The 2009 PECOTA numbers are trickling out. The player cards will be released soon, which means the team projections will follow within a couple of weeks, although they will presumably wait until the free agent dust is settled. Those of you who were around last year my recall the pro-Rays, anti-Mariners feeding frenzy that occurred at the books after the projections came out, and the subsequent loss of value on both. It ended up not mattering much in the end. But since I only handle MLB and pro football around here, I thought it might be worth taking an early look at it this year, before the numbers come out. For now, I'm only considering futures bets, since the win total numbers won't be out for quite a while. So it's all about teams that will exceed expectations. We'll get to the Angels later.
Anyway, what we're looking for are teams whose 2008 third-order records suggest that they are better than their results and who have a ton of young talent that should improve in 2009. Divisional assignments is also a factor. For example, there's dozens of things to like about the Orioles (most of them affiliated with Matt Wieters), but three very big hurdles in their way.
I've already brought up the Indians, who at one point were 30-1 to win the World Series and who have a great core of young talent. The other teams whose pythagorean expectation numbers suggest that they were, for lack of a better word, "unlucky" in 2008 include the:
Blue Jays (again, the AL East problem comes up here)
Tigers
Mariners
Braves
Nationals
Dodgers
Padres
Let's ignore the Blue Jays for now because of the AL East issue (we'll look at them again when the win total lines come out), and set aside the Dodgers for now because they are looking at as much as 20 Wins Above Replacement Player worth of free agents at the moment. And I don't need any help talking about the Nats' farm system, as my horrified fiancee can tell you.
Any Tigers, Mariners, Braves or Padres fans out there who can tell us a little something about their young talent? Anyone else who has a sneaking suspicion PECOTA is going to love their team in 2009? Anyone spot an outlier on the futures lines for one of these teams at one of the online books? Feel free to post in the comments or email us at the address provided on the web site. We think the site works best when we're getting feedback from all the smart people out there.
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5 comments:
Haven't really looked into it, but off the top of my head I love the Braves. They got extremely unlucky in the beginning of the season last year then basically gave up. Having the overrated Mets and world champion Phillies in their division should add to their value a little bit.
The Tigers story is pretty simple:
They lost SS Edgar Renteria, C Ivan Rodriguez, 250AB OF Matt Joyce.
They gained SS Adam Everett, C Gerald Laird, and SP Edwin Jackson.
Regardless of how much Renteria sucks, unless Everett can stay healthy, he won't be much help. He needs to log a lot of defensive innings to help the club.
Laird is a slight upgrade over Pudge assuming he logs a ton of innings. I'm not sure how they're defense compares, but I've heard it's favorable. Laird catching allows Inge to move back to 3rd, where he's a premier defender (who still has a wretched approach at the plate).
Carlos Guillen should be taking the bulk of the ABs from Left Field, with Marcus Thames playing the role of 4th OF who mashes lefties. Sheffield got 482PA for the Tiggies last year, which seems unlikely to happen again. If they give him half that many, they'll have to fill 240PA at DH/OF from some combination of:
More Thames
Ryan Raburn/Clete Thomas/ Brent Clevelyn. Yeah, that's exactly as ugly as it sounds.
The offense should be about the same as it was last year, maybe a little worse with the ugly bottom 3 of Laird, Inge, Everett.
The defense should be much better, with premier defenders at 3B and SS, and a younger Laird behind the plate.
The pitching can't get any worse, I don't think. Down years from Verlander and Bonderman, combined with black-hole-type years from Nate Robertson and Kenny Rogers means any rotation you throw out there should get better.
They've got two potential 4.00 FIP guys in Bondo and Verlander, but the former can't stay healthy. 300 innings from the both would be great.
The other 4 likely starters -- Armando Galarraga, Nate Robertson, Edwin Jackson, Zach Miner -- are 4.75 FIP guys, with Miner more likely to clock in slightly better because of his groundball rate. Compare this sextet with last year's disaster, and it's probably slightly improved. They project to get more innings out of Bondo and higher quality innings out of Robertson, but Galarraga was unsustainably lucky last year. My guess is that the pitching gets slightly better, but the run prevention gets a good deal better.
The bullpen is better. No more Todd Jones. They replaced him with Brandon Lyon, though, who kinda sucks.
They should have a still-horrible bullpen. Hopefully losing Jones is enough to fire everybody up. Lyon's okay, I guess.
End result: Similar hitting + slightly better pitching + better defense + underperformed Pythag by 4 wins last year = 8-10 wins better than last year's record. 82-80 sounds about right.
Great stuff, Anonymoose. Anyone else that wants to add on about these teams or any other, please have at it.
Also, to clarify- where I asked for information on "young talent" in the post, I was talking only about major league or major-league ready talent. Not a lot of rookies have tremendous impact right out of the gate. However, I would also like to know about the under-26 players who may be ready to break out. Or, conversely, if a team is full of veterans who are approaching collapse (I'm looking at you, middle of the White Sox batting order), that's worth noting.
I'm starting a Tigers-centric blog sometime soon, I think, to keep myself busy over the summer. I'm working on some pretty basic positional analysis right now. When I get it done, it will look something like:
OF+DH (expected increase/decrease in offensive value; expected increase/decrease in defensive value)
Infield (same)
Rotation
Bullpen
Then I'll add in some basic stuff like Pythag, etc., and hopefully have a number to compare to the Vegas O/Us when they come out. I'll send you a copy when I'm done, even though it won't be of much value since I can barely operate Excel, and Bill James projects everyone to have 900PA. I'll shoot an email off when I'm done, maybe you can take a look and add your thoughts.
I'm a semi-regular reader, and I pretty much never comment, so: keep up the mediocre work, guys.
I can make this real simple - it will be a minor miracle if the Pirates lose less than 95 games - traded away Bay and Nady - all you need to know is that Nyjer Morgan is penciled in as the starting LF right now - that may end up being Eric Hinske but still they suck...Unless Paul Maholm and Ian Snell win 17 games apiece, this group wont score enough runs to win the 8-7 games that the pitching staff will require them to win.....
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