Ryan Romano: Can Alvarez and Trumbo improve the O's offense?

When we think of the Baltimore Orioles, we generally imagine a team that scores a lot of runs. Chris Davis, Manny Machado and Adam Jones have hit quite well in recent years, and unless they get hurt, their success should hold steady in 2016. Supporting cast members such as Matt Wieters, Caleb Joseph and Jonathan Schoop have served as reliable depth options. And most importantly, new arrivals Mark Trumbo and Pedro Alvarez should make things even better. Overall, it seems like the team should fare well on offense after a bumpy year in 2015.

But just how many runs will the Orioles score this season? To answer a question like this, we'd usually turn to projection systems. FanGraphs.com uses Steamer and ZiPS to create its Depth Charts projections, and Baseball Prospectus relies on its proprietary PECOTA projections. While the two sites generally come to the same conclusion, in this case, they don't see eye to eye. According to FanGraphs, Baltimore should score 4.66 runs per game, which would rank sixth in the major leagues. Baseball Prospectus, on the other hand, expects them to score 713 runs total this season, which would place them ninth in the majors. That 27-run difference -- the fifth largest in baseball -- is a consequential one, as it amounts to about three wins over the course of the season. So where will the Orioles offense land?

Let's look back at 2015. In that year, the Orioles scored 713 runs, the ninth-highest total in the majors. On the surface, this bodes well: The Orioles now have Trumbo and Alvarez around, so we might expect them to build upon that and score even more. The problem with that line of thinking is that the Orioles got lucky last season -- they scored more runs than they should have. Weighted Runs Created (wRC) is a metric that looks at a team's hitting ability and predicts how many runs they should score over the course of a season. In 2015, the Orioles only accumulated 684 wRC; that ranked a mere 17th in baseball. Despite the new offensive additions, the team's scoring could stagnate or even regress, just as Baseball Prospectus projects.

Or will it? Instead of focusing on the wRC figures for 2015, let's check out the wRC projections for 2016. Here we see a different story: Altogether, the Orioles should accrue 739 wRC this year, which would represent a 55-run upgrade over last year. If they don't underperform -- i.e., if they score as many runs as this metric expects them to -- they should fulfill the optimistic prediction of FanGraphs.

In all likelihood, the holdovers will produce at about the same level this year as they did last year. Davis and Machado should get a bit worse as they regress toward the mean post-breakout; Jones and J.J. Hardy should get a bit better as they heal from their 2015 injuries; and Joseph, Wieters, and Schoop should remain respectable. The team-wide improvement will instead come from the imports. In simple terms, the Orioles will have fewer awful hitters and more decent hitters. In 2015, Gerardo Parra, Travis Snider, Delmon Young, David Lough, Alejandro De Aza, Everth Cabrera and Chris Parmelee combined for 88 wRC in 1,117 plate appearances. They've all departed, and in their place, Alvarez and Trumbo should accrue 141 wRC over 1,071 trips to the dish. With everything else the same, that would bump the team up 53 runs from 2015. Even if Joey Rickard and Hyun Soo Kim don't live up to their potential, the strength -- or at least competence -- of Alvarez and Trumbo should make the offense a force.

When it comes to 2016 projected records, FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus have different opinions of the Orioles. The former thinks the club will go 79-83 and the latter predicts a 75-87 record. That disagreement stems from their divergent views of the offense. Based on the projected wRC figures for 2016, I would say that the FanGraphs projection is more likely. Anything could happen -- if the Orioles have proven anything in recent years, it's that projections don't always come true -- but I'll take the over on the Orioles offense.

Ryan Romano blogs about the Orioles for Camden Depot. Follow the blog on Twitter: @CamdenDepot. His thoughts on the O's appear here as part of MASNsports.com's continuing commitment to welcome guest bloggers to our little corner of cyberspace. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.