Tampa Bays success was predictable by looking at the projections for individual players.

The collapse of the Tigers and Indians was not, although a lot of people did think that Bonderman was a health risk and Willis was way over-rated especially for a NL pitcher coming to the AL, off a bad season, and having been over-worked in the past.

The White Sox and Twins has lots of players exceed their projections, some of which I mentioned earlier. The Rays players basically did as projected or slightly better.

MW: Not even a glimmer of recognition, huh? Maybe it’s also that the projections are often wrong. Probably more often than they’re right.

Why would you assume that? There was no particular reason for either one of those teams to do that well. They had Cleveland and Detroit neck and neck at the top of the division.

Floyd, Danks, Quentin, and Ramirez all came through with unexpected good seasons.

Span, Blackburn, & Slowey all came through with nice seasons for the Twins. They were probably less of a surprise than the White Sox but without the collapse of the the Indians and Tigers nobody would have noticed.

There was lots of reasons to have liked the Rays last spring. Young proven talent at almost every position.

MW: That was sarcasm there.

Why the need for sarcasm ? Just because you couldn’t/didn’t see Tampa Bay Rays coming, doesn’t mean that others didn’t. It’s true that the “main stream media” was caught unaware, but the sabremetrically based systems were all over Tampa Bay in the spring of 2008. And your constant attribution of their success to luck is just ignorance, sour-grapes, and a refusal to admit a rather poor effort with regard to off-season analysis.

MW: Why is it that the fact that the sabremetrically-based systems saw Tampa improving (but missed by what, 8-10 game) proves them right, and yet you dismiss the facts that they didn’t see the White Sox and Twins coming, and that they didn’t see the Tigers and Indians failing.

The Blue Jay season was only disappointing for those who thought that they would be over 90 wins and in the playoff hunt. Around the baseball world in general Toronto’s 2008 season was not considered disappointing.

One thing to keep in mind is that while the Blue Jays’ offense was self destructing; virtually every Blue Jay pitcher except BJ Ryan (and including Doc Halladay) were having great and largely unexpected seasons.

Halladay – 246 IP, 2.78 ERA
Marcum – 151 IP, 3.39 ERA
McGowan – 111 IP, 4.37 ERA
Burnett – 221 IP, 4.07 ERA
Litsch – 176 IP, 3.58 ERA

Ryan – 58 IP, 2.95 ERA
Downs – 71 IP, 1.78 ERA
Tallet – 58 IP, 2.88 ERA
League – 33 IP, 2.18 ERA
Carlson – 60 IP, 2.25 ERA
Wolfe – 25 IP, 2.45 ERA

Hands-up, everybody expecting a repeat performance.

MW: Yeah, the Jays leading the majors in pitching was just a fluke. Not like T-Bay winning the pennant.

MW: You’re right.

As for defense, I conceded I could see arguments for a couple other teams as well. Teams that had higher rankings in other defensive stats.

I think pretty much everyone in baseball would agree my statement of Houston being the best team defensively in 2008 has a lot more merit than your statement about the Jays being the best the past 2 years.

MW: I don’t.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008
AL projected Standings

Using the CHONE projections, and what I currently assume will be each team’s lineup. All trades, signings up to today are considered.

AL East
Red Sox 92-70
Yankees 92-70
Rays 89-73
Blue Jays 83-79
Orioles 65-97

MW: I’m confused. Is this the prediction for 2009 or 2008? And what does the Angels’ third baseman have to do with it?

These were the predicted 2008 standings done by Sean Smith that he likes to refer to as CHONE because he is a big Angel fan. His player projections have been pretty much universally accepted as the best available for a while now and they are free.

Here is a link http://www.baseballprojection.com/

MW: So the Blue Jays, despite having a very disappointing season by all accounts, actually OVERperformed their projection by three games? Nice.

Why would you assume that? There was no particular reason for either one of those teams to do that well. They had Cleveland and Detroit neck and neck at the top of the division.

Floyd, Danks, Quentin, and Ramirez all came through with unexpected good seasons.

Span, Blackburn, & Slowey all came through with nice seasons for the Twins. They were probably less of a surprise than the White Sox but without the collapse of the the Indians and Tigers nobody would have noticed.

There was lots of reasons to have liked the Rays last spring. Young proven talent at almost every position.

MW: That was sarcasm there – of course WARP wouldn’t have predicted that of the Twins and Sox, or for the Tigers and Indians to crap their pants, as it were. I was trying to illustrate that any prediction is far from infallible.

My prediction is that Kevin Millar takes a lot of bats from Lyle Overbay and Travis Snider because Cito falls in love with his “home run power”. Meanwhile, this team could have afforded Bobby Abreu by non-tendering Jose Bautista, Sean Camp, and Jason Frasor (if you need to find cash). This team needs guys who can get on base like Abreu, but Cito doesn’t even know what that stat is. Home runs baby, if you hit more than 15, you are welcome with Cito. How many outs you make is irrelevant.

Waaaay back on April 28 (I just went and found it) I asked you about Vernon Wells’ declining range. I know that CF is “his spot” and that he’s not likely to lose it any time soon, but I just had a look at John Dewan’s +/- numbers for 2008, and Alex Rios was (according to that measure at least) one of the best defensive outfielders in all of baseball last year. He ranked 6th among CF and 4th among RF in spite of not playing a full season at either spot. Wells, meanwhile, was near the bottom of the list among CFs.

As I said above, I don’t expect it to happen, but if it were up to you, would you move Alex Rios to CF? Can you think of any downside besides making Vernon Wells unhappy?

MW: If it were up to me, I wouldn’t do it yet. But I’d certainly keep it in the back of my mind if Wells’ defense didn’t get back to its old levels or worse, continued to decline.