Suggested Uses of the Simulator #2


Let’s try something else as another potential use of the software.  I’ve been looking at the various off season moves of the 2023-2023 Pittsburgh Pirates and trying to figure out what they mean.  


So to do that, I asked a few fellow Pirate fans given what’s been done, what is a best guess lineup for next years ‘most days’ team.  This is what I got back:


hitter #1  - frazier-all

hitter #2  - cruz-all

hitter #3  - reynolds-all

hitter #4  - hayes-all

hitter #5  - santana-all

hitter #6  - andujar-all

hitter #7  - choi-all

hitter #8  - suwinski-best

hitter #9  - delay-all


Now they don’t have Frazier but Bae came up late last year and was just an OBP machine.  So, being optimistic, for this cut of the run, let’s just assume he’s a rookie Adam Frazier.  That’s probably way too sunny but let’s go with it for now.  I also made a few more sunny projections.


1: Nobody drops off next year

2: The Jack Suwinski who plays next year will be his best last year Jack Suwinski 

3: Bae will hit like rookie Fazier

4: Reynolds stays with the team


So how do I get a glimmer of what this changes for the Pirates this year?  I decided to really ignore splits and handedness and stuff like that (for now) and just concentrate on the raw lineup.


So with that in mind, I went fishing for a rock bottom lineup of the Pirates last year and set them up for 1000 six inning games.  Later innings don’t work as well when you’re lining them up against an ‘average’ pitcher because of the specialization and substitution that goes on there so we’ll stick with six inning games.


I put together the following lineup and generated profiles for them:


Hayes-all

Reynolds-all

Chavis

Tsutsugo

Castillo

Suwinski-bad

Madres

Gamel-all

Delay-all 


This is not a happy lineup but it was taken from an early July game of 2022 which was probably their low point for the offense.  I generated the profiles and ran the simulator and got a run profile that showed this lineup scoring 2 or less runs in six innings almost 750 times out of 1000 six inning games.  Yikes!


I then ran the lineup from the top with the assumptions listed and it calculated to 600 games scoring 2 or less in six innings.  So what does that mean?


It’s probably best to use simulator runs vs simulator runs since they both probably have the same assumptions built into them and that they will cancel out.  


As a next step I assembled a Brewers 2022 lineup and decided to run that.  They were about 10th in the league in offense.  Not top but not bottom either.  


The lineup I used was:


player 1 - Yelich  

player 2 - Adames  

player 3 - Tellez  

player 4 - Mccutchen  

player 5 - Wong  

player 6 - Peterson  

player 7 - Renfroe  

player 8 - Varvaez  

player 9 - Davis  


When I ran this lineup under the same conditions, it also clocked in about 600 out of 1000 times scoring less than 3 runs in 6 innings.  It tells me that the Pirates 2023 should, given these optimistic assumptions, be at least average-ish next year.  


As a final look I went with the what is assumed to be Mets 2023 lineup, just for giggles.  That line up was:


1) CF Brandon Nimmo .274/.367/.800
2) 3B Carlos Correa .291/.366/.834
3) SS Francisco Lindor .270/.339/.788
4) 1B Pete Alonso .271/.352/.870
5) 2B Jeff McNeil .326/.382/.836
6) LF Mark Canha .266/.367/.770
7) DH Daniel Vogelbach .255/.393/.830
8) RF Starling Marte .292/.347/.815
9) C Francisco Alvarez .167/.286/.786 (14 career plate appearances)


Alvarez is a bit of a mystery but probably doesn’t figure to be a big hitter.  I had Delay’s profile available so I just used it.  THIS team shows 500 or so games with under 3 runs in six innings.  The differential between them and everybody else is just going to expand in a regular nine inning game.  


Yeah, that seems better, right?