison, it was .778 last season.

[JL21]

I wasn't aware anyone was expecting it to perform "this way" all year.

Is there a thread where someone is suggesting they'll hit .235 all year??? Bounce into 200+ double plays on the season? hit ~80 homers in 2007?

1. This isn't aimed at you at all.

2. There are many, many posts on here of gloom and doom. Is anyone saying specifically that they'll hit .235, 200 DP's, etc...? No, not specifically.

RC, when you suggest they will "come around," what level of offense are you expecting over the course of the year? When I've asked you before, you've said things like "more than this;" any more specific notion of what we're looking at RC-style?

To be honest, I haven't done much work on it. Actually, I haven't done any. But I don't think that the 725-750 range is that far off.

A quick look shows that they needed to replace an offensive VORP of 48.7.

Player, VORP
Speizio: 16.3
Edmonds: 20.0
Luna: 8.6
Vizcaino: 3.2
Belliard: -3.1
Wilson: 3.7

That included replacing Speizio and Edmonds, which they did.... with Speizio and Edmonds. That said, I don't expect Speizio to have a 16 VORP again. Closer to 5 is about right, given his '04 and '05 performance. Edmonds, on the other hand, I would expect to see around 25-30 just because he's likely to play more than the 408 PA's he had last year. I'll be on the safe side and say 25. Let's start breaking it down:

Player, VORP, replaced with:
Speizio: 16.3, NEW: 5
Edmonds: 20.0, NEW: 25
Net: -6

Now, let's look at 2B. Luna, Vizcaino, and Belliard accounted for 8.7. Kennedy essentially gobbles up their AB's, and his 3-year VORP average is 16.5, though his 10.9 last year was the worst of the 3. Let's do it as a 3-2-1: 14.9.

So, Player, VORP, replaced with:
Luna: 8.6 + Vizcaino: 3.2 + Belliard: -3.1 becomes 14.9
Net for 2B: 6.2
Net Overall: 0.2

And finally:
Wilson: 3.7

Looking at his 3 year numbers would make that look pessimistic, but given his decreased playing time, I think that's about where you'll see him.

What else should we look at? Well:

1. Duncan: 24.8 in 314 PA's. I think that VORP is perfectly reasonable to expect again.... but in 500 PA's. And those 200 PA's that he'll have now will replace about 100 of the Gooch's 0.2 and 100 of J-Rod's 8.8 in 212 PA's. Basically, it's a net loss of about 4-5 runs.
Net Overall: -5

2. Molina. For the sake of argument, I'm going to leave it alone. We'll assume he'll replicate his -19.7. But I doubt that'll happen. Let's just leave it.

3. Rolen and Albert, frankly, were about where you'd expect them to be in '06 and I'd expect more of the same in '07.
Net overall unchanged

4. Due to decreased playing time, Encarnacion's 8.5 would've been right in line with his 3-year average..... but with the injury, you're looking at 1/4 less production or so. Even less if the injury lingers. To make it bleak as possible, we'll give Juan a 0 for the year. There's a loss of 9 runs.
Net overall: -14 runs

They scored 781 last year, although I believe their linear weights implies that they were closer to a 750 run team (correct me if I'm wrong). So basically, I see them right in the 725-750 range.

[Dwtlr]

Let's take a quick and dirty comparison of the offense's OPS+ for their career, their OPS+ from last year, and their OPS+ this season.

In short, I'm going to illustrate that even though the offense is supposed to be bad to mediocre this year, there's not a chance they'll continue to perform this poorly, even if there's an injury to anyone besides Albert.

PLAYER: career OPS+/'06 OPS+/'07 OPS+
Albert: 170/ 180/ 97
Rolen: 129/ 127/ 57
Edmonds: 136/ 111/ 39
Kennedy: 91/ 90/ 38
Eckstein: 87/ 81/ 59
Wilson: 103/ 84/ 34
Molina: 65/ 54/ 88
Speizio: 95/ 121/ 56

Molina's the only one above his career average and the others aren't just below their career averages- they're WAY below their career averages.

Gripe all you want, but this offense is not going to continue to perform this way. It will come around.

No offense but why would anyone with a modicum of knowledge about this group of players suggest anything otherwise..

The crunching of numbers on this forum is way overdone..

[JL21]

The crunching of numbers on this forum is way overdone..

All I did was go to baseball-reference and grab the numbers. "Looking at" and "crunching" are not the same.