Of course it's early, but it's also January, and I'll take a few hawt baseball projections if it means not having to hear about PAYYYY-TON and TAWWWWWM. Also, rosters aren't anywhere close to being finalized, so take this for what it's worth. FanGraphs released their 2016 projections today. What do we see?
Houston: 86-76
Seattle: 84-78
Dallas: 82-80
Anaheim: 81-81
Oakland: 79-83
OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG THE ASTROS WIN THE WEST. PUT THE BANNER UP NOW.
Please do keep in mind that the 86 wins are a statistical projection, and are tied for 5th-highest in baseball. The Cubs, Red Sox, and Dodgers are the only teams in baseball to have a projected win total of 90 or higher.
Also within the projection page, we see that FanGraphs projects the offense to be slightly better in 2016, scoring 4.56 runs/game - up from 4.50 runs/game in 2015. The biggest difference is that the projections say the Astros won't do as well on defense as they did in 2015: allowing 4.26 runs/game, an increase of almost half a run per game (3.81) over 2015. That 3.81 runs allowed/game was the best in the AL in 2015.
UPDATE: Thanks to TCB, I stumbled across (and by "stumbled across" I mean "clicked on a link they tweeted") Clay Davenport's projections for the 2016 season.
Davenport projects the AL West as follows:
Houston: 91-71
Seattle: 87-75
Anaheim: 81-81
Oakland: 80-82
Dallas: 79-83
Even better: the Astros have a 49.5% chance of winning the World Series, just behind Cleveland's (!) 49.6% in the American League.
Please do click the link for his explanations and other fun stats.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
