Others' Projections

Just like last year, ReplacementLevel.com (a Yankee blog) has some projected standings for the AL East (though they are preliminary).

He has the O's offense putting up a .267/.336/.422 line compared to my .275/.341/.425. That's 779 runs scored to 791. He also has the O's pitching staff putting up a 4.80 ERA with a 4.92 FIP and giving up 832 runs, while I have them with a 5.07 tRA (5.42 for starters and 4.59 for relievers) and giving up about 811 (different scales, I know).

That means his O's have a Pythagorean record of 76-86, but then he makes an adjustment to all of the teams for being in the AL East and having to play each other more. After that, the O's lose 5 wins to go to 71-91.

The final standings, by the way, where:
NYY - 96
BOS - 94
TBR - 90
TOR - 75
BAL - 71

Last year pretty much everyone was low on the O's win totals, and even those that got the 68 wins were off because they had that as the Pythagorean record whereas the Orioles RS/RA implied they should have won 73 games. I was higher on Nick Markakis than almost all projections, and he still managed to exceed my expectations for total production (lower SLG, much higher OBP). This year I'm once again on the high end for him as well as the team as a whole. We'll see how it turns out. The AL East adjustment is interesting - even though I already started things off 5 wins lower than I understand it should be, I'll probably knock off a couple more for the final guess.