Here's a screenshot of Baseball Prospectus' projected American League standings:
(click to enlarge)
As you can see they have the Red Sox winning the division by one game over the Yankees, who win the Wild Card. They also have Cleveland winning the Central and the Angels winning the West.
They also projected the NL, which you can view here. They have the Mets winning the East, the Cubs winning the Central, the Diamondbacks winning the West, and the World Champion Phillies winning the Wild Card.
They also projected the NL, which you can view here. They have the Mets winning the East, the Cubs winning the Central, the Diamondbacks winning the West, and the World Champion Phillies winning the Wild Card.
10 Comments:
fair enough...but it will all come down to health. If we stay healthy, the Sox won't win. But they have a lot of questions as well. Lowell, Penny, Smoltz, Drew...big question marks
I dont see how they can think Boston will have a better offense than the yankees.
Boston offense will get exposed this year and they know that thats why they offered Teixeria 170 million.
Margo, you're right. It will, and always, comes down to health.
Last year if the Yankees stayed healthy all year, who knows how many games better they would have ended up.
Anon, I can't see their offense being better either.
I'm happy, it has the Yankees with the best pitching staff in baseball. If they do that then they can go far in the playoffs. Of course health is important too.
also ortiz wont do as well without manny
Barring an injury plague like last season, the Yankees SHOULD score more than 810 runs. I'm not sure if the new stadium will play much differently than the old one (I'm guessing not), but 810 seems a little low. I'd guess something closer to 900 rather than something closer to 800, aka something around 850 or more.
Just to add:
They scored 790 last year, even with all the injuries. They've improved the lineup with Swisher, a full year of Nady, Teixeira, and (hopefully) Posada and Matsui. Even Arod and Jeter missed some time, and Cano had a down year.
As for Boston, they're missing out on Manny who they had for half of the year last year (even though he wasn't "usual" Manny he still put up big numbers), Ortiz has a shoulder "issue" so far and who knows what will happen there, as well as question marks in Lowell, and Varitek has declined significantly, etc. Not to mention it's probably unreasonable to expect Youkilis and Pedroia both to have MVP caliber seasons in back-to-back years... there's just bound to be a bit of a fall off.
And who's going to catch Wakefield? Josh Bard tried it for about two weeks after Boston traded Mirabelli away, and he was so awful catching the knuckle ball they had to re-trade back for Mirabelli. Now the Sox got Bard back... how's that going to work out?
Its not like they are saying that the Yankees will be terrible. We would still have the second best record in the league. There ain't much difference between 98 and 97 wins, probably the Red Soxs get one more lucky win. If these predictions come true, we would the Angels again though. Hopefully we can beat them this time. My prediction, though is Yankees-Rays-Red Soxs, and the Yankees clobber the Royals on their way to the ALCS against the Rays.
If the Yankees lose the division to the Sox and then have to play the Angels in the first round most Yankees fans, myself included, won't be happy. That's what I'm talking about.
On the other hand, of course we'd be happy to make the postseason again.
But how are the Royals going to find their way to the playoffs?
One thing I do love about these projections is how yet again, the top three teams in the AL East have a better record than every other team in the rest of the AL. With the unbalanced schedule, one can not even argue these projections are based on the weakness of the Orioles and the Jays as they are projected to be no worse than the bottom two in the Central and better than the bottom two in the West. I only wonder if both the Yanks and the Sox would win 100 if they went back to the old way of doing things.
Also, since its inception in 1995 (well, 94 if no strike), the wild card was only won by a Central or West division team on four occasions.
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