2010 Pecota Projections!!!

They had the A’s winning the West last season too.

I’d bet the frothing rage at HH is hilarious.

If the A’s give up and score the same number of runs, shouldn’t that mean a .500 record?

The A’s are projected to have the third lowest runs scored (737) and the second lowest runs allowed (737) in the AL.

And boy, the AL East looks like it could be a fun race to watch!

Big League Stew

They just really look goofy. The only three teams with at least 90 wins are in the American League East. The Angels, at 76-86, are only better than the Blue Jays and Royals in the American League. Six teams in the National League last year had at least 88 wins. According to these predictions, it’ll only be two in 2010. Is there something that I’m not getting?

Its overly conservative, and its maybe not the best forecasting system out there.

BUT

It was one of the major pioneers, its still very reputable, they have some true genius on their staff.

And HELL, they are telling me what I want to hear!

…people are asking what does the Sheets Signing mean, IT MEANS BEANE is in cahoots with BP!

And I’m not being sarcastic.

I don’t subscribe to BP, so I’ll be theorizing a bit on what they’re actually saying. Anyone who does subscribe can feel free to correct me where I err.

First, Oakland’s pythagorean record last year was .500. They score 759 runs and allowed 761. Second and third-order win totals are similar, putting us at 79 and 82 wins, respectively. Let’s go with the median and say that what we put out there in 2009 was basically a .500 team.

To get up to 87 wins, we need to improve by 6 wins. Just by now, I think the projections are starting to look more realistic, but let’s keep going.

PECOTA projects us to allow 737 runs, 24 less than 2009, (or about 3+ wins worth.) A big part of why we’re projected to be stingier with runs is the rotation.The A’s had games started by 14 different players, including Sean Gallagher, Dana Eveland, Clayton Mortensen, Edgar Gonzalez and Dan Giese, none of whom will be anywhere near the A’s depth chart at starter this year. For those inclined to do so, this would be a good place to make a Trevor Cahill joke, but what’s not a joke is the greatly diminished likelihood that Trevor Cahill will make 32 starts this year. Also, Mazzaro and Gio gave up a lot of runs last year. Less starts by all the names I’ve mentioned and more starts by Sheets and Duchscherer, even if you hedge and don’t predict full seasons out of both, are going to be a significant upgrade.

Further, all those under-27 pitchers like Anderson, Braden, etc? Likely to improve to some degree. Even if Sheets and Duke only combine for one full season, two wins (or more) of improvement from the rotation seems like a very reasonable projection, maybe even a conservative one.

On the bullpen front, I don’t see a very large change. We had an excellent bullpen last year, we’ll have an excellent one this year. Devine’s back and Casilla’s out, but given how good the pen was last year, a little regression from some guys isn’t unreasonable. Call it a push overall.

Defensively, there are a lot of modest gains. Nothing massive, but there’s general improvement at most positions. Catcher stays the same. 1B changes from the Giambi/Barton/Crosby/Everidge cadre to what I’m assuming will mostly be Barton. 2B switches from the Ellis/Kennedy duo to Ellis alone, presuming Pennington’s had his “don’t run into Mark” lessons. 3B was manned by Hannahan (who was good at it) as well as Kennedy and Crosby, (who weren’t.) The aggregate will almost certainly be outplayed by Kouzmanoff. Pennington was not a great shortstop, but he was significantly better than Cabrera. The outfield will have less Holliday, (not a good thing. He was 6.6 runs above average for us,) less Hairston, (neutral. He was average,) and less Cust, (a very good thing,) and more Davis and Crisp. There’s a mild upgrade in total, though this could easily be turned into a mild downgrade by signing and playing Johnny Damon. Overall, taking into account the vagaries of defensive statistics, I think calling this a win’s worth of upgrade is about right.

So, PECOTA’s improvement in terms of allowing runs looks reasonable enough. But how is it that we end up scoring 32 runs more? Our best hitter last year was Matt Holliday, even if he didn’t hit quite up to his NL standards while he was here. Where are the changes? Our next best hitters last year were Rajai Davis and Daric Barton. Both figure to get more time this year.

Meanwhile, here are some hitters we won’t be seeing in green and gold, (along with their 2009 OPS+es). Orlando Cabrera (81), Jason Giambi (85), Bobby Crosby (72), Scott Hairston (70), Nomar Garciaparra (85), Jack Hannahan (55), Tommy Everidge (76). Are incoming hitters Kouzmanoff and Crisp world-beaters? Probably not, but they’re better than what we threw out there last year.

I have to admit, I don’t really see four wins of offensive improvement, there. Just eyeballing it, two seems more likely, but then I thought three wins of pitching/defensive improvement was a conservative estimate. Maybe PECOTA expects bounce-back years from Ellis and Cust, and improvement by Suzuki? In any case, I don’t think six games of improvement is totally UNreasonable.

Someone else want to take a look at the Angels and see if that drop makes sense?

WWVP: What Would VIGODA Project?

If nothing else, Beane would make a hell of a fantasy manager.