These are a few weeks old at this point, and they may have moved slightly since they were published, but VegasWatch did their annual post with over/unders from the online sportsbook Bet Online on February 20th. For the most part, they line up with conventional wisdom – the sports books are pretty good at what they do – but there are a few that stand out as opportunities for someone who might want to win a friendly contest with their friends. Not for money, of course. That would be wrong.

Anyway, here are three opportunities to take the over and three opportunities to take the under and potentially do okay.

Take the over.

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For an explanation of this series, please read the introduction from Monday. All the posts in the series can be found here.

This series was a lot of work, but it was also fun to go through each organization and look at some of the interesting projections that ZIPS has spit out for various starters. The projections listed below are a combination of rate stats projected by Dan Szymborski’s system combined with my estimation of innings pitched and then a calculation of WAR based on the combination of my quantity estimate and Dan’s projection of quality. These aren’t intended to be exact projections, which is why we’ve rounded to the nearest half win, but I think they’re probably going to fair pretty decently – I did do my best to ensure that the total IP and WAR projections lined up very closely with league totals from last year, and I tried to figure out the seven or eight most likely starters for each franchise – the depth chart information isn’t always crystal clear for every team, so I had to make some guesses, but I think the selections are reasonable in most cases.

There were definitely some surprises once I finished the calculations and sorted from top to bottom. If this a purely subjective exercise based on my opinion, some teams would move around a decent amount, but I’ve tried to make it clear where I think the ZIPS rate stats might be too high or too low on a specific group, or gave an explanation for the thinking behind the IP total. Besides the shocker in the top five, I’m pretty comfortable with most of these, and think they line up with general consensus pretty well. But, enough ramblings – on to the rankings.

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For an explanation of this series, please read the introduction from Monday. All the posts in the series can be found here.

This series was a lot of work, but it was also fun to go through each organization and look at some of the interesting projections that ZIPS has spit out for various starters. The projections listed below are a combination of rate stats projected by Dan Szymborski’s system combined with my estimation of innings pitched and then a calculation of WAR based on the combination of my quantity estimate and Dan’s projection of quality. These aren’t intended to be exact projections, which is why we’ve rounded to the nearest half win, but I think they’re probably going to fair pretty decently – I did do my best to ensure that the total IP and WAR projections lined up very closely with league totals from last year, and I tried to figure out the seven or eight most likely starters for each franchise – the depth chart information isn’t always crystal clear for every team, so I had to make some guesses, but I think the selections are reasonable in most cases.

There were definitely some surprises once I finished the calculations and sorted from top to bottom. If this a purely subjective exercise based on my opinion, some teams would move around a decent amount, but I’ve tried to make it clear where I think the ZIPS rate stats might be too high or too low on a specific group, or gave an explanation for the thinking behind the IP total. Besides the shocker in the top five, I’m pretty comfortable with most of these, and think they line up with general consensus pretty well.

Since we’re covering so many players and it just got incredibly long, we’ve split this post in two, with the second post set to run in a couple of hours. But, enough ramblings, on to the rankings.

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For those following the prospects for the upcoming draft, there’s some pretty huge breaking news that just came down from Baseball America:

BREAKING NEWS: RHP Lucas Giolito is out of the season for Harvard-Westlake. Sprained UCL. No surgery needed. 6-10 weeks rehab. #mlbdraft

— Nathan Rode (@BAHighSchool) March 7, 2012

Giolito was the consensus top high school arm in the draft, and his recent performances had created some talk that he might be in the mix for the first overall pick. That’s all out the window now, as a six to ten week rehab program means that scouts likely won’t see him on the mound again before the draft takes place in early June. If the injury isn’t as serious as it sounds, it’s possible he could do some throwing in May, but even that seems like a longshot.

Perhaps the most recent comparable situation involved Minnesota RHP Kyle Gibson, who was rated the #4 prospect in the 2009 draft before a stress fracture in his forearm caused him to miss the end of his junior season. The Twins ended up selecting Gibson 22nd overall, so the injury didn’t cause him to fall out of the first round entirely. After a promising year and a half in the minors, Gibson got hurt again last summer, and required Tommy John surgery last fall. He’s not expected to pitch in 2012.

Giolito’s upside is going to be too hard for teams to pass on, so I’d expect he’ll still go somewhere in the first round, but with stricter rules in place in regards to draft bonuses, it’s going to be harder for him to get a large paycheck from a team at the end of the first round. If Giolito isn’t willing to accept a dramatically reduced bonus from what he would have gotten as a top five pick, this may end up pushing him into the college ranks – he’s committed to UCLA if he does not sign with an MLB team this summer.

This news is a pretty big blow to the teams with early selections. Even if they weren’t planning on taking Giolito, this weakens the top of a draft class that was already a bit underwhelming.

Michael Pineda made his Yankee debut yesterday – at least, Yankee-debut-in-games-that-don’t-count anyway. He threw two innings, gave up just one hit, didn’t walk anyone, and struck out two batters. The results were pretty successful. However, as Ken Rosenthal reports, the process was slightly less impressive:

Scouts yesterday had #Yankees‘ Pineda at 88-91 – “and there was some effort to get to 91,” one said. Pineda averaged 94.7 last year. #MLB

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) March 6, 2012

A pitcher who sat in the mid-90s and regularly touched the upper-90s now throwing 88-91 could be cause for real concern. And, Keith Law even noted that at this time last year, Pineda was throwing much harder:

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Now that it’s March, you’re going to see a lot of different Season Previews popping up around the web. Some of these will go team by team, others will go division by division, and a few others will just talk about the expected contenders while giving short shrift to those who might not be ready to win just quite yet. We wanted to do something a little different, however, so starting today, we’re going position by position around the league, and comparing the relative merits of each team’s options at each spot on the field for 2012. This is only looking at the upcoming season and doesn’t account for potential long term value – we’re just concerned with what each team may get from a given spot on the field this year.

We’re going to kick it off this afternoon with catchers and first baseman, and we’ll do a couple posts per day until we get through the starters and relievers on Friday. The goal is that, by the end of the week, we will have provided a look at where each team is strong or weak, and what kind of performance a team can expect to get from their current in-house options.

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Continuing Major League Baseball’s trend of breaking news in the middle of the night (thanks guys!), Michael Senserino reported about an hour ago that the Pirates had agreed to a six year, $51 million contract with star center fielder Andrew McCutchen. No need to bury the lede here – this is nothing short of a fantastic signing for the Pirates.

Just 25 years old, McCutchen had just over two years of accumulated service time, so this deal buys out his final pre-arbitration season, all three of his arb years, and his first two years of free agency, while also giving the Pirates a team option (for $14.75 million) on what would be his third free agent eligible season. Barring an injury or a total collapse of his skills, that option looks very likely to be exercised, so the working assumption should be that the Pirates have locked up McCutchen’s age 25-31 seasons for $65 million.

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Shane Victorino has been pretty chatty about his contract lately. He’s said that he wants to stay in Philadelphia and will give the Phillies a “home town discount” in order to keep him, but then yesterday, he noted that his goal is to get a five year extension that would cover his age 32-36 seasons. Victorino’s been an underrated player for a while and has certainly been vital to the Phillies success, but can he really expect to land a five year contract next winter if he hits free agency, as his agents have suggested?

Here are the players that have signed contracts of five years or longer as free agents over the last five years.

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