You Say PECOTA, I say PECATA
John at Nationals Pastime takes his always-invaluable look at the numbers. This time, with Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA forecast.
As we've been harping on all year, our pitching rotation looks solid. John says their number indicate we've got the third-best rotation in the East, but that adjustments for new players coming and old players going could bump us up solidly into the number two position.
As we've also been harping on all year, hitting is our weakness. The Nats are scraping the barrel offensively. With Castilla, Guzman, Chavez and the pitcher, there are a few too many easy outs for the pitcher. The Terrible Trio will have to work a little harder to avoid making as many outs this year.
John rightfully points out that these are probably only useful projections for the beginning of the year. Injuries, performance varation, trades, etc all will have a huge impact on the season.
There's a list of about 10 things that would need to go right for us to make the playoffs. I'm not counting on many of them. But there's no reason why this team couldn't play .500 baseball (yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm pretending that we don't need to score runs!) And considering everything they've been through, that would be a pretty damn good success.
As we've been harping on all year, our pitching rotation looks solid. John says their number indicate we've got the third-best rotation in the East, but that adjustments for new players coming and old players going could bump us up solidly into the number two position.
As we've also been harping on all year, hitting is our weakness. The Nats are scraping the barrel offensively. With Castilla, Guzman, Chavez and the pitcher, there are a few too many easy outs for the pitcher. The Terrible Trio will have to work a little harder to avoid making as many outs this year.
John rightfully points out that these are probably only useful projections for the beginning of the year. Injuries, performance varation, trades, etc all will have a huge impact on the season.
There's a list of about 10 things that would need to go right for us to make the playoffs. I'm not counting on many of them. But there's no reason why this team couldn't play .500 baseball (yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm pretending that we don't need to score runs!) And considering everything they've been through, that would be a pretty damn good success.
posted by Chris Needham at
9:37 AM
6 Comments:
That would be the ideal offensively--especially if you platooned Sledge against lefties.
But, Wilkerson's defense in center scares me a little bit. He's filled in at the position, but i'm not sure if he can handle it fulltime. I'm sure he'd be below average. But that's not to say that he'd be Bernie Williams out there either. Plus, there's also the additional wear and tear of playing center.
Of course, this is where people smarter than me need to figure out if the offensive upgrade is worth the defensive downgrade in center and the increased chance of fatigue-related diminished offense from Wilkerson.
By
Chris Needham, at 1/27/2005 10:38 AM
I'm on the "Ryan Church for CF" bandwagon. So far it's just me and a little dog with an eyepatch. Anyone else want to hop aboard?
By
Ryan, at 1/27/2005 3:51 PM
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
By
Chris Needham, at 1/27/2005 3:55 PM
I can't get the link to work. Oh, well.
"Ryan Church" defense on google pulls up an article on him.
It says he plays pretty good defense. That's the only thing that concerns me about him, I guess.
By
Chris Needham, at 1/27/2005 3:56 PM
Ryan,
Please tell me it wasn't you who just used "Ryan Church Nationals Married" on google to find my blog? Please? :)
You didn't strike me as a groupie.
By
Chris Needham, at 1/27/2005 4:07 PM
I'm a Livan groupie. He's a whole lotta man.
By
Ryan, at 1/27/2005 6:59 PM
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