Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 378: The PECOTA Day Podcast

Episode Date: February 4, 2014

Ben and Sam talk about pitchers, catchers, and PECOTA projections reporting for spring training.

Dakota knows time talk. Dakota knows bubble gum. Dakota knows water fountains. Dakota knows everything. Good morning and welcome to episode 378 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. The Coda knows everything. prospectus not in the not in the world yep pakoda day is that what you mean yep yeah everything feels early this year it has been early for us it's early in baseball because a couple teams are just a few days away from from reporting and it's early for bp because normally we're still a week away from the book coming out and Pocota coming out and maybe a few weeks away from the top 101 coming out. And all of those things either are out or have been out for a little while already.

So as you're as you're listening to this, unless you're listening to it the second that we put it up, Pakoda is available at Baseball Perspectives to subscribers. So you can go and download the spreadsheet with all the projections and look at the depth charts for each team and the projections for each team and the player forecast manager and the fantasy tools and all that stuff is live. So lots of hard work behind the scenes went into it and we're happy that it's out there yeah uh and some people sat around doing nothing some did yeah i mean it wasn't their job too but behind the scenes there were also people not working yes it's important to remember just out of curiosity do you have a do you do you get any sort of i i guess

now you don't because you uh i well i sort of sense that there's a at least a tiny portion of you that dreads the season but did you historically get any sort of jolt from pitchers and catchers reporting was that a day you celebrated i probably did early in my fandom, and then quickly I realized that it's like the most anticlimactic event on the baseball calendar. Because from the second the World Series is over, people start the countdown, and they start the countdown to pitchers and catchers

because it's the earliest date that you can kind of make the case that baseball is happening. And it's, you know, sort of nice after a winter to see players in uniform and everything, but that wears off in about a day, and then a lot more nothing happens before something happens. I hate it. Well, I've enjoyed beat writer pictures uh beat writer twitter pictures of things

that are happening there yeah uh there's a there's a great tumblr you saw one today i did a great picture of those today yeah uh anthony one of the greatest yeah it was great i retweeted it because anthony mccarrran, the baseball writer for the Daily News, was covering or was at a workout that Derek Jeter was doing. He was hitting in the cage and he was taking some grounders. And he tweeted a picture of Jeter in the cage. And you really can't see Jeter at all. If you like squint and make it big and kind of lean it, you can kind of see a silhouette of a player maybe. I see – I guess I see four silhouettes, none that I would consider likely to be players, although at least one of which could start a fat Jeter controversy. Yeah.

This looks like horse stables, though. It looks like you're peering into horse stables. Yeah, and so Anthony McCarron tweeted that to Jeter. Oh, wait, I see it. It looks to me like I see a Little League team playing. I feel like I see one six-year-old boy oh i see a person running is he running it's like a person running it's like a rorschach test uh you can see whatever you want to see and so he tweeted that's jeter in the back wait wait no i do i i do i see you see i see a i

see a i don't know i see someone who looks like he might be holding a bat in a batting stance, but. Oh, no, I see a ground ball going just to the left of somebody. So that's definitely it. Burn. Did you know that he's not very good at defense? I had heard. So anyway, he tweeted, got gotta look closely though and I did and I still can't see him

nothing against Anthony but Karen this is what you have to do when you're a beat writer and your paper sends you to cover spring training and you have to cover spring training and at this point in spring training that means taking pictures of mundane events or maybe not even visible events so i'm i'm eagerly anticipating the return of the bad spring training twit pics tumblr which collects all of these uh terrible pictures one of the things one of the things that happened

the year that bad spring training twit pics tumblr.com came out is that after a few weeks, I felt like you started seeing knowing photos. You saw beat writers who were putting their worst ... I don't want to necessarily say their worst photo up, but the one that was the most bad spring training twitpix.tumblr.com-esque and you got the sense that they had become in on the joke so is it your guess based on on what you've seen today that anthony mccarron was knowingly tweeting this with bad spring training twitpix.tumblr.com in mind or was this just him warming up for the season? Yeah, I think it was more, I don't know. Maybe that one there was some self-awareness of the fact that you can't really even see Jeter. Because there's an explanation point after though.

Right. If it had just said, got to look closely, there's Jeter in the cage there but the the the way that the the tweet is structured there is a there is the uh the the uh characteristic there's the sort of traditional exclamatory upswing that comes from a a ironic tweet yes and and he was also uh he was tweeting about like every every grounder Jeter was taking as if it was a momentous event. And I think he was intending to do that. Sounds very knowing. Yes. Definitely knowing.

But at the same time, he deemed it tweet worthy. And it is at this point in the year because this was a slow day. And Jeter taking workouts in Florida is as big as anything else happening. Um, so anyway, yeah, I do. He did.

There is a repetitiveness to this too, that, that I could go either way on this. There's all these photos are the, the ones he tweets later are all basically, I think he went into this with a plan. I think that he, this is,

this was, he spent, he spent a couple i think that he this is this was he spent he spent a couple of hours executing a pretty good joke is what i think yeah could be um and i the worst is is beat writer play by play in spring training and i think that's part of the joke he's he's doing play by well yes he may be he may be um everyone is. But you could make the case that that beat writer play by play is is more valid, more worth the bandwidth it takes up in spring training when people aren't actually watching the games as much. And it's sort of harder to see the play by play. On the other hand, it's completely inconsequential. it's completely inconsequential um so it's hard to say which is which is more meaningless in season play by play or in it always reminds me like when you see the or when you see those like pictures of you know like 1903 world series or something and like all these people are are gathered around some big board somewhere really far away from where the World Series is taking place.

And you have people moving mechanical figures around this display, and everyone's clustered around because this was the fastest you could get the news. The news was coming over the telegraph, and these people were simulating the game, and everyone was watching it. People were simulating the game and everyone was watching it. And it seems to me that a lot of beat writers are still sort of stuck in that mentality of we have to share the events that are happening on the field. Even though anyone who's interested could open the Game Day app on their phone or watch MLB TV or all of the many ways that you can find out what's happening in baseball games today. Boy, Ben, you came out swinging tonight. Yeah, I did.

Bringing down the system. I have no patience for the play-by-play of in-season games, even as far as the choice that you have set up, the Sophie's Choice, so to speak. Wait a minute. I haven, the Sophie's Choice, so to speak. Wait a minute. I haven't seen Sophie's Choice. I vaguely recall, though, that using that as a metaphor is awful. I don't remember why. Can I take that back?

Sure. I don't know. I don't have any idea. So forgive me. Okay. I might have just done something awful. All right. Primityiny i'm scared i am terrified to find out what i've just said uh the choice that you've presented me though uh i think that uh that if the game is not being broadcast in any for in any fashion that the

beat writer uh tweets are sort of a little bit tedious but that is why beat writers exist and i congratulate them for doing it i i applaud that yeah okay have you seen sophie's choice uh i don't think so okay do you know what the choice is i think i know what the choice is am i in trouble i guess it was maybe a maybe a frivolous use of the of the choice i i don't know you think the choice you think the choice about whether to have beat writer twitter play by play in a regular season or spring training is frivolous? It's not the sort of thing you would make a major motion picture about with Meryl Streep. No. All right.

Okay. What are we talking about today? I don't know. It's your day. I thought that you were directing me to talk about something. Well, I thought we could talk basically about Pocota. don't i don't know we could talk about the standings we could talk about any projections that might have caught your eye uh i i've been after reading russell's piece that ran on monday i'm looking and I don't find the chemistry column on here. I need the chemistry column.

Yeah, that's not on there. I was thinking that this is, I guess we'll get to Pagoda eventually, but I was thinking that one of my sort of goals this year is I want to figure out how to root for the chemistry of my team. Like I know how to root for my team's pitching to do well, and there can be multiple layers of that. You can root for the bullpen to be saved, for instance.

And you can root for one specific pitcher's changeup to look good and develop. Or you can root for the catchers to be good framers this year. There's all sorts of ways that you can root for that. And as a person who is now tremendously interested in this great, unmeasurable mystery of chemistry, I want to figure out how I can track my club's chemistry. And not necessarily get to the truth of it. Well, certainly not get to the truth of it.

It's impossible. But to get to something that is convincingly truthful enough to me that I can get enjoyment out of it, that I can delight, that I can basically, that I can judge things that are happening as positive or negative because that's essentially what baseball is, is you're judging. There's about 500-ish discrete events in the course of a game, and you are evaluating each single event as making you slightly happier or slightly sadder. making you slightly happier or slightly sadder. It affects some chemical in your brain, either the happy direction or the sad direction. I would like to be able to figure out how to read the B stories in the next day's newspaper, the features and the quotes and what I see in the dugout and all that, and be able to

determine whether my brain should send happy signals or sad signals. That's my goal. That's what I would like to – and maybe this year is unreasonable. But I would like to be able to wrap that in to my fan experience. Good luck with that. Good luck with that. I'm thinking of trying to assess team chemistry via Twitter as a proxy and looking at it. Really? Because I was going to do that. That is actually an article on my to-do list because Gabe recommended it, actually.

Gabe Kapler suggested that you could design a study like the NBA touch study that I've referenced a couple of times. Um, and you could do it with tweets as touches. And I was actually, I was going to do that. So what, how are you? I wasn't thinking counting tweets. I was thinking just looking up how, how tightly tied together the team is on Twitter. Like, are they following each other? What percentage of, yeah, that sort of thing.

Because Russell had suggested once that if he were allowed unfettered access to a clubhouse, that he could try to assess chemistry by sort of just charting the interactions and seeing who talked to who and how many conversations they had. And, you know, you could kind of use Twitter as a very imperfect proxy for that. So, yeah. One of us will do it.

All right. So I don't have anything to say about Pocota. It sounds like you do. But I don't have anything to say about Pocota. It sounds like you do. But I happen to have opened the spreadsheet that everybody can download on Tuesday. And right now – Right now, I believe. I just got an email. It's live.

Right now I can only view the comparables column. And the page is sorted by projected warp. So I think probably Mike Trout is number one, though I don't know. And so his comparables are Jason Hayward, Justin Upton, and Giancarlo Stanton. And so I'm scrolling down, and the first bad player I can find in a comparables list, the first, you know, I would say truly pretty bad player that I can find, is the 29th ranked player in baseball by projected warp.

And his, one of his three comparables is Lonnie Chisholm. And so I challenge you right now to guess who that player is. And I'll tell you his other, the others are Ryan Zimmerman and Starlin Castro. So he's 29th in projected warp he's presumably an infielder uh and uh young enough that Lonnie Chisenhall can be one of his comps so we have Zimmerman Castro and Chisenhall do you have a guess uh you hate when I have to think about things.

Mm-hmm. Um, Matt Davidson. Matt Davidson, interesting. That would be a very, very optimistic. It sure would. That's a bad, bad guess. Um, it's an infielder. Presumably, presumably the left side of the infield. I have a guess. You have a guess. It's an infielder. Presumably the left side of the infield.

I have a guess. You have a guess. Oh, right. You haven't even seen it yourself yet. Right. I definitely have a guess. Middlebrooks? Okay.

That's probably too optimistic, too. Probably. Yeah. I'm going to guess Manny Machado. Okay. That's probably too optimistic too. Probably. Yeah. I'm going to guess Manny Machado. Okay. It crossed my mind and I thought he might be too good. He might be. Maybe Bogart.

Yeah. Oh, Bogart's a good one. That's a good guess. That's a really good – that's a strong guess. I have one more for you. Okay. Number 35, 35th best player in baseball scott sizemore is one of his and his other two are chase headley and seth smith

the odd grouping yeah that is weird i don't even know what the yeah right there's no no common position there really uh well Well, Sizemore, I mean, Sizemore eventually was at third, as was Headley. But yeah, you've got basically a third baseman, a second baseman, and an outfielder. I might guess, Arenado seems too optimistic for 35th best player in baseball. And probably I'm just thinking that because Sestamith was Colorado and has planted that in my mind. I don't know who Siz size more is size more older than pablo sandoval could that be it uh it could be all right i'm gonna go look at these tell us the answers the the the size more one is josh donaldson which is fitting because he

replaced scott size more like that's actually who he that's whose position he was playing Donaldson, which is fitting because he replaced Scott Sizemore. That's actually whose position he was playing. Classic. Classic Pocota. And the other one is Manny Machado. Well done. Okay. All right.

What do you want to say? I don't know. My favorite projection, I think, and I haven't really dug into everything yet, and I'll probably write about some individual projections, but the one that I'm fondest of is Billy Hamilton's base running projection. Would you care to guess what his projected base running runs total is almost impossible to imagine that pakoda would have somebody over 10 it is almost impossible it is almost impossible and it's almost impossible to imagine that billy hamilton could be below 10 if he's given it there's a minimum in these of 250 plate appearances I don't know if Hamilton's projected more than that but even at

250 plate appearances I would imagine he can clear 10 he's got 488 on here projected plate appearances I'll say 11.9 it's 11 which yeah is very

very high because as everyone who's seen Pocota knows, and really every projection system, it tends to look sort of conservative to people who haven't seen projections before because they expect the league leader to have a number that, in whatever category you're talking about, that could conceivably lead the league. Whereas in projections

no one is ever really projected to hit 50 homers someone might do it uh but the system doesn't really project any individual person to do it and so yeah that's why it's it's fun that hamilton has an 11 base running runs projection because that would have led the league last year yes by uh by like three runs um which is weird because you almost never look at really any category in pakota look at the league leader or the projected league leader and compare to last season's league leader and see that the projecting projected total is higher which is the case here. But there was no Billy Hamilton in baseball for most of last season. 73 steals. Yeah.

From Pakoda. Pakoda says that. I know. It's crazy. And his projected on-base percentage is only 299. So he will be going every time he gets on-base. You're right. They have him on – Pakoda has him on first base,

not counting fielder's choices, 118 times, plus hit by pitch. So 119 times, plus fielder's choices, but also minus every time there's a guy on second in front of him. And minus blowouts. And minus first pitch swings by the guy who's batting. And so out of those 118 or whatever times i said they expect him to to go 88 times wow yeah and uh and to be the 55th best player in baseball because a lot of that is largely yeah largely because of this and defense yeah yeah i mean he's it looks like it he'll be a terrible hitter so wait a a minute. So the thing about Hamilton then is that normally the classic guy who's better in fantasy than real life is the guy who gives you empty steals.

But Hamilton, is he better in fantasy, or stolen bases, which counts like 17 times more in fantasy. So 55th best position player, he will probably be drafted higher than 110th or wherever the 55th best position player is drafted. So he'll probably be like a fifth rounder. yeah i guess i guess still more valuable in fantasy but yeah so that's that's my favorite so looking at last year's spreadsheet the the highest projected base running runs total was seven for coco crisp um so this is this is the rare case where pakoda really goes out on a limb with someone. So I enjoyed that. How about John Segura? Yeah.

That's kind of – I mean particularly if you're the type who gets swayed by arbitrary endpoints and you know that Segura was tremendous through May and absolutely dreadful from that point on, and you think that the league figured him out and you had concerns about him all along anyway, as some people in this podcast did, you would think that Segura is not a good bet to be the 13th best position player in baseball. You would think that that's too optimistic. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And what is his hitting projection? Because it's mostly defense-based.

282, 320, 403, which is actually considerably better than league average for a shortstop. Mm-hmm. Yeah, his second-half line last year was 241-268-315, which is pretty ugly. Yeah. Yeah, but Pocota really likes his defense. He's like a top 10 defender by Pocota's estimation,

and that's at the most difficult position. And that's interesting that Pocota sees that because the sense that I get from talking to people is that his defense actually is sort of a – like took a big leap forward last year or maybe in the last year and a half or so and he there were i mean one of the reasons that he i think got traded is because there wasn't a consensus that he would even stay at shortstop for very long um because he's you know he doesn't have great shortstops build and there was some question about his throwing and about his defense and pakoda anyway the point i'm making is that pakoda is sort of famously has a longer memory than flawed human brains generally have and is less prone to overreact to the last year so it's kind of encouraging that pakoda sees in him like a truly good defender and not a one year um not a one year. So here's a way that we can organize the rest of this episode.

Andrew Koo, one of our sometimes writers and often stat request gurus at BP, just sent me a list that I had requested of the top risers and fallers comparing 2014 projected warp to 2013 actual warp. I'll probably write something about this after we're finished here, but let me read you a selection of some of these risers and fallers and see if you're buying it.

The top projected, yeah. I mean, I assume that all of the top risers are going to be people that we also think are risers, right? We just might not think they're extreme risers. Yeah, right. What are the odds that Pocota's like number two riser? I'm going to be like, nope, he's crashing. Probably not great, but... Possible.

A lot of them, of course, are risers in just playing time. I'll probably ask him for some rate stats too. So you have guys who missed a lot of last season, like Cameron Mabin is at the top of the list because he had 57 plate appearances last year and didn't hit well in those plate appearances. But he's actually projected to be a 2.6 win player, which would be nice if that happened. The second top riser is Albert Pujols. Now, Pakoda was high on Pujols last year. He's still high on Pujols, and, Pocota was high on Pujols last year, is still high on Pujols. And that's

because the way that Colin Wires set the system up is that it takes into account a lot of older data that some other systems don't. So like the back end of Pujols' peak or close to his peak is still being factored in to some, some degree here. Um, but it, but it expects him to be, uh, let's see his line or no, that's his last season line, but it expects him to be like a star again. Um, which is, it's kind of a trade off with Pocota. You get some guys who it's still high on even though they seem to be declining, but then you also get some guys who other systems might tend to downgrade them too much based on one bad year, whereas Pakoda will say, no, he's still pretty good.

Yeah, and I will say this about projection systems. This was always one of the things that I thought might be a blind spot for them is that like, let's say that the player, you know, the system really likes Albert Pujols. The system really liked Albert Pujols before last year and something changes in Albert Pujols and makes him terrible. And I'm not saying that's the case, but a player like that, something happens and makes him terrible i'm not saying that's the case but a player like that something happens and makes him terrible the thing is that a year later all the things that it liked about albert pools like it still likes all those things it's it's it only likes them like 80 as much because that data has been moved to the background but it basically still thinks that

he's more or less the guy that it thought he was. And that's generally a good, um, perspective to have, you know, generally one year data is, is less, less reliable, but there are guys who just get worse.

And, and, uh, you know, it takes some, I just feel like there are certain guys who i remember from my youth my youth being like you know like seven years ago whereas like every year pakoda liked him until he was out of the league you know and so like it could be that there are certain players who pakoda just simply

has an affinity for and the worse their year gets the Pocota likes them to be a riser. Yeah. Well, you watched every or a lot of Albert Pujols' agonizing runs to first base last year and timed them and wrote about them. Do you think there's any chance of a bounce back to this kind of star, not superstar, not best player in the league star, but low-level star? Do you think that potential is there? Yeah. I mean, I'm not a doctor, and I don't know how he's going to show up. But, yeah, I mean, it seemed to me watching him that a huge portion of his problems last year was related to his legs.

One thing that I didn't appreciate because the Angels kind of denied this was the case or seemed to at the beginning of the year was that the leg didn't just affect his running. It really affected his swing his plant and um i became convinced that it was the driving force in his struggles last year there i mean i was already a little down on on pools the year before because of his lost plate recognition which is why i thought that he had you know was going to drop from a like a seven or eight warp player to like a five warp player and maybe faster than we had expected but um and so that's still an issue but i think that's a smaller component to the problems than the legs were i think the legs were massively um to blame and yeah i mean if pakoda says i don't know what pakoda says but if it says 4 warp, I'd be comfortable with that. Yeah, 4.7, I think.

Yeah, seems totally reasonable to me. Aren't I on record predicting an Albert Pujols first place MVP vote? I think you are, yeah. I think I am, yeah. Okay, so I'm looking at just guys who actually played last year here so that we can get rid of the the tasharas and and the people who are projected to rise just because they they didn't play uh so the the number one guy if you look at minimum 500 plate appearances in 2013 is darwin barney

who isn't actually projected to be that good. He's just projected to not be awful. Yeah. So that's not particularly exciting. No. I agree with that. I agree that he will be not that good. I don't know that I agree that he'll get much better,

but I do agree he will be not that good. We had him at negative 1.7 warp last year, so I think that he will be not that good. We had him at negative 1.7 warp last year, so I think that he will be better than that. The next two guys are ones that people are interested in, BJ Upton and Starlin Castro. And these are the kind of things where, you know, the system is not necessarily looking at those two guys as individuals and saying that their seasons were not worrisome

or that it's dismissing their struggles last year. It's just factoring in the fact that they were good for quite a while, and then they had a year that was way out of line with their their previous level of performance and it's saying that the odds are that they will bounce back at least to some degree toward that previously established level yeah when we talked about who was going to take over the um the uni best uni betancourt mantle as the guy capable of having seven consecutive sub replacement seasons and still hanging on in the league um one name i thought of was starling castro uh not that i think he will i think that focota's projection that he comes back to be

what like roughly an average player is good i think that's basically what he is but um he could hang on for a really long time as a sub replacement player if he if he wanted to if he if that were his goal uh pablo pablo sandoval is projected for like a two win rise and pakoda hasn't even seen his shirtless pictures yet um and dan ugla is projected to not be completely terrible again uh-huh um wait what is his name what is dan ugla's name yeah what is it never mind um never mind yeah um and i don don't know, it likes people like Jose Altuve is a riser. That's an interesting one because he played plenty last year. Mm-hmm.

I wonder why. I wonder why that is. I don't know. I wonder. I guess he had a bad defensive rating last year. Maybe that's part of it. Jose Bautista. Naturally, yeah.

John Carlos Stanton. Let's see. Where's Stanton? He's not close to the top here. Prince Fielder is pretty close to the top. Yeah. I would buy that. Stanton is about a win better, looks like.

Interesting. And then on the other end, it's sort of the opposite. end, it's sort of the opposite. It's people who took a huge step forward last year, like Chris Davis would be the guy at the bottom. And there's nothing particularly fluky about Chris Davis. It's one of those, I mean, the stats are the actual performance. If you dig into it, you can certainly talk yourself into believing that it was a real thing. that's that's what we do when we look at these projections and we see that someone is supposed to to fall like that you sort of make excuses for the system or at least you you explain what you know that the system doesn't uh because you often hear people say that, you know, if you believe in your projection system, then you should just defend all of its projections.

Like you can't build a projection system and then claim that you have a better idea of what this particular player is going to do than the projection system does. That would almost seem to defeat the purpose of having a projection system. But there are cases where I think it's completely valid to do that. If you know that a guy did something that really seemed to change his true talent level, and you can be deceived, and there are cases where you can be deceived, where the projection system might turn out to be right after all. But you can make a case that Chris Davis did things differently.

He changed his swing and he changed his approach and he started hitting balls in different places and letting other balls go. And these are all sort of inputs that are not currently in projection systems. And they are in our brains. So we might as well make use of them. Yeah. As for the standings, the standings, I have no problem with any of the projected division winners. We talked about our risers and fallers in the standings on yesterday's show. The projected division winners are all probably the teams that I would have picked.

The Red Sox. Dodgers, Cardinals, Nationals, Red Sox, Tigers, and A's? Yep. Okay. So nothing seems very strange there. The AL East race is actually a tie at the top between the Red Sox and the Rays. The AL West race, there's a one-win difference in projection between the A's and the Angels, which could surprise some people.

And the Rangers are a couple games back of that, so all three of those teams are within three wins. The Nationals and Braves are three wins apart. Cardinals Reds, five wins apart. The real outlier and the real eye-catching projection on here, because all of those teams are kind of clustered around 89, 89 or 88, 89 wins, which is typically what you see with Dakota. It's the good teams are high 80s or low 90s. And it's similar to the individual player projections where we don't really see the extremes. So we kind of look at the ordinal rankings more than anything. But in this case, the Dodgers are the outlier at 98 wins.

Yeah, best offense in the National League, according to this, and best pitching in the majors. Yeah, by far. And it looks like they're projected to allow 40 to 50 runs fewer than any other team, which partially is, some of that is the ballpark, I suppose. But it's not the defense, because they're projected to be a below-average defensive team. because they're projected to be a below-average defensive team. It looks like the power of Kershaw and Granke and Ryu and Heron is projected to be competent, at least. And it's really, I guess the offense is interesting

because there is no player projected to be worth even four wins in the lineup, which is probably strange. I would imagine that a lot of teams with worse offenses have one or more players at that level. The Dodgers don't have anyone, according to this. But they also don't really have a hole, it looks like. And they also have, they have like Andre Ethier at 2.4 wins, just as a fourth outfielder. So there's a lot of depth.

And it does seem like that's one of the things that causes us to underrate teams in a lot of seasons is just not having a hole um we talked about that last season i think with with the a's just sort of how no one on their no one in their lineup looked all that impressive as an individual but there was no no sub replacement guy just sucking up plate appearances really um and it kind of looks like that's the case with the dodgers and the rotation is projected to do well the relievers are projected to do well and then part of it is just the quality of the competition because if you look at the the projected team warp totals um there's only like a there's like a six win difference between them and the

red socks in this and a nine win difference in the actual win totals so i assume that some of that is just the nl west effect um do you do you at least do you buy the... Probably the NL effective. For what it's worth, Pocota has the other four teams in the division a combined game over 500. So I would imagine that that's the best of any division's bottom four teams, except for maybe the AL East. Well, do you buy at least the... Do you buy the idea that the Dodgers are the best team in baseball yes okay I don't I mean I buy the idea I don't know if I necessarily agree but probably probably

I agree okay so that's the important thing here yeah I would I would say that i my my my gut or whatever my my one of these things the thing in my brain that reads a bunch of stuff and then churns out an opinion whatever that is uh would be that it's either the dodgers or the cardinals or the tigers and probably the dodgers okay or the cardinals or the Tigers, and probably the Dodgers. Okay. Or the Cardinals or the Tigers. Anything else you want to mention? Nope.

Okay. Well, we hope that you will go to BP and look over the projections yourself and discuss them in the Facebook group with the many hundreds of other listeners who are in there at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. The Astros are projected to be two wins better than we projected them to be last year. And we'll talk about that and other exciting things about the Astros tomorrow when we kick off the season preview series. I'm looking forward to this. And not only because it means that we don't really have to think of topics for the next month plus, but I'm going to enjoy it. We had a lot of interesting people who wrote for the annual this year that we didn't talk to on last year's season preview stuff so looking forward to hearing their thoughts and also the thoughts of the other non-bp guests who

will be on so as a reminder we'll be doing those monday to thursday from the worst projected team to the best projected team and we will still answer your emails on fridays so send us some at podcast at baseball prospectus.com and we'll be back tomorrow