MadMax, Bill James's Pythagorean Expectation had the Astros overachieving last year. http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/HOU/2008_trans.shtml 86-75, 3rd place in NL Central Division Scored 712 runs, Allowed 743 runs. Pythagorean W-L: 77-84 Not a stretch to say that the Astros will slip 10 games this year.
Bill James has the Astros overachieving nearly every year I've read that. I have to say, I don't put a whole lot of stock in that.
In 2007, we performed 1 game better than expected. In 2006, we performed 1 game worse than expected. In 2005, we performed 2 games worse than expected. In 2004, we performed exactly as expected.
I'm actually a lot more optimistic about the pitching than the hitting. There are obviously a lot of pitching question marks, but if everything goes right (200 ip from wandy , Hampton healthy, moehler productive, bullpen pitching well,maybe norris coming up and contributing, etc) it could be an above average staff. I just don't see how they're going to score enough , even in reasonable bestcase scenarios, to be competitive.
When Drayton bought the team, he told whoever the GM was (Bob Watson?) that he wanted to win 135 games. Why the hell not?
FWIW The Venentian was the first book to post season total over/unders and the Astros are at 72.5. http://resultsdisoriented.blogspot.com/2009/02/2009-mlb-season-wins-overunder-numbers.html
