FanPost

Detroit's Predicted Dominance: A little too much hype?

A while back I purchased Bill James' 2008 projections (March update) to evaluate players for my fantasy baseball league. This offseason, I carried out a review of BP's, Bill James' and CBS Sportsline's 2007 preseason projections. It really wasn't all that close. Bill James' 2007 projections came out in front by a mile. Relative to each other, they were all pretty good. But CBS overestimated hitter production across the board and BP underestimated it across the board. No one really distinguished themselves with the pitcher projections.

Having settled on a projection source, I wanted to see how Detroit and Cleveland were projected to matchup. At first glance, Detroit's offseason moves make it seem like they're going to handily beat us. That said, I've felt that Detroit aging roster should put them in line for some drops in production, thus mitigating the addition Cabrera. Factor in the continued development of Garko, Gutierrez, Asdrubal, etc..., and you should really have two evenly matched teams in Cleveland and Detroit. Here are the results.......

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Note

  • Total runs scored determined by totaling the runs created by individual players
  • Offensive production normalized for 6300 plate appearances
  • Total earned runs allowed determined by totaling the earned runs allowed by individual pitchers
  • Pitching production normalized for 1450 innings pitched
  • Team runs allowed calculated by adding in 60 unearned runs to each team's earned run total (in line with the median and mean for recent seasons)
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    Bottom line: Even with all the fuss about Detroit's offseason moves, they look to be only marginally better (2 wins) than the Tribe

    FanPosts are reader-generated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Covering the Corner or the Covering the Corner staff.