Revised projections of the 2007 season

DMZ · January 23, 2007 at 11:41 am · Filed Under Mariners 

At the start of the month, I spent some time looking at the team and offered up a guess:

785 runs scored
770 runs allowed

Which works out to about 82 wins. Dave noted I was a little too optimistic about the bullpen and since then we’ve seen two good sets of projections come out: ZiPS and PECOTA. I may yet get to running some season simulations with Diamond Mind to see how the whole picture comes out, too.

The numbers I used compared to the projection systems’ “normal-case” turned out well. I was a little high for my Vidro/Guillen numbers, too conservative on Felix’s progress, I again disagreed with predicitions of Ichiro’s total collapse, and so on, but generally I did well. The big gap was, as Dave said, the bullpen, where I figured there’d be a little regression from Putz but the unit would remain generally solid. The projections are a lot lower. I was far more bullish on O’Flaherty than the numbers.

My sketch of the team put it at 82 wins without further moves, and the best projections by systems are a lot less optimistic – you easily drop 20+ runs pushing the ZiPS or PECOTA numbers for the bullpen in there, which puts the team at 79-80 wins on the season.

If the swing players (Lopez, Felix, Guillen/Batista/Vidro) all perform well, no one collapses, Felix and Ichiro stay healthy, and the bullpen’s good, then sure, the team blows that away and heads to the playoffs. That’s a lot of things to go right, though.

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Comments

54 Responses to “Revised projections of the 2007 season”

  1. John L. Morgan on January 24th, 2007 10:53 am

    Does the runs allowed projection account for the expected improvement defensively from Reed/Bloomquist/Jones et al–who were all poor defensive CFs–to Ichiro who will likely be an excellent defensive CF? How good can we expect Ichiro to be in center? I never got a chance to see him play the position, but know that even the best defensive RF doesn’t necessarily make an even competent CF. Not that I doubt the amazing Ichiro.

  2. bakomariner on January 24th, 2007 11:25 am

    reed was a pretty good defensive CF…made some outstanding plays…

  3. John L. Morgan on January 24th, 2007 3:50 pm

    #52, well Dave Pinto’s PMR rated him as the worst defensive CF regular in baseball last year.

  4. MickeyZ on January 25th, 2007 6:49 am

    Yes, I’m feeble and non-mathmatical, but 770 runs allowed seems overly optimistic to me. A quick look at last year shows 6 American League teams allowed fewer than 770 runs, and 8 allowed more.

    Are we thinking that we have an average pitching staff?

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