The Reverend
Halofan reports that Jeff Weaver is an Angel on a two year deal. I like. Don't know what the dollar terms are, but its Arte's money, not mine, at least until I make my trip out to LA of Anaheim to make my contribution.
This changes the Angel's projection, and substantially for the better. Weaver isn't great, his ERA projects to 4.11, but also 215 innings, and replaces Hector Carrasco. I had Carrasco for a 4.79 ERA as a starter, and I think that's extremely generous. There's also no way Hector throws 215 innings, so a few more innings are taken away from guys the Angels don't really want to be starting right now, probably Joe Saunders and Jeff's little 6'7" brother. Saunders needs a year in AAA, Jared probably needs to start in AA, move throw AAA, and possibly be ready at the end of the year if there is a need. Carrasco now moves to the bullpen, where he can compete with Esteban Yan for the garbage innings.
New AL west projections:
A's 90-72
Angels 86-76
Rangers 77-85
Mariners 76-86
A's still have the advantage on paper but now its close. Come on Angels, lets do it again.
I've already revised the AL East due to Red Sox acquisitions, but its time for the central. Cleveland loses Coco Crisp. There's a lot of debate on Baseballthinkfactory about whether or not Coco is a capable centerfielder. Fielding metrics say he's a great LF, but a below average CF. Some think that if he's that good in left, then he can't be horrible in center, and the low ratings are just from small sample size. I project him as an average CF for the sake of Red Sox predictions. Who knows if that's right? We'll see. But for Indian projections, make no mistake about it, they are losing an outstanding defensive leftfielder, and their pitching will hurt for it.
Replacing Crisp with Michaels (considered average though its hard to tell since he hasn't played a whole lot) costs 5 runs on offense, but 13 on defense.
AL Central:
Twins 86-76
Indians 83-79
W Sox 83-79
Tigers 80-82
Royals 66-96
Since the Indians are worse on offense and defense, this makes sense, but how do the Twins lose a game from the last time I did projections? Improvement from the Angels and Red Sox forced me to rebalance the league. Don't take my predictions too seriously, I don't know that much. But what I do know is that the overall record for MLB will be .500, once again, for the 136th straight season.
Because of interleague play, the leagues don't have to add up. Last year the typical AL team was 82-80. For sake of simplicity, I've made both leagues .500, but go ahead and add 1 win per team to the AL and subtract 1 from the NL. AL was better last year, and has probably added more talent than the NL.
