Rays at Rangers, game two: lineups and projections

Here is tonight's Rays lineups with regressed split projections against Nick Tepesch. My usual go-to sytem, ZiPS, doesn't have a projection for Tepesch yet, but other systems, including my favorite for rookies, Oliver, project him to be about 20% below average. For the sake of producing numbers, I've assumed him to have an average right handed split. The details may not be quite right, but the the gist is pretty clear.

It's a pretty good lineup (although Kelly Johnson looks out of place in the ninth spot, and Jose Lobaton would be relatively better against the righty today with Jose Molina against the lefty Holland tomorrow) and Tepesch is purely a last resort for the Rangers. The Rays offense should score runs. If they don't, people will not be saying nice things about Derek Shelton tomorrow.

A graphical representation with numbers for non-starters is available in the series preview.

And the Rays better score runs, because this Texas lineup could be quite rude to Roberto Hernandez. The trick will be to keep the first two Rangers hitters (who may actually be the weakest portions of the lineup tonight) off the base paths because Lance Berkman, switch hitting in the middle, remains a beast.