Division Preview: NL West
We’re just a week from Opening Day, and while our Positional Power Rankings series is designed to give an overview of each team’s strengths and weaknesses, it’s still helpful to look at each team in the context of their division. So, today, I’m kicking off our divisional previews, and we’ll knock out each division — going west to east — over the rest of the week. Today, we’ll start with the NL West.
The Projected Standings
| Team | Wins | Losses | Division | Wild Card | World Series |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dodgers | 91 | 71 | 73% | 13% | 13% |
| Padres | 83 | 79 | 16% | 24% | 3% |
| Giants | 80 | 82 | 8% | 16% | 1% |
| Diamondbacks | 74 | 88 | 2% | 4% | 0% |
| Rockies | 74 | 88 | 1% | 3% | 0% |
Our forecasts suggest that there’s a clear favorite at the top, two teams in a pretty close fight for second, and two also-rans who are unlikely to make a serious push for the postseason. Let’s take a closer look at each team.
Los Angeles Dodgers
While the Dodgers starting line-up is very good — and their rotation could be excellent if they ever get their projected starting five to pitch on consecutive days — this is really a team that projects well because of their depth. Essentially every position on the diamond is covered by a useful redundancy, and at a few positions, their starting-caliber players go three or even four deep. No one in baseball is more immune to position player injuries (or down years) than the Dodgers.
Things aren’t quite the same in the rotation, though. Hyun-Jin Ryu is already having shoulder problems, which is a worrisome development given how his 2014 season ended. Brandon McCarthy and Brett Anderson are both significant health risks, and even Zack Greinke isn’t quite up to speed after starting camp late because of a seemingly minor elbow issue. If there’s a way for the Dodgers season to go wrong, this is it; they don’t have a lot of extra major league starters hanging around. If Ryu is out for any real length of time and one or two of the others end up on the DL as well, the Dodgers could be scrambling for pitching in a hurry.
Of course, their positional player depth — and apparently unlimited stockpile of money — means that they have the resources to acquire starting pitching in-season if need be, but there often aren’t very many useful arms available early in the season, and if things go off the rails health-wise in April, the Dodgers could end up finding themselves trying to dig out of an early hole. Especially with Kenley Jansen out for the first month of the year, a slow start is certainly possible, and the team should mostly just want to hang around with San Diego and San Francisco for the season’s first month.
If May rolls around and the Dodgers in first place, the rest of the division is in trouble. This team is only likely to get stronger as the year goes on, and they’re going to be hard to run down late in the year. If they can keep things afloat to start the year while waiting on Ryu and Jansen to recover, expect them to run away with the division. The best hope for everyone else is that the Dodgers talent-over-health bets all go terribly wrong, and the team ends up dramatically underperforming on the pitching side.
San Diego Padres
The Padres are probably 2015’s most interesting team, as they changed course in a dramatic way this winter. The team loaded up on right-handed power, and as a result, it’s a safe bet they won’t struggle to score runs as they did a year ago. The questions now relate to how well they’ll do everything else.
The outfield defense isn’t going to be good, not with Wil Myers moving back to center field and an aging Matt Kemp flanking him to one side, but the Padres do have an advantage of having a pitching staff that almost universally specializes in strikeouts, which may mitigate some of the team’s defensive issues. But like the Dodgers, there are some real injury concerns on the pitching staff, and the team probably shouldn’t count on getting 30 starts from anyone besides James Shields and Ian Kennedy. In fact, the Padres are in many ways the anti-Dodgers, with a frontline that could absolutely compete for the division but a very weak secondary group that could be exposed if pushed into action.
Even among the everyday players, there are needs for real upgrades, with essentially the entire infield consisting of below average big leaguers, and not many good options behind those already-weak starters. The roster is also somewhat strangely aligned, as the team’s biggest source of depth comes in the outfield, which is where their most prominent starters occupy all the everyday jobs, making job-shares basically impossible. Swapping an outfielder or two for a shortstop or a third baseman could be a deal worth making, but that’s been true for a while now, and yet Alexi Amarista and Will Middlebrooks still have starting jobs.
There’s absolutely contender upside here, especially if Matt Kemp and Justin Upton regress less than the projections expect. If you see those guys as legitimate stars, then this is probably one of the five best teams in the National League. If those guys are more above-average players, then there’s probably not enough else on the roster to keep up with the Dodgers. But the Wild Card race is wide open, and the Padres certainly have enough talent to be in the mix for one of those spots all year long. There’s a lot of downside here too, though, and if they don’t find an infield upgrade or two, this could end up being a roster that is let down by the weak links in the chain.
San Francisco
The .500ish projection feels a bit light for the defending champs, but we do need to remember that the Giants only won 88 games a year ago; they weren’t one of baseball’s very best teams until October. Replacing Pablo Sandoval with Casey McGehee is a downgrade; even if the Giants may very well be right about the wisdom of signing Kung Fu Panda long-term, it will come at a short-term cost. Toss in Hunter Pence‘s injury, and this line-up looks particularly weak at the moment, as Nori Aoki’s projected .316 wOBA will be the third highest forecast of the Opening Day starters.
This team is going to have to win with run prevention, and that may very well come down to how close Matt Cain can get back to being the Matt Cain of old instead of just an old Matt Cain. If he gets back to prior levels, this rotation could be very good, but that’s certainly far from a guarantee. The team is betting on on veterans like Cain and Jake Peavy to stem off decline and continue to pitch at a high level, which is a bit of a high-risk proposition. They have enough rotation depth that the pitching staff is unlikely to fall apart, but the mediocre offense is going to need substantial contributions from the mound in order to keep up with Los Angeles and San Diego; Ryan Vogelsong is probably not good enough to make up for an offense that may struggle to score runs.
The roster is also somewhat hard to easily upgrade, as there aren’t any glaring holes anywhere that could be improved by simply importing a warm body who provides a little bit of value. The Giants already have decent role players in place at most positions, but beyond Buster Posey and Madison Bumgarner, there aren’t a lot of high-end performers in place. The Giants have historically done very well at getting strong seasons from surprising sources, and they’ll likely need to hit on a few of those once again if they’re going to get back to October this year.
Arizona Diamondbacks
I will fully admit that I don’t really get what the Diamondbacks are doing. They’re seemingly trying to get younger while also still trying to win, but I don’t see a contender here, nor do I love the collection of young talent they’ve stockpiled. The rotation looks particularly poor from my vantage point, a collection of bad-command guys who throw hard mixed in with guys who throw the ball down the middle and hope it doesn’t get crushed.
Paul Goldschmidt is one of the game’s best players and one of the most valuable assets in the sport. But the drop-off from their franchise player to the supporting cast is steeper than you’ll find with any other franchise, and it’s hard for me to even imagine how many players would have to have career years for the Diamondbacks to make a playoff run this year.
The Phillies will likely keep them from being the worst team in the National League this year, but at least Philadelphia is now paying the cost for previously borrowing from their future to build rosters that won on a regular basis. This Arizona team doesn’t look particularly good to me now, I don’t see an obvious path to improvement going forward, and their fans don’t even have recent successes to hang their hats on.
Things will eventually get better in the desert. I’m just not sure when that will be or how long that will take.
Colorado Rockies
The Rockies are the Padres if all the Padres starting pitchers got hurt at once. At the top end of the roster, there are some very good pieces, with Troy Tulowitzki remaining one of the game’s very best players when he’s on the field. But once you get past Tulo, Nolan Arenado, Carlos Gonzalez, and Corey Dickerson, the rest of this roster is just not very good. And that’s why everyone is simply sitting around waiting for the Rockies to trade their star players.
This should probably be the year they do that. Tulowitzki is now 30 years old; the longer they hold him, the less valuable he gets. The team has not really committed to a full rebuild yet, but once it becomes clear that they aren’t contending in 2015 — and given that Kyle Kendrick is their Opening Day starter, that shouldn’t take long — then it’s going to be time to put Tulo on the block and really start making moves for the future. They’ve got a few trade pieces that are going to be in high demand, so if new GM Jeff Bridich can swing a couple of good trades, this rebuild might not take more than a few years. But it needs to start this year. There just isn’t enough talent here to make a serious run unless everything goes right at once, and even then, the risk of the annual Tulowitzki injury could undo a miracle run at any moment.
Let the stars prove they are healthy, then sell. It’s not going to be the most fun thing to watch in the second half, but it’s the right plan for the Rockies.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
I’m not saying middlebrooks will be a star or close to that, but I suspect Amarista will have a considerably worse season. And no I’m not considering the spring stats. I think padres will have a new starting SS by August.
“The Padres are probably 2015’s most interesting team”
This sentence is utterly hilarious, even if it might be true.
I don’t get it. Seems true enough.
Even when they were good, they were boring. Boring colors, boring name, boring city. An interesting Padres team just seems so incongruous.
Agree.
I mean… they had a bullpen a few years ago that self identified as the “pen-itentiary”. Sounds pretty exciting to me.
Not even from San Diego but have to come to its defense. Who says its boring? Sure “Padres” and their colors could be boring but this just sounds like you needed a third thing in that list. San Diego is a great city. Where are you from?
Reminds me of when the Clippers were supposed to be the NBA’s most interesting team. No one was buying it.
boring team, anything but boring city
Don’t know why you’re being downvoted, this is absolutely true. The Padres have historically been the least interesting team in baseball, however they play. My Giants faced them about 600 times in 2008 and I don’t know if I could remember 5 names from that team.
And I like San Diego, but it’s a town without weather, without history, without any interesting architecture or unique culture. It’s a nice place to live, but as major cities go, it’s as bland and forgettable as its baseball team.
Watch Tommy Medica. Don’t think this will be his breakout year but I expect him to steal the starting 1B job from Alonso by the time the season is over. I have liked what I’ve seen so far from Matt Kemp in ST in that he doesn’t look so washed up like I was worried he might. I’m most nervous about our SS situation.
Medica’s first priority is going to be earning the bulk of the playing time at 1B in El Paso. And if he does get it (he’ll be in a rotation with Alex Dickerson and Jake Goebbert), his second priority will be not repeating his lack of performance as the starting 1B in El Paso last spring.
If Alonso remains unsustainable, the organization is going to have incentive to continue to look for a LHH option at the position. If they choose to defer to a RHH hitter, the first two guys to get a crack at it are likely Middlebrooks and Myers.
Opening with the NL West? #stopwestcoastbias
Sounds like Fangraphs hasn’t watched any Padres spring training games. Myers has been reliably average in CF.
If the had it would still be irresponsible to conclude that as an individual watching the games. Defensive stats are not entirely reliable in a full, one-year, sample, and one individual’s opinion is certainly not more reliable than them.
I’m an expert.
Source: I watched the spring training games.
I know. They’re almost acting as though spring training defensive stats aren’t valid or reliable.
What’s with this website?
scouts can do that, fangraphs is an analytics site. Thus unless they want to do the same thing that mainstream sites do, which is rely on scouts, they can’t very well say that.
I guess Dave is finally admitting the Padres are contenders.
Yet still they aren’t.
Pretty clearly are.
As long as they’re tied with the Dodgers, as they are now, they’re contenders.
They should enjoy being tied for first, however, because they won’t finish close to the Dodgers.
I am not claiming they will compete with Dodgers for division, Dodgers should have no issue winning it by at least 5 games. But they absolutely are contenders via wildcard.
Everyone but like three teams will be a contender for the wild card through about August.
Except that Dave has consistently been laughing at every Padres attempt to improve their team throughout their offseason. He said they needed 3 Babe Ruths in order to be competitive this year.
The ability to replace Pablo Sandoval’s production is much exaggerated. 3 straight years of declining slash lines with yo-yo defense. Predicting a sub-500 year from the Giants and a 11 game distance for the Dodgers looks sort of like declaring eventual world champion front offices 20 something best in the game multiple times.
Matt Kemp looks great so far. This is a guy who slashed 309/365/606 in the 2nd half of 2014, will play with a huge chip on his shoulder and is only 30 years young still. Padres-Dodgers games should be quite exciting this year, if only to see what Kemp does. The scorn for his defense is high comedy at this point, and he’s not going out to CF this year. If there’s one thing missing from all the analysis of the new GMs in the NL West, its the fact the Dodgers have a big chunk out of their (good) offense, that has been rubbed over by a starry eyed worship of Andrew Friedman.
Oh, and Matt Cain gets his pixie dust back, look out for the Giants.
based on what?
Then please please discover the method the Giants use to beat their statistical projections, because that’s what that prediction is. It’s not Dave’s personal opinion.
They easily made up for that with defense anyway. Kendrick is better than Gordon in both respects. Rollins is a much better defender than Hanley. Pederson is a much better defender than Kemp, who didn’t have a spot anyway. Plus, Grandal should hit way better than Ellis. They lost offense at SS and gained it at 2B and C.
Let’s not act like going from hanley to this years version of Rollins is anything but a huge downgrade. On the giants tho it’s not just that they have to replace a good 3B, rotation has questions after bumgarner
Sure, but my point is they made other clear upgrades, and emphasizing the loss of offense (which is overblown as it is) is ignoring an important part of the equation. On top of that, retaining Hanley at shortstop was not an option, so they needed to get a SS anyway. There wasn’t a place for Hanley to play on the 2015 team.
Sandoval put up (in declining 12-13-14 order) roughly a 280/335/420 slash line. Whether he can make it to that line this year (aided by Fenway and the AL East bandboxes) remains to be seen, but that’s what they are looking at. That’s well within reach of McGehee or somebody else.
The rotation is indeed a big questionmark, with 3 old veterans depending on savvy over substance in Peavy, Hudson and Vogelsong.
Defense: his CF play is sub-par. He missed 7 plays in LF and 7 plays in RF last year. While recovering from injury. Based also on actually watching him play over half the games last year. Is he a plus defender? Of course not. Is he giving back his hitting with his defense in RF (where he will play)? No he is not.
There’s been plenty of personal opinion over the years, including last year when they were declared the worst bullpen in the league. (Not Dave, Jeff) And yet… 3 rings in 5 years.
Pederson is going to be in for an experience once the league gets a book on him after his first month. Depending on a rookie is a big gamble. Good thing Crawford and Ethier are still around to fake it. Defensive metrics matter, but they can also be exaggerated in importance. I’d be worrying about Rollins and Kendrick’s age, something that has been glossed over in these pages.
But, on the other hand, Dodgers replaced him – probably a slightly below average RF – with Pederson, who is by all accounts probably an average CF. Even using a conservative positional adjustment, that’s about a 10 run difference. Kemp very likely will be more than 10 runs better than Pederson with the bat, but considering the other areas where the Dodgers improved, it’s not nearly enough to consider them significantly worse.
I also watched a lot of Matt Kemp playing in the outfield. It was not pleasant, not that either of our eyes are worth much.
I remember that article. That article was also based on the statistical projections.
Again, if you’ve figured out what the Giants do that the projections don’t consider, please share.
Cool. That’s a gamble that teams are basically constantly taking. Luckily for the Dodgers, they have a great bench, including Van Slyke, who you didn’t even mention.
Age is not a cliff. The projections account for it and as such they are obviously not projected to get better, but even accounting for expected decline, they should be good players, Kendrick especially. He’s 30, not 40.
The drop-off in the Dodger shortstop offense should be very small. You’re probably looking at ~140 starts from Rollins and ~20 starts from Turner/Guerrero this season, which can’t be much worse (and you could make a case it will be better) than 2014’s ~100 starts from Hanley and ~60 starts from Rojas. People keep forgetting how injury-prone Hanley is, although playing LF in Fenway should help out his durability.
Kendrick is going to be 32. Rollins is 36. Rollins has been league average or below for 7 years now. His slashes the last 4 years are not pretty, I think that’s ignored big time while everybody breaths a sigh of relief its not Hanley R out there. (Definitely oft injured to boot that Hanley). Kendrick is a good player. They have him for a year. Its definitely an interesting trade to watch: Dee Gordon, Andrew H and Kendrick. Everybody seems to assume Gordon will regress, but he’s 26, and has figured out a lot about hitting in the past two years. I don’t think its a slam dunk win for the Dodgers. this could be a huge beat.
I actually do know a couple things the Giants have figured out.
I did not mention Van Slyke, who is a great 4th OF. The bench, its good. For the amount of money sitting on it, it should be good.
Please share. If it’s something that can be used to improve a projection system, then it’s pretty silly of you to whine that these systems underrate the Giants while you know why they underrate the Giants.
You mistake whining for busting balls on three years of bad predictions. Fangraphs has missed again. and again. and again. You’re a frequent commentator, you know most of it because you’re on every article about the Giants: more advanced defensive metrics then is publicly available, a love of “clutch” hitting that gets so mocked, high contact rates and some other things that I don’t feel like sharing. And the ability to fill in on the fly.
You mistake unconstructive criticism for anything anyone should ever care about.
Fangraphs didn’t think the Giants would win the world series and then the Giants won the world series. Scathing.
If you don’t know enough about those things you mentioned to help improve the projection system, then you don’t know about them, period. You may think the Giants have sought out clutch hitters successfully, but if you can’t show that it’s a scouting skill they have, and not just the way that things have worked out lately, then you’re just bragging out of hindsight based on post hoc cherry-picking.
If you can show that the Giants have successfully targeted clutch hitting, and it works, and you choose to whine (sorry, bust balls) instead of add to our collective knowledge, then I guess it just makes me kind of sad.
You have a whole blog dude. You ever done an article about how the Giants have actually purposely sought out or developed players who are good clutch hitters? With evidence?
Sad, sad Bip. I love how you speak for “we”. The collective readers of fangraphs. I’m very specific about who I’m talking about – Dave Cameron and a couple other fangraphs writers. And yes, I’ve been busting balls, here and there, for a while.
The emphasis actually hasn’t been on hitters though, its been on pitchers. And if Jeremy Affeldt wasn’t clutch, the Giants don’t have one ring, much less 3. Yes, they have targeted players like that (and overpaid according to WAR obsessed writers/bloggers/commentators) and have come up shiny for their efforts.
Proving things in baseball gets murky. Stats and scouts, blended together. That’s the big story with the G’s.
1988.
But this part was Dave’s opinion, and its absolute bollocks: “Of course, their positional player depth — and apparently unlimited stockpile of money — means that they have the resources to acquire starting pitching in-season if need be,” – they found out last year that every team put the price at Urias, Seager or Pederson and slammed the door in their face. And that will happen again, no matter the TV money deal they’ve got themselves into.
…they do have those three players, though, which means – if they want to – they can in fact acquire starting pitching in-season if need be.
You disagreed with Dave’s opinion and then proved him right.
When it comes to the NL West, and the Giants, Dave Cameron has been wrong a ton in the past five. The Dodgers aren’t trading Urias or Seager for anything. They should have traded Pederson last year.
They should have traded Pederson and put who in center field?
Your point is what exactly? That teams are putting a Dodger tax on their trade offers? Because that’s absurd, particularly for AL teams. Teams are going to make the best deal for themselves. Intentionally asking for a package they know the Dodgers won’t give up is the same as simply saying they won’t trade with the Dodgers… which, again, is absurd.
Also, recall the past offseason where the Dodgers made roughly a billion trades, got such valuable pieces as Kendrick, Rollins, Grandal, and a nice package of role players from Miami, without giving up their top three (or four, or five.)
Actually, great point. There is a dodger tax. Teams refuse to pay for the Dodgers to unwind their previous trades/contracts. The Kemp trade was extremely light, and Crawford/Ethier are basically refusals unless the Dodgers eat the contract – which is why they haven’t moved. The new regime had to eat Haren’s salary to get rid of him, and couldn’t find a buyer for Wilson so they ate that to boot.
The Dodgers made about five trades, not a billion, and while complex due to having multiple clubs involved, involved a lot of salary eating to get things done. One year of Howie Kendrick for Dee Gordon and eating Haren’s contract.
But the point was about starting pitching. The expectation that you’re going to snap your fingers and get top shelf starting pitching is hilariously bad. That will cost top prospects. And while the new regime is sorting out the old’s “depth” – nobody is going to trade for Alex Guerrero, or Justin Turner, or any of this so called position player depth. They’ll want the young controllable talent, ie the stuff the Dodgers cannot afford to give up (on multiple levels, because this TV deal is going to get them sweating in a couple of years when Time Warner’s sponsors have all ran for the hills).
That’s a very your opinion thing to say.
because those two are overpaid by any standard, not because of a Dodger tax.
The new regime got some pretty good stuff back for eating Haren’s contract. And, honestly, again, are you saying another team would have had takers for Wilson? Wilson of no team on March 30th?
Your bias is pretty obvious by this point. You’re simply ignoring any information that contradicts your perception of the events.
The point of the depth is to use it, not to trade it. The Dodgers don’t need to lean on the trade market to fill a bunch of holes because they don’t have those holes. Their rotation is the one spot where their depth isn’t great, but even then their rotation should be better than the Giants’ and Padres’.
I look forward to Dee Gordon’s BABIP scores. Then we’ll see what’s what.
And the Giants are moving ahead of the Orioles for most butt-hurt fan base of 2015! It’s still very early though.
Granted it’s just one guy. But so, so much butt-hurt. “WAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH DAVE DOESN’T THINK WE’RE GOOD!” is a concise summary of his last 20 posts. As if Dave personally completed these projections, and/or as if one person’s opinion of where the Giants will finish matters even a bit.
The Dodgers are looking at a LF of Ethier and Crawford until the have to face reality and note that Van Slyke is the least bad option of the bunch.
Asserting that “Kemp didn’t have a spot” is not a reflection of the actual baseball abilities of the outfielders they controlled four months ago.
Kemp can only play RF, so if you keep him, that’s where he plays. Joc is the only one who is decent in CF, so he has to play there. Then you’re left with Puig, Ethier and Crawford sharing LF, with Ethier and Crawford as your bench. Then you’re very likely wasting Van Slyke in the minors.
Ethier and Crawford are clearly the most expendable, and I’m sure the Dodgers would love to trade them, but, well… And they aren’t trading Puig, and they also don’t want to trade Joc and be forced to play Puig in center, so that leaves Kemp. Of all their outfielders, Kemp is probably the most overrated, given that he hit will in the second half, which is the media’s favorite split. Crawford is probably the most underrated, given that he’s actually still a decent player (though still not worth the contract).
Basically, by process of elimination, Kemp is the one they have to trade. Ethier and Crawford don’t have enough trade value, and Puig and Pederson they’d prefer to keep.
The Dodgers are looking at a LF of Ethier and Crawford until they have to face reality and note that Van Slyke is the least bad option of the bunch.
Asserting that “Kemp didn’t have a spot” is not a reflection of the actual baseball abilities of the outfielders they controlled four months ago.
It’s actually Dave’s job to discover how the Giants beat their statistical projections. And he doesn’t do it. Publishing articles that just regurgitate projections is boring and lazy. He’s an analyst and a writer. Writers should be adding value. Projections are good, but they’re not perfect.
Articles are subjective. If he wants to avoid “personal opinion” just publish the numbers without any words. Words always add an element of “opinion”. Dave needs to embrace this and use his “opinion” to add to the discussion.
Regardless of what Dave does, Shankbone is taunting the person who is actually exposing his views to criticism, based on nothing but hindsight. It’s totally valid to investigate whether the Giants have discovered some source of value that the projections don’t account for. Dave hasn’t done so, but then again no one can investigate everything that’s worth investigating. Dave also, presumably, is not convinced that the Giants have beat the projections, and so would naturally be less inclined to investigate.
However, to be so convinced, and to have no impulse to investigate, and to do nothing but troll a literal statistical algorithm is more worthy of criticism than whatever Dave is doing.
The statistical projections are so ubiquitous here because as much as we think we can, we can’t actually do better than the projections. The reason why this is the case is that if someone thinks of a way to consistently do better than the projections, that knowledge is then used to improve the projection.
The reason why Dave and articles based on projections have received so much criticism (much more than other types of articles) is because of the arrogant attitude. We can’t beat actually beat projections. Yes we actually can. Through better projections. Through identifying the flaws of projection systems and making them better. Dave should not be disinclined to think the Giants have beat projections. He should be open to them. That’s the scientific method. Closing it down and saying “we can’t actually beat projections” and therefore reference them like gospel is groupthink and will prevent better articles and better writing and better analysis and better projection systems.
I recommend checking out Dan Szymborski’s articles on ESPN that he writes about ZiPS. The tone is far less arrogant and he doesn’t use ZiPS as if it were fact already. He doesn’t berate front offices but gives a lot of credit to them assuming that front offices know ZiPS. Dave assumes front offices don’t know the projections. He also talks a lot more in terms of percentages and odds. For example, he doesn’t assume that the Dodgers will win the division. There’s still a 1 out of 4 chance that the Dodgers don’t win the division and Dave writes like its 1 out of 100. It’s really different tone of writing.
I thought you were a little harsh on the Diamondbacks. They are going to suck this year, though as you said probably won’t be the worst team in baseball. However, I think they will be competitive sooner than later. They have some good #3-#5 options in Collmenter, Anderson and Patrick Corbin coming back from TJ. Add in their deep stable of pitching prospects: Bradley, Shipley, Blair,and Lopez and I think they could field a respectable if not good rotation next year and going forward. Hitting wise they have a lot of young guys with potential to be solid regulars in Lamb, Owings, Ahmed, Drury in the infield and Pollock, Inciarte, and Peralta in the outfield. Catcher is the only gaping hole long term, but could be addressed at some point.
A list of seven guys “with the potential to be solid regulars” is a great way to come up with two guys who are solid regulars.
One superstar, two solid regulars and a “respectable if not good rotation” sounds an awful lot like a team that’s in great position to be bad for a long time.
“I’m just not sure when that will be or how long that will take.”
Please report to the Department of Redundancy Department at once!
Honestly the reason every year they get the O’s and Giants projections wrong is pretty simple. The managers of the two teams are F’ing Magicians, and its GM’s are amazing at finding trash can players who blowup for a season or half a season. These two things are not possible to project and break down into numbers, God I bet Sabean Doesn’t even know what ragtag Vet hes going to get for free this year that starts in the playoffs and is good how could Fangraphs predict that?
None of this is OMG THEY HATE MY TEAM BIAS its just honestly impossible to predict some of this stuff. If your team beats projections constantly it means your Manager/GM are great at there job and you should just be extremely happy as a fan, not on some tirade constantly “Bustin ballz” about it. (Not only you also the O’s Fans are just as bad (PPS Im from Baltimore so I love my O’s))
I was skeptical of the real effect managers have on baseball until Showwalter was hired by the O’s. That first half season that AWFUL team he took over at the AS break played playoff quality baseball. Could just be a blip/luck but it has continued since the dude is just a beast.
Not a Giant fan, but if this is true, then Dave should say it. The problem is that Dave doesn’t act like there is anything the projections don’t know. I’m sure if you press him, he’d admit it, but he doesn’t volunteer it in his articles. Instead they keep writing articles defending projections. We want to see articles highlighting the flaws of projections and how to possibly improve them, not more articles that defend them and act like they are gospel.
I think anyone will admit they aren’t perfect, but Dave probably can’t think of specific ways that they are wrong. I do agree with you though about something. I would love a periodic “projection review” article. Basically, every year or half-year they should look at the teams and players that deviated most significantly from the projections, and just ask “could this have been predicted? can we learn anything from this?” However, this is a preseason article, so this is exactly not the time to do that.
What’s weird about the Giants and Orioles is that they have “overperformed” in different ways. I don’t think the Giants have actually significantly overperformed their regular season projections. They’ve been a good-not-great regular season team, and I think that’s what they’ve been projected to be. It’s just in the postseason where they do better than anyone would predict. The O’s really do seem to actually win more regular season games than projected though. I wonder if both of those could have a similar explanation, or if it’s totally different, or if it’s all just luck.
I think the interesting thing in SD is really the infield. As much as everyone at Fangraphs seems contractually obligated to include the fact that the outfield defense is worse in their articles-are we really sure Gyorko and Middlebrooks are both below average?
I mean, if we’re counting on regression for Justin Upton (why? Certainly it cannot be because of age) then isn’t it part of a normal cycle that some of the younger guys actually do get better?
As per the Padres pitching-yes….if their top 4 starters get hurt, they’re in trouble….isn’t that true of anyone though?
Well Mark typically defense peaks early.
Most guys if they are bad (Unless its something fixable like throwing errors, lack of reps at a position for example) they don’t improve by a lot. They have 4-6 years of evidence that gyorko and Middlebrooks are not amazing defenders, Could they be average this year? sure, but expecting anything more is unreasonable.
I don’t think the Giants beat projections. The Giants are a team that is very good in the playoffs. They barely made the playoffs in 2010, they were the 3rd best record in the NL in 2012 and they were the 2nd wild card in 2012. In 2011 and 2013 they missed the playoffs completely. The Giants are just a solid veteran team with players who play better in important games than players on other teams. It has more to do with the psychology of these players than the skills of these players.
I don’t think the Giants beat projections. Projections mean nothing in the playoffs. The Giants are a team that is very good in the playoffs. They barely made the playoffs in 2010, they were the 3rd best record in the NL in 2012 and they were the 2nd wild card in 2012. In 2011 and 2013 they missed the playoffs completely. The Giants are just a solid veteran team with players who play better in important games than players on other teams. It has more to do with the psychology of these players than the skills of these players.
The main point i was making is that RIGHT now it looks like the Giants are XXX good, Once the year starts maybe the Padres fall apart and the Rockies get hurt like normal, they basically get a ton of free wins off two doormats that have rolled over. The Management of that team is really really good, they will find a way to make it work and you cant show that in the numbers/projections.
It’s really fascinating how many teams now follow the compete for the wildcard and get lucky with a crazy October approach to baseball now.