Monday, February 22, 2016

2016 Astros - Projected

Time for our fourth (almost) annual season projections. In case you missed the first few, here are links to 2012, 2014, and 2015. To recap, 2012 was horrible (74 projected wins, 55 actual wins), 2014 was pretty good (72, 70), and last year was close-ish (81, 86). Last year I didn't see Lance McCullers going from a 5.47 ERA in Lancaster in 2014 to arguably the best rookie pitcher in baseball in 2015. I also didn't have Correa factored in at all, had Keuchel regressing slightly, and missed on Valbuena's power spike.

The same general disclaimer applies: "Now, anytime you put together projections the goal isn't necessarily to be perfect. You're looking for a likely outcome for each player, yes, but my goal isn't so much each player but the team as a whole. Some guys are going to have unexpected breakouts and some are going to deposit feces on their mattress, but the idea is that you can project a reasonable baseline of expectations for the team as a whole."

The biggest question marks for me this year are: 1) Who gets the playing time at 1B, 2) Which pitchers step up into the SP4 and SP5 roles, and 3) How are the bullpen roles going to shake out.

Enough words, here are the numbers.



There is some rounding involved, so the individual totals may be slightly different than the team totals. Looks like a pretty good improvement, but it should be noted that last year's Pythagorean record was also 93-69.

Your turn! Tell us what you think in the comments.