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Since I didn't get time to write anything for today until just now, I thought I'd take a quick little stroll around the oven-fresh PECOTA forecasts, Baseball Prospectus' system for projecting the coming season. I won't get too into the specific numbers (that would be stealing), but the standings page I linked to is free to everybody, and there's some interesting stuff to talk about.
Every year, PECOTA does one thing that gets people riled up. In 2007, it projected the White Sox, coming off 99- and 90-win seasons, to go 70-92, and this guy made fun of them for it (original article curiously no longer available). They went 70-92. In 2008, it projected the perennial cellar-dwelling Rays to win 89 games, which everyone thought was ridiculous. They won 97. In 2009, it projected Matt Wieters to hit something like .800/.850/3million. That one didn't work quite so well.
This year, it's pretty easy to see what all the fuss is going to be about. The defending champs finishing third is big news, to be sure. But, c'mon; you're talking two games behind the Red Sox and three behind the Rays, and six games ahead of everyone else in the American League. If this puts the odds against the Yanks making the playoffs, their chances are still something like 49.999999%.
It's a bigger story that PECOTA likes the Rays to improve by twelve games (and ten over their 2009 Pythagorean record), considering they managed to win only 84 last year despite a huge offensive year by Jason Bartlett and an all-around MVP-quality year by Ben Zobrist that most people will assume is a fluke. But even with regressions from those two, PECOTA likes a big bounceback year for BJ Upton and a slightly smaller one for Pat Burrell, and breakouts by Evan Longoria and David Price, along with strong performances by starting pitchers James Shields and Matt Garza. It's awfully hard to win 96 games, and if you're going to pick a team to do it, it's pretty surprising that it's the Rays, but I can see where they're coming from.
There's no Wieters 2.0 this year. Uberprospect Jason Heyward is expected to put up roughly league-average numbers (which, for his age-19 season, would give him a pretty solid chance to turn into a Hall of Famer eventually...but it's certainly no Wieters projection). Stephen Strasburg isn't expected to pitch a ton in the majors this year (these projections will evolve as the season draws near), but it's not a bad debut, with around a 4.00 ERA in around a hundred innings, and better than a strikeout an inning (but too many walks).
The bane of Nate Silver's existence for years has been Ichiro!; he's such a unique player that PECOTA just doesn't know how to handle him, and usually predicts a drastic crash-n-burn every season. That may have been fixed this year, or maybe his 2009 was just too good to ignore. His 2010 projection is 30 points in AVG and OBP and over 50 points in SLG better than what they had him pegged for in 2009.
His Mariners are at 86-76, which represents just a one-game improvement last year...which is shocking, considering all the improvements they've made, until you realize that the M's pythagorean record was just 75-87. Last year they were lucky; this year they're really that good. If they get the same luck (or whatever intangible quality you want to ascribe to it) again this year, they'll run away with the West.
Reigning (should be back-to-back and three-time-overall) MVP Joe Mauer? His projection is awesome, way up from last year, but there's no pretense that the HR power he showed in '09 might be real (they've got him at just 15 homers, 6 up from their '09 projection). They're pretty rosy on the Twins as a whole, yet it all adds up to just 82 wins (which is still enough to lead the Central). A quality second or third baseman would ratchet that up quite a bit.
Interestingly, no team outside the AL East is picked to win even 90 games. That obviously won't hold -- not even close -- but it generally takes a number of lucky breaks to get up above 90 wins, so it's hard to project any one team to do it. It's a testament to how good (PECOTA thinks that) the Yanks, Sox and Rays are.
On the other hand, it's just as hard for most teams to lose 90...which portends a very long 2010, yet again, for fans of the Pirates (70-92) and Royals (66-96! Oy).
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