[rwperu34]

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if i wasn't so sure vegas would open the tampa o/u at 68 wins next year, i'd put about half my bankroll on under 20 here.

i'm too old for childish back-and-forth arguments on 2+2, but here goes anyway: teams with near-.500 talent make the playoffs all the time. the diamondbacks and rockies did it this year, tigers and cardinals the year before that. the 2005 white sox won the world series with a .500 team.


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Here's the thing. None of those .500 teams made the playoffs in a division with the Yankees and Red Sox. Both components of the Evil Empire are going to project in the ballpark of 95 wins for next season. Tampa will project at 75-80. There will be a minimum of 15 games separating Tampa from not one, but two teams, within their division. Even if they are better than the Blue Jays and can beat up on them and the Orioles, they've really got <5% chance to get into the playoffs. Even if they were a one in eight shot once they got there, they'd be over 100:1 against to win the WS. Without doing any real math or figuring, I'd put that in the same ballpark as the hapless-I-start-matt-morris Pirates.

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basically, what i'm getting out of this is that you're completely ignoring the updated projections for delmon young and pretending it's still 2005. when pecota and zips publish their forecasts for delmon's 2008-10, you're going to be very disappointed; i'd be surprised if he projects to be worth one win more than the average right fielder in 2010.

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One thing I've leared about PECOTA is, it's not really any different than any other projection system. If a player is coming off of a big year, his projection will be high, if he's coming off of a bad/injured year, his projection will be low. So yes, I expect Young's PECOTA to be bad, and I expect he will outproduce it. Sometimes violently.

FWIW, ZIPS has him at .292/.323./424/.767, although interestingly, Vg in RF.