I think I would take those because it seems like they assume a platoon of Scott and Lane is going to happen. I would be ok with it if both produced those stats. It is Burke whose stats I don't really believe. Only 10 home runs? Burke should hit at least 15 homers if given 500+ AB's and get between 60-70 RBI's if he stays in the 2 hole most of the year. Everyone elses stats look pretty good I think but I don't know how accurate they are, especially Wandy having a sub 5 era.
How is this off? I'd say that is about right. Our offense struggles every year, and the pitching steps up. This year will be different. We only have one ace in the rotation with Roy O, and a pretty good bullpen. And the addition of Lee is not guranteed that our lineup will produce. Cards win division, Cubs win wild card. We won't be anywhere near the playoff race. Without Andy and Roger, I don't think our pitchers will get the job done. Only chance I think we get close to going over 78 wins is if Roger plays the whole season.
Andy was 14-13 with a 4.20 ERA last year. Batters hit .284 against him...not exactly numbers that cant be replaced. We finished 1 game behind the Cards...we stocked up with some good talent...and what has STL done? They lost Marquis, Weaver, and Suppan from their starting rotation (signed Kip Wells, but still...). I dont see how you can say that we wont be competitive in the central division. Yes, it would help to have Clemens back, but this team is still going to be solid.
Baseball Prospectus has the Astros 4th in the division, allowing 64 more runs than last year, and finishing behind the 81-win Cardinals. I'm not a subscriber, so that's all I know.
Whats funny is that I dont recall a season in which we were projected to be 1st or 2nd in the division...yet, year after year, we do just that. What kind of track record do you need to actually get some respect from the media...jeez.
nothing is guaranteed. but you have to think we'll score more runs WITH carlos lee than without him. what in the world has you thinking the cards will win the division? there are so many Rocket fan/Astro haters. is it jealousy? is it dislike of baseball? what is it?
"This is not a contending team." -- Will Carroll (iirc), BP, season preview of the 2005 Astros. I could pull numerous similar blurbs. BP is largely full of ****. Occasionally funny (even sometimes intentionally), but very light on actual on-the-field, or even statistically useful, insight. They've fallen in love with their particular brand of snark, and they have their sacred cows/dead horses that they continue to alternately worship & beat with reckless abandon. Maybe I've been reading them for too long, but I haven't seen much new or particularly interesting out of them in the past few years.
What in the world have the Cubs done to make you think they're better than the Astros, Phillies, Braves, Marlins, Dodgers and other teams? Talk about media hype influencing predictions... my goodness. As for the Astros, replacing Aubrey Huff's bat with Carlos Lee's adds more than what you lose from replacing Andy Pettitte with Jason Jennings in the rotation. A Luke Scott/Jason Lane platoon for a full season is better than Luke Scott for two months and four months of mediocrity from Preston Wilson. Chris Burke, while worse than Taveras defensively, is an offensive upgrade on Taveras. Loretta is an upgrade offensively in the middle infield, where he will take many at-bats that went to Biggio/Everett/Bruntlett last season. Ensberg played about as poorly as he can possibly play last year, and seems primed for a reasonable bounce-back in production. Even if Clemens doesn't return and you replace him with Woody Williams, worst case you're looking at breaking even (roughly 82 games) when you factor in the rotation downgrade and the clear offensive upgrades. With Clemens, the team is significantly better and it's not even debatable. To expect this team to not even approach 78 wins is either completely illogical or simply excessive whining and negativity to try and get attention.
Max needs an addition to his sig anyways. "If I were playing 3B and my mother were rounding third with the run that was going to beat us, I'd trip her. Oh, sure, I'd pick her up and brush her off and say, 'Sorry, Mom,' but nobody beats me." "God watches over drunks and third basemen." Durocher was a character. Don't agree with all the "winning is the only thing", doesn't matter how you play the game, stuff, but nobody's perfect. He and Yogi might be the two greatest quotes in the history of MLB.
No one predicted career years from Ensberg and Pettitte, as well as a Clemens season that blew 2004 away.
Yeah we may score more runs but we're also will be giving up more runs. I think the Cards will win the division cause they are more consistent unlike the Astros. The Astros get themselves into a hole every year and have to going on ridiculous win streaks just to break .500, one of these years it will catch up to them and I believe it is this year. That's what the Stros are, a mediocre team, we're not a dominate team, we're not elite. We don't have the players to be elite. Only reason the Cards finished only one game and half ahead of us was because Pujols was out for awhile.. it would of been more if he had played the whole year. And for the Rocket Fan/Astro Hater, I'm not a hater, I'm just not a homer and I'm a realist. I don't praise the home team just because they're the home team. Jealous of what? I don't know what your talking about, and yeah I love baseball. It's not about the hype, the Cubs have made moves. Have you not seen the Cubs lineup or roster? Your telling me you rather the Astro's team over the Cubs right now? Garner over Lou? On paper, just on paper.. look at it, and you can easily see who has the better team. The Cubs will win, and they will be better than the Astros, it's going to happen, they've had a couple losing seasons now, but it's all will change, they're due to make their run. The Astro's magic will run out. And how is it completely illogical to not expect this team to approach 78 wins? They only won 82 games last season, and that was cause of the crazy win streaks they put together at the end of the season. I don't need attention, I'm giving my opinion.
Nope, BP sure didn't. You can add that to the laundry list of things they've gotten wrong. PECOTA is largely crapola. In any useful sense, anyway.
No worries, man. I was just reading other bizarre conversations in other bizarre forums and it all seemed to fit. I do know that my first child, may he be a masculine child, very well may be named Jesus Alou Box, Esq.
See, you have to look at both sides. Just like they had great luck at the end of the season, they had similarly bad luck at times before that. You can't just dismiss a team's win streak as "crazy" but act like everything else is routine. It's all part of it. The Cubs made moves. Guess what? So did we. They added Soriano, Mark DeRosa, Ted Lilly, Jason Marquis, and Cliff Floyd. The Astros two pitching additions - Jennings and Williams - are clearly better than Lilly and Marquis, and it's not even close. Lee is comparable to Soriano, and possibly better depending on how you value strikeouts. Loretta, for his career, is roughly equivalent to DeRosa. Yes, the Astros lost Pettitte, but a 4.20 ERA pitcher wasn't the only difference between the 'Stros and Cubs last season. Aside from that, the Astros improved more than the Cubs. Actually, for all you complain about the Astros rotation, the Cubs are starting Jason Marquis — he of the above 6 ERA — in the 3 spot in their rotation. The Astros' rotation looks like a group of All-Stars relative to their Cubs counterparts. The bullpens aren't even comparable... whatever you think of Lidge, Wheeler and Qualls are superior and more durable than almost anyone the Cubs have. And if Lidge returns to form, the difference is ridiculous. The lineups are similar... Astros have the advantages at first, left, and right, while the Cubs have advantages in center, catcher and third. Second and shortstop are tossups. I'm willing to bet I follow baseball and know the moves and lineups as well as anyone here, and to say the Cubs have superior big league talent to the Astros is hysterical and ridiculously illogical. Difference is, Cubs are more followed on a national level, so you hear a lot more about their moves (and the impact they might make) if you believe everything ESPN tells you. Given injuries, anything can happen, but the odds of the Cubs being better than the Astros this season are very low.
See, you're doing it again. You're counting the injuries to the Cardinals, but you're not counting injuries to Ensberg and other key members to the Astros. You're not factoring in Scott playing a full season vs. two months. The Cards are more consistent? Tell that to their fans who watched their collapse the final two weeks of the regular season. They had three seperate losing streaks during last season of 8 games or more... consistent? Please. Also, you seem to believe it's likely that the Astros won't have a late-season run, yet you act as though it's all but a given their early-season struggles will resume. See, that's where you come off as a whiner and a hater as opposed to an objective fan. You seem to emphasize the law of averages when it comes to things that are exceedingly positive (late-season win streaks, Cardinals' injuries, etc.), but when you're negative, you take it as a given that it's going to happen again. You can't do that. You're right in that the law of averages tells you the Astros might not have another great late-season rally, but the law of averages also says the Astros might not have as slow of a start. It goes both ways, yet you only examine one, and that's how you come off lacking objectivity.
