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Wow. Replace trot with juan gonzalez, and youkilis with Alex Cabrera. Who IS Alex Cabrera? Japanese leagues, right? I've heard of him, but don't know much other than that he played for the D-Backs in 2000 and then went to Japan. I can't help but imagine how many times Papi(?) would get pitched around to get to Alex Cabrera and Juan Goninjured.

Hmmm. For 1-2 million I would take a shot at him, but his numbers have been god-awful from 2004 and 2005.

You lazy bastard You mean the PECTOA's for IP and AB's, right? Not all of the stats you listed match perfectly with PECOTA (though many are close). What about your projections plump. C'mon man, stick your neck out a little!

What you say is completely in line with SFoC's post, ORS. You guys both make great points that are larger and more philosophical than the topic "Sox offensive predictions" could possibly cover. You are both saying that forecasting baseball is both about statistics and motivation. As SFoC made very clear, there is tremendous bias inherent in any projection system that weighs any one variable over another (i.e., OBP is more important than AVG). It is an assumption that is made on a vast quantity of data, but that data is necessarily incomplete. The only way to get a "correct" answer about how to weigh any particular statistic is to have an infinite or complete set of data. But we haven't played next season yet so our set is incomplete. Experience helps us to dictate the rules we use and the laws we create. We can gleam that some level of projection works well. Bill James's pythagorean formula was pretty good, and working from that (like geometry) other likely laws/rules seem to come forth. That being said, it isn't always right. You can flip a coin 100 times and end up with 99 heads; the chances of it happening are infinitely small, but there nonetheless. So what the HELL am I saying? We can predict and use statistics all we want, but future uncertainty is the essence of why I am constantly excited by baseball. Baseball keeps statistics better than any other sport and has for a very long time. Despite all that objective knowledge the best science we can do with it is still ultimately based on individual players doing individual things. That being said, I too would much rather attempt to study the science of the thing than to pretend that no objective knowledge of baseball exists. At the same time, though, I'll still stick my neck out and make a prediction about next season. Its fun like that.

You're not predicting much from Schilling here Plump. I mean, his numbers actually aren't that bad, but the IP and ERA seem eerily similar to the 2006 PECOTA projections. Let's hope you (and they) aren't right. I thought PECOTA predicted 99.7 IP because it projects in terms of player trends and Schilling's injury would therefore drastically impact the number of IP for next year. Schilling looked a lot better to me at the end of the season last year so I'm expecting either something like what you predict (roughly 100 IP), or over 200 IP. One or the other. If he is ineffective then he likely won't throw too much, but if he's even partly effective then he will get the Wakefield-esque 14 wins and 200+ IP.

Yes, its crazy. Where are you hearing those rumors?

Is 360 too high or too low?

Here are my projections: Crisp: .301, 16 HR, 80 RBI, .352 OBP, .832 OPS (105 R, 18 SB) Loretta: .293, 10 HR, 65 RBI, .360 OBP, .815 OPS (89 R, 2 SB) Ortiz: .301, 42 HR, 137 RBI, .393 OBP, .948 OPS (110 R, 0 SB) Manny: .310, 39 HR, 130 RBI, .390 OBP, .953 OPS (114 R, 1 SB) Varitek: .283, 19 HR, 83 RBI, .359 OBP, .889 OPS (68 R, 2 SB) Lowell: .279, 17 HR, 85 RBI, .342 OBP, .781 OPS (71 R, 0 SB) Nixon: .288, 17 HR, 83 RBI, .352 OBP, .827 OPS (61 R, 1 SB) Youkilis: .305, 14 HR, 76 RBI, .372 OBP, .819 OPS (73 R, 0 SB) Gonzalez: .262, 9 HR, 72 RBI, .321 OBP, 798 OPS (79 R, 2 SB) I also think Pedroia will get a call up by early-mid season (late May perhaps), and will: Pedroia: .298, 2 HR, 42 RBI, .387 OBP, 843 OPS I think about half of the above predictions are low, and maybe half are high. It should be somewhere in the middle.

What do you consider to be adequate homework? Just curious Ksushi, nothing personal. I think the Ortiz prediction was crazy. Manny is one of the best RBI men in the last 50 years, perhaps the best. His best season was an ABSURD 165 RBI. Papi probably won't do that. I think the rest of those predictions were a LITTLE bit optimistic. What that means is that I think they are all good ceiling numbers. If every player plays to say 87% of their ceiling then those numbers might come out, but we have players in various states of ascention and decline, so it is optimistic to believe that all of them will produce at that level. Each of them COULD play as well as predicted (not counting Ortiz) but it is impossible to know which will and which won't. Some will. Some won't.

I don't think Ortiz is going to post 180 RBI. That would be one of the greatest RBI seasons since Gehrig and Hack Wilson. That's a bold prediction. If Gehrig was able to do it, then I suppose Ortiz could do it, but it just seems out of the rhelm of possibility in this day and age... we'll see, but 1.2 RBI per game seems a little lofty (I estimated the 1.2, it is at least 1+).

Hey Papi, CHILL OUT WITH THE SMILES AND THE THUMBS UP AND ALL THAT MAN!! Either slow down and make good posts or just go post in one of the topics that nobody reads... like, say, ANDREA BOCELLI (in the fights and crap section) or "Yo Yo Yo" also on the fights and crap page (page 11 I believe). At least write in semi-complete sentences and chill out with all the abbreviations. Am I the only one who is driven crazy by that s***? I hope not.

I feel like Damon broke up with the red sox and is still really uncomfortable. Sox nation is like the ex-girlfriend that he always truly loved, but he felt compelled to go toward the girl who puts out and doesn't demand the emotional ties that dating the Red Sox does. I imagine Damon will forever pine for that again and project that he will not be a very happy yankee overall. He just is seeming to have a real hard time finding closure; hopefully he finds it when he recieves the initial mix of boos and cheers his first at bat. It puts sox fans in a very difficult position. EVERYONE knows that, given what he did in Boston, he might deserve as long a standing ovation as any player in red sox history. Even williams never won a WS for the sox. His ovation SHOULD be much like the one Pedro will undoubtedly get upon his return. But it is ABSOLUTELY PUTRID to think about a standing ovation for any Yankee. I understand Roger got one, and I think yankees should get them upon retirement perhaps (Jeter should get a good one), but not a Yankee in his prime, ready and trying to beat the Red Sox. that is unacceptable. So I don't know what people will do. I imagine he will get a standing O, followed by boo's every time he comes to the plate.

I think that Theo said it right when he said that its not really valid to compare these players. they are at different stages of their career and have different specialties. What is important is how well they fit into the team they're on, the players they play with, the city, and the manager. Damon had to fit-in in one time, Crisp will have to do so in another. I think he will be very, very good for the next few years but I don't actually care if he is "better" than Damon. As long as he does everything he is supposed to do I'll be happy with him.

I think that just about covers it SFOC, thanks. So the redsox are spending about 13 million less... let's see, what could that get the red sox? Knowing their front office and the way they use money, I imagine it could get them TONS. While we may not find another David Ortiz for very cheap, it is likely that there are other really good players out there who can be had for 3-6 million and who will eventually be worth 11 million. I am very happy with how this FO has constructed their team. They took a poorly built, inflexible, overpaid team and turned it into a team deep in talent at up and down the order, on the bench, in the starting rotation and in the pen. With or without Foulke the pen will be quite strong IMO.

It will be a lonely year this year then huh walrus? I don't have anything particularly against Roger. The Red Sox released him, which means they released questionably the best pitcher of the last 50 years when he was still in his relative prime. I don't blame clemens for that. At the time I blamed him for going to the Yankees, but the sox beat him up pretty good and I didn't feel like he ultimately hurt them too much. If Roger comes to boston then the sox would have a great pitching staff. Same with the Yankees. If the Yankees pick up Clemens and DON'T win I think it would be the ultimate embarassment.

I don't know why it matters how much per year we are paying atlanta. In any case, we are paying them 11 million. For all I know the money could already have changed hands. What they got in exchange was Marte who we swung for Coco Crisp, a cheap player in an expensive player position, whom we control for the next 4 years.

2005: Yankees: 208,306,817 Red Sox: 123,505,125 http://www.onestopbaseball.com/teampayroll.asp EDIT: no, the red sox are not a small market team. Okay. Feel better now? The one analogy that comes to mind is drug use: people who use, be it alcohol or drugs, often rely on others as enablers, co-dependents, etc., The yankees are like the drunkard from college who keeps it up into his 30's when everyone else has stepped back. In case you didn't notice, the day of big spending was the late 90's and early 00's. Everyone throughout the league understood that Manny and A-Rod were truly absurd contracts. At the time everyone thought more and more players would keep earning more and more. A-Rod and Manny's contracts were like the bender or scarry drug experience that backs a lot of people off, be it a hangover or a scarry psychedelic experience. After a year or two people went "woah... maybe we've gone a little too far" and there hasn't been a larger contract yet. And GOOD players have signed contracts: beltran, vlad, pedro and nobody has come close to those. They are GIGANTIC contracts. So, yeah, the sox are a big market team. And they act like most other big market teams. Again, it is the Yankees who are the outliers, not the sox and yankees. The red sox are much more like the mets, dodgers, and angels than they are like the Kevin Brown/Giambi/Wright-kees.

That's a good point. I think both teams lost because they played the wrong team in the first round. The sox have done well against the Angels recently. I'm confident they could have won against them. Honestly, though, I don't think anyone would have done very well against the white sox last year. they were just peaking at the right time. And about the division, I have no problem with the Yankees getting it last year. The sox led for most of the season and ended up with the same record as the yankees, logically I see why the Yankees won, but I won't look back on that season with my kids and say "yeah, the yankees clearly won the division that year". They were neck and neck and were tied. Its one of those things that, looking back, I bet the sox and yankees both wish they could have played one another to finish it, but NOBODY wanted to play game 163 before the playoffs; not sox fans, or yankee fans, or the players themselves. It is only now, two months before the next season starts, that I wish they could have played it

And by second biggest payroll you are referring to a team that spent 85 MILLION DOLLARS LESS THAN THE YANKEES. That's the equivalent of me saying "yeah, all those other teams complain that our payroll is so much bigger than theirs, just because we spend 85 MILLION DOLLARS more than them. Hypocrites all!" Two reasons this argument is absurd: 1) If you accept the Red Sox/Yankees disparity as essentially even (i.e., they both spend a lot of money), and you accept that disparity to the degree that you are willing to say the sox are doing the same thing as the Yankees, then the same thing would apply for teams below the red sox. Any team within 85 million dollars of the Red Sox would be hypocritical to blame them for spending more. Teams within 85 million dollars of the Red Sox: Mets Angels Phillies Cardinals Giants Mariners Cubs Braves Dodgers Astros White Sox Orioles Tigers Padres Diamondbacks Reds Marlins Twins Rangers Athletics Nationals Rockies Blue Jays Guardians Brewers Wow. The Yankees spent more than 150 Million dollars more than the Twins, Rangers, A's, nationals, Rockies, Blue Jays, Guardians, Brewers, Pirates, Royals, and D-Rays. Wow. The Red Sox spent 100 million dollars more than nobody. 2) The red sox are currently ATTEMPTING to spend less money. Their payroll dropped from 2004 last year and they (as listed above) just got a number of players for the amount of money the Yanks are spending for Johnny Damon. Are we really grasping at straws here? Perhaps. I mean, the red sox spend the second most money of all teams. But that is a really naive way of looking at it. How can people on one hand say "the red sox are a big market team, they SHOULD spend money to be like the yankees", then I hear excuses like "YOU do it too, hypocrite" as if you know it is a bad thing, as if it is embarassing, and you're looking for a way out. The Red Sox spend 60% of what the Yankees do. Would you say that a pitcher with a lot of walks is a good pitcher because there is another pitcher who has 60% of his number? How about players who hit 60% the amount of RBI's, are they basically the same? Yankees payroll next year (according to hardballdollars.com), ASSUMING they had to pay the luxary tax: 255,780,000 -------------- Here's a neat little exercise. Go to this site and copy the spending for each team: http://www.onestopbaseball.com/TeamPayroll.asp Take that copied info, open Excel, and paste it in the first box. Then, with all that information cited, view it as a vertical bar graph. Look and tell me, which is more the outlier: The Yankees vs. the Red Sox and everyone else, or the Red Sox and all the other teams. I think you'll notice that there is a nice gradual progression leading from the poorest team gradually up to the Red Sox, and then, like freaking Angel Falls or the Grand Canyon a gigantic jump to the Yankees. Honestly man, its not even close. (if anyone knows how to paste that graph I will, but I couldn't figure it out). EDIT: forgot one 'e'

Well, let's see, the Sox "tied" for the division with the Yankees and lost to the eventual World Champ in the playoffs. They did so with a payroll that was considerably lower than the Yankees, so I would say it did pretty well. The goal is to get to the playoffs and hope that the team is playing well enough to get through. Mission accomplished.

Tejada doesn't have any "face of team" experience? You can't call Papelbon THE face of the franchise when you mean that the franchise has many faces. In that case, Tejada would be the face of the franchise too. So yeah, I want more about faces of teams I think Papelbon is great. He is likely going to be a great pitcher and has electric stuff. But you can't say that it is ridiculuous for someone to suggest getting Tejada for him. I wouldn't do the deal if I had the chance, but it is still pretty tempting. I understand building for the future, but adding Tejada to the top of a lineup that has 7 starting pitchers on it (even losing Papelbon, you get Lester). They would have a great shot at two or more world series over the next few years. But we've spent too much time on this stupid rumor. I just don't care that much and was simply throwing it out there.

Migueljuana. I was just throwing it out as conjecture, as the rumor that I was addressing involved Lester and someone for Tejada. Then I imagined the lineup that the sox would have with Tejada, and wondered: if necessary, which of those two players (Papelbon or Lester) would people trade. More as a thought experiment than anything. That's all we f***ing do here anyway, its not like me writing that means the deal has happened. s***, lay off the 98 font butchering of posts please. I think you should defend how Papelbon is the future face of our team? How do you know that? Is he charasmatic enough? Are there other faces in the way? I think that is a very hard thing to know one way or another. Couldn't lester be the face of that team, or how about David Ortiz? I hear Coco Crisp might be good one day, or how about the scrappy Dustin Pedroia? That seems like a lot of potential faces, not counting Craig Hansen or Jacoby ellsbury, or whoever else they buy when the next round of FA's happens.

26 to 6, I think I have expressed this before, but I think you are an excellent poster and are a valuable member of this community. So I ask, in all honesty, are you in the slightest embarassed by the amount of money the Yankees spend? I mean, everyone points to the Yankees and Red Sox, the big spenders. But its not even close. I mean, the Sox have made the playoffs for the past 3 seasons AGAINST the Yankees (i.e., sharing a division and many games). Two of those seasons they got to within 5 outs of going to the WS, and one of those they actually did. They have done this with the following payroll disparities: 2003: (Yankees: $169,588,508), (Boston $108,403,617) 2004: (Yankees: $187,918,394), (Boston $130,395,386) 2005: (Yankees: $208,306,817), (Boston $123,505,125) Total: Yankees: 565,202,142; Red Sox: 362,304,128 ...a difference of $202,898,014, or $67,632,671 per year. If they used that money intellegently they could have bought some good TEAMS for that much money. -------------------------------------------- That being said, Rivernator, I don't understand why you write that the Sox won't overpay for a player as if that is a bad thing.?..?? The yankees make lots of bad mistakes, and in order to make up for them they buy another marquee player. The sox don't do that and I'm proud of it. To me, spending that much money is lazy man's baseball. From the outside it seems that the yankees never have to get too deep into statistics or anything to justify their purchases. I assume that at some level they do, but I can't remember the last time the Yankees made a calculated move on par with the recent Crisp signing. When was the last time the Yankees got an "established up-and-comer" like that? The whole point of the luxuary tax is to help poorer teams get out from the bottom, so it is ridiculuous that the Yankees get to avoid the tax by building themselves a new stadium. They just get to spend that money to make themselves better? Well, that's a hard financial decision then isn't it? We save 15 million dollars by building a stadium right now? Okay, screw you Tampa and washington and Arizona. We're going to be more expensive than we ever have been and you're not getting one CENT. Sweet stuff. Sorry for the rant, but the fervor with which you are responding to every post on this board with your pro Yankee perspective incited it in me. The Yankees have not won a world series since they became the priciest team in baseball, yet you will come on here and insult sox fans for putting up with their owner who attempts to change the direction of a franchise so that it can be flexible? Our payroll dropped last year and I think it is clear that Henry has a ceiling. That doesn't mean he has a tolerance for losing, it means he lacks tolerance for stupidity. I for one am happy that the sox have proved to be one of the most intelligent teams the past few years. They have taken on one noticably bad contract, and through some fenagling they were able to convert it into Coco Crisp, even if they lost a little money. But at least they were frugle and smart enough to get rid of him. If the Red Sox want one of the Lee's they will offer him what they believe he is worth. What they can ensure that player of is being part of a competitive team, a fair market wage, a community that supports its players like no other, and the ability to become/remain a superstar on the national market. There is nothing wrong with that and it should keep players coming in for a fair market value as long as there are good players.

Yeah, Mulder had a pretty good year last year. His numbers have dropped though, and it seems like his best years were a few years ago. For THIS to be his drop though still makes him a pretty darn good pitcher. For some reason I never really think he is very good when I watch him, but he tends to do okay. The last few years his OBP against has gone up considerably into the .330 area (before it was consistently under 3). This has effected his OPS numbers as well, into the .750 area (for point of comparison, Beckett has never had an OPS against of .690). Perhaps that's why he's never impressed me too much; he's not a power pitcher really. In any case, he's still a pretty good 2 (or, hopefully, if your team is good, a 3).

People think Pedroia is going to be good because he has been good throughout the minors. If the guy wasn't 5 '8 or whatever he would likely have gone much higher in the draft; everyone knew he had tools and a great personality but they were scared of his body. He has tremendous patience at the plate and some pop too. Oh yeah, he was also 2003 NCAA defensive player of the year, and the 2005 Red Sox Minor League Offensive Player of the Year. The guy has won award after award coming through and pretty much everyone who sees him play agrees that he will be a very productive major leaguer. Again, its all about the plate discipline. It is worth noting, however, that 1) you're right that he hasn't played a MLB game yet, and 2) I think the sox are VERY open to the idea of getting ANOTHER short stop for their future, if the right guy came along. Pedroia would be great at 2nd or SS, but if you get the chance to land a top-notch SS you should, because Pedroia projects to be the best 2nd baseman in the game IMHO.