Saturday, February 13, 2010

PECOTA Backpedals on the Nationals Again

The latest projections for wins-losses this season are up at Baseball Prospectus, and they've revised their Nationals projections (once a heady 82 wins) to 75 wins. That would make them the 5th worst team in baseball and last place in the NL East, two games back of the tail-spinning Mets.

7 comments:

Mike said...

How 'bout that AL Central with everybody under .500? Or the Angels in the cellar? Crazy.

Nate said...

I'd take 75 wins, wouldn't you?

Will said...

Just based on my non-subscriber view, their projections look a whole lot better than they originally did. I don't doubt the Angels will be a lot worse. They're going to miss Figgins and Lackey a lot, and I think guys like Morales, Aybar and Rivera will regress quite a bit. Not to mention the Mariners and Rangers will be a lot better.

The AL Central probably will be pretty bad next year, though all the teams going under .500 is a little bold. The Twins look to be a bit better than BP projects. It thinks the Twins pitching staff will be the 4th worst in the AL, but they have a pretty decent rotation. It seems a little off to me.

My only concern for the Nats is regarding BP's pessimism about the their offense. Though they predict the Nats OPS to be exactly the same as last year (BP predict .744, 2009 Nats batted .743), they project just about every other team to bat substantially better. Yes, I understand these projections are naturally optimistic, because of how they allot playing time (they are unable to predict injuries), but the National League average OPS was .739 last year. Only the Padres are projected to be worse than that. On top of that, only the Padres and Pirates are supposed to have worse offenses than the Nats, even though they were 8th of 16 last year.

Positively Half St. said...

Nate- Yes, sign me up for 75 wins, too, I guess. I would prefer the original prediction of 82 wins, but that does seem silly. I just want to get the 75 wins in spite of the regular amount of injuries, etc. I don't want the Nats to win 75 games because everything that could go right did go right. We need a reason to believe they will really be in the mix in 2011.

Steven said...

I have trouble saying "I'd take 75 wins." But I'll say that if the Nationals win 75, and the reason is because Mock, Desmond, Storen, Detwiler, Flores, Maxwell, and Aaron Thopmson... yeah, I'd take that.

Anonymous said...

Please stop posting the PECOTA updates. At this pace the Nats are going to be 0-162 before pitchers and catchers report.

Anonymous said...

Willy Taveras!