Playoff Rosters, Part 8: ALDS Game 1 Lineups and Projections

Here are the announced Rays and Red Sox lineups and how they should be expected to perform versus the starting pitchers. The wOBA projections are regressed platoon splits calculated using ZiPS RoS projections (note: projections are from early September) and Bojan Koprivica's platoon research.

All projections come from a wOBA tool created by Jason Hanselman and our own Ian Malinowski.

The Rays results against Lester may be entirely dependent on how prepared they will be for where he's throwing. Lester has excellent breaking pitches that he can throw outside the zone and on the edges, much like Cobb in Wednesday's Wild Card game. Lester has an improved cutter and a 94 MPH fastball that's been getting stronger all season -- compared to Moore, who's seen his velocity diminish.

Wil Myers takes a bump backwards to third in the line up this afternoon, following his three strikeout performance on Wednesday. The move gives Myers less pressure in terms of run creation -- the third slot is regarded as less important than lead off, second, or fourth in Tango's book -- while keeping him high in the order to gather more at bats and opportunities.

Tim Britton ran a great write up on Game 1 starter Matt Moore this morning, and I highly reccomend his take to refresh on the greatness of what Matt Moore could be.

More from DRaysBay:

• Playoff Rosters, Part 7: ALDS Roster Announced
• Playoff Rosters, Part 6: Red Sox Position Players
• The Rays Tank: Friday in Fenway
• On questioning Joe Maddon: Joyce vs Young
• Playoff Rosters, Part 5: ALDS Starting Rotations