harmony

Will the Houston Astros win 16 fewer games than last year (and the Seattle Mariners six fewer games)? That falls within the realm of possibilities as the vastly improved Texas Rangers and Los Angeles Angels may make the AL West baseball's toughest division. Or not.

FanGraphs has posted its playoff odds: https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds

A more accurate example is needed: https://usctrojans.com/sports/football/opponent-history/university-of-nebraska/124

The chances of the Red Sox winning at least 85 games are less than the chances of the Athletics winning at least 62 games. IMHO ZiPS projects the Red Sox to win only seven games more than the Athletics: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-2023-start-of-spring-zips-projected-standings-american-league/ More projections: https://www.baseballprospectus.com/standings/

Another account, this time from NESN: https://nesn.com/2021/03/red-sox-prospects-jay-groome-scouting-report-outlook-2021/

Kenley Jansen reportedly is off to a slow start at Spring Training:

mvp 78 remains a valued contributor.

As the linked article continues: "He continued to impress scouts upon returning to the mound, but his standing as the consensus No. 1 prospect was gone, and some scouts began to question his elite standing." Groome may be running out of time to live up to the early hype as the lefthander approaches his 25th birthday in August.

FWIW Jay Groome was the seventh pitcher taken in the June 2016 draft: https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?year_ID=2016&draft_round=1&draft_type=junreg&query_type=year_round Groome was the fifth high school pitcher taken in that draft (behind Ian Anderson, Riley Pint, Braxton Garrett and Matt Manning). Groome and Pint have yet to make MLB debuts.

Boston and Seattle were situated much differently on July 30 when the Mariners traded Noelvi Marte, Edwin Arroyo, Andrew Moore and Levi Stoudt to the Reds for righthander Luis Castillo. At the time the Mariners had the league's fourth-best record at 54-47 in a quest for their first postseason bid since 2002. The Red Sox had the ninth-best record at 50-51. This poster thought the Mariners would need to surrender Marte or Arroyo for Castillo and was surprised when both left in the deal. However, the Seattle farm system, which entered the 2022 season ranked among the best in baseball, had middle-infield depth that the Boston system lacked. The Mariners are high on shortstops Cole Young, Michael Arroyo and Axel Sanchez, not to mention Felnin Celesten, the second-ranked international prospect whom the M's signed last month. Those prospects may be distant but 28-year-old shortstop J.P. Crawford is signed through 2026. Any long-term contract carries risks but the five-year, $110 million extension for Castillo stacks up well against the free agent contracts of starters Chris Bassitt, Taijuan Walker and James Taillon.

Red Sox beat reporter Jen McCaffrey at The Athletic interviewed Evan Drellich regarding his upcoming book: https://theathletic.com/4192866/2023/02/14/qa-evan-drellich-astros-scandal/ Subscription required.

San Diego's signing of Michael Wacha has not upset some Oriole fans: https://forum.orioleshangout.com/topic/47083-do-you-want-wacha-and-if-so-what-terms-can-you-live-with/page/7/

From Tuesday's chat with MLB Trade Rumors columnist Steve Adams: https://live.jotcast.com/chat/chat-with-mlbtrs-steve-adams-2-14-23-15051.html

Were the reported disclosures in Evan Drellich’s upcoming book concerning? https://www.boston.com/sports/boston-red-sox/2023/02/08/upcoming-book-contains-new-details-about-alex-coras-involvement-in-astros-sign-stealing-scandal/

The Red Sox gave Alex Cora a second chance: https://www.boston.com/sports/boston-red-sox/2023/02/08/upcoming-book-contains-new-details-about-alex-coras-involvement-in-astros-sign-stealing-scandal/ How would Red Sox fans feel if Cora managed the Yankees?

Another example to support your position would be Seattle righthander George Kirby, who as a rookie last year tossed 130 MLB innings* after pitching only 117.1 minor league innings since being drafted in 2019. * plus 26.2 minor league innings and eight high-pressure shutout innings in the postseason

Overlooked were the 120.2 innings Garrett Whitlock pitched as a starter five years ago across three lower minor league levels. Other than 2018 Whitlock has never pitched more than 82.2 innings in a professional season.

Garrett Whitlock has never tossed more than 82.1 innings in a season. Expecting 31 starts from the 26-year-old righthander is highly optimistic. Brayan Bello on the other hand threw 153.1 innings last year.

MLB.com columnist Anthony Castrovince lists the Blue Jays and Yankees among 10 offseason winners: Teams that made the best offseason moves WWW.MLB.COM Let’s embark upon an annual tradition by puckering up our lips and applying the kiss of death. That’s right. It’s time to name the Winter Winners! You know how this so often goes. A team wins the winter and loses the season. That’s of course not always the case, but The Red Sox did not make the cut coming off their last-place finish. The Sox lost Xander Bogaerts, J.D. Martinez, Nathan Eovaldi, Rich Hill and presumably Michael Wacha (not to mention the projected late start of Trevor Story). Will the additions of Masataka Yoshida, Justin Turner, Corey Kluber, Adam Duvall, Kenley Jansen, Chris Martin and Richard Bleier (and the shaky returns of Chris Sale and James Paxton) be enough to compensate for the losses? https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-2023-start-of-spring-zips-projected-standings-american-league/

The Los Angeles Angels and Texas Rangers should be significantly improved this season after going a combined 20-45 against the AL East last year. In 2022 AL East had atypical success against the AL West in the regular season before the AL West went 5-0 against the AL East in postseason games.

Agreed. On another baseball forum an analogy was drawn between forum contributors and those who still play beer league softball or baseball. Those still playing in the beer leagues harbor no delusions about competing at the MLB level. Fans who question front office decisions face a similar disparity of knowledge and expertise. Metaphorically we forum fans are trying to hit big league pitching when we question front office decisions. Beer league softball is a worthwhile pastime even if the players can't compete at the MLB level. Likewise, fan discussion of baseball decisions is a worthwhile pastime even if the contributors lack the information and expertise of their front office counterparts. Of course front office personnel were not born with their current knowledge and expertise. At some point they probably had no more knowledge and expertise than the average contributor to this forum. But those persons kept asking questions and seeking information. In a high competitive field those persons eventually landed a job in an MLB front office. No shame in what we do on this forum.

Would a projection be realistic if it fell 50-75 points lower than those from the established publicly available services? Reliance on those services helps avoid the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

Who is cherry-picking in this thread? A first post cited Rafael Devers’ career OPS and his significantly higher OPS over the past two seasons. Not all agree. The ZiPS projection of an .887 OPS is higher than the OPS projections from FanGraphs, Steamer and Marcel.

Corrected. Thank you.

FanGraphs, Steamer, ZiPS and Marcel are likely familiar with the “bell curve into prime years” in projecting Rafael Devers with 2023 OPS of .871, .854, .888 and .851, respectively. Nothing wrong with optimism … or an optimistic thread.