Wouldn't It Be Great...

Dreaming of the upcoming season. Wouldn't it be great if...

Someone did a home run dance in the sixth inning of a 7-2 game . . . and no once paid any attention? You want to stop gratuitous celebrations? The sound of one hand clapping would do it.

A batter laid down a bunt to break up a no-hitter in the ninth inning of a 3-0 game, invoking the ire of the opposing team and leading to a plunking, a two-base error and a double that tied the game and unwrote the unwritten rule?

Ken "Hawk" Harrelson retired and someone who knew something about baseball in the 21st century replaced him? Then fans on Chicago's South Side would have at least one thing to celebrate this year.

Umpires ordered batters to stop fooling around and get in the box and demanded that pitchers serve up the ball within 20 seconds as required by the rules? And games started moving along?

Jake Arrieta really is as good as the second half of last season? Because that would mean that in 2016 he'd allow a .409 OPS and an ERA of 0.75. He'd allow four home runs all season.

A fan bopped by a batted ball admitted it was their own damn fault for not paying attention?

The players on a last place squad began extolling the team's chemistry? Funny, you never hear that.

Someone connected to a club 10 games under .500 announced that his team had just acquired "momentum" and then they went out and won 13 of the next 15 games? Then we

would finally have one verifiable example of the spirit magic that gives rise to that term.

Baseball writers and announcers all had to take a course and pass an exam on new analysis and be able to explain triple-slash stats, Fielding Independent Pitching, True Average, BABIP and Wins Against Replacement? That way fans would learn about them and we would all better understand the game.

Baseball announcers, particularly play-by-play guys (as opposed to analysts) had to pass an oral communication exam? Then we would stop hearing idiotic phrases like "controlling their own destiny," grounds rule double, and "second-chance opportunities."  (Destiny cannot be controlled and chances are opportunities.) Announcers would understand basic sentence structure, common idioms, proper usage and diction, and generally sound like experts in communication rather than like Norm Crosby.

Mike Trout did it again, and then again and again through age 30?  He'd have 96 WAR with half his career ahead of him.

Why Some Folks Love the Indians

Stop me if you've heard this before: the Cleveland Native Americans' bandwagon is loading up fast. The teepee is full and Chief Wahoo's entourage is growing. With the Tigers down, the Twins falling back to earth, the White Sox in need of darning even before the season starts and apprehension about the Royals' staying power, many a quipster, seamhead and hot-taker is hot-taking the Indians to win the Central.

The Land of Cleve finished 81-80 with a late surge last season, a punchless stars-and-scrubs lineup bolstered by good pitching and defense. Their top slugger (Carlos Santana) bopped 19 homers and the best player (rookie Francisco Lindor, pictured here)) got into just 99 games.

That would seem like a good baseline for improvement the following year, especially as several of the better everyday players still live on the south side of 30.

What They Got and What They Ain't Got
What's so alluring about the Indians is that last year's carryover -- power arms in the rotation, a solid bullpen, young studs dotted throughout the lineup and rotation, and good defense around the horn -- are scarce commodities. What they lacked last year -- any hint of a third baseman, two-thirds of an outfield, an occasional long ball -- are relatively easy to replace.

So after losing super-utility knife Ryan Rayburn to the Rockies, Cleveland brought in Mike Napoli to split 1B/DH duties with Santana; twinkle-toes Juan Uribe to bring some semblance of Major League stability to the hot corner; and outfielders Rajai Davis and Marlon Byrd to solidify the green space. Together that group should supply some added power as well.

The Indians will count on former Cy Young winner Corey Kluber to once again anchor the starting five, with flamethrowers Carlos Carrasco, Danny Salazar, Trevor Bauer and Josh Tomlin filling out the staff. Tribe hurlers produced the highest average velocity in the sport last year, which comes in handy especially during those cold autumn evenings of October.

Seen It Before
Okay, fine. But Murphy and his law lie in wait for this outfit. Perennial All-Star Michael Brantley, (right) the only outfielder worth keeping last year, is out for months following shoulder surgery. The pitching crew isn't exactly Maddux-Glavine-Smoltz-Avery, particularly at the back end. And the bench goes just a couple deep before injury ravages this team's chances.

The Indians are intriguing for sure. Baseball Prospectus rates them the best team in the American League, based on middling hitting, excellent pitching and the second best defense (behind Tampa Bay) in the league. And if they start the season with that kind of fire, there might be a big bat in the trading deadline mix. But lots of teams are intriguing and could win the pennant with a few positive "what ifs."

So, as always, we'll see. In baseball, at least, the long regular season matters.

Marshall McLuhan Is Killing Us

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/opinions.html

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community." --Oscar Wilde

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/opinions.html

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/opinions.html

If you were to watch sports television or listen to sports talk radio, you could be forgiven for thinking that LeBron James is driving the Cleveland Cavaliers bus off a cliff, that Mike Krzyzewski's legacy is now tainted by one bald-faced white lie, or that other  inconsequential moments in sports have taken on the gravitas of nuclear annihilation.

That's because these media have stopped the presses to devote interminable hours of blather dissecting both LeBron James's recent words and actions and Coach K's refusal to acknowledge a well-documented conversation.

"Nontroversies"
King James has, during the course of this ceaseless and meaningless regular season, demonstrated boredom, frustration and perhaps even regret about his team's dynamics. It appears he may have chosen teammates who don't share his singular focus, his devotion to his craft and his obsessive desire to win a championship for Cleveland.

Coach K lied to reporters about his words of admonition to an opposing player during the post-game handshake following Thursday's loss to Oregon in the NCAA playoffs. Cameras clearly caught him telling Dillon Brooks "you're too good of a player to do that," after Brooks fired up a three-pointer and celebrated its success with six seconds left and an 11-point lead. 

The Medium Is the Message
But this is not about James or Krzyzewski. It's about why these mini "nontroversies" flower into hours of discussion. it's about the medium, not the message.

You see, the existence of 24-hour sports talk and 24-hour sports news are far more responsible than LeBron James and Mike Krzyzewski are for the ubiquity of scandal in sports today. The plethora of national sports conversation outlets amounts to a gaping yaw that must be filled, minute after minute after minute -- at least those minutes not sequestered away for commercials, sponsorships, promos and the like. So let's say 50% of those minutes.

Paradox: More Conversation = Fewer Topics

With (the remaining half of) 24 hours to fill, you might think that many topics would get covered in the course of each day. Au contraire, Pierre. Because of the fierce competition, no network wants to be caught discussing any topic not of immediate and urgent concern to a majority of listeners at any given moment. That listener is liable to hit the radio or remote button and find another national sports network discussing the sport of their choice. So ironically, the existence of multiple options has reduced the sports talk universe to football and some seasonal filler. More choices has meant less hockey, tennis, car racing, track and field, soccer, boxing, baseball off-season or anything else.

This time of year, the NBA and the NCAA basketball playoffs join the NFL as topics that sports talk will cover. Consequently, that's all the sports talk consumer is interested in. And the cycle repeats itself.

More to the point, the hosts have to find fodder for their shows. And that means elevating the mundane to critical and expanding every anthill into a mountain.  It means parsing every word spoken by people who are not professional communicators and analyzing them into oblivion. And it means spouting opinions irrespective of the availability of the facts.

What They Won't Discuss
Because they are starved for content, the sports yakkers can never acknowledge the underlying business dynamic or that their subjects are drivel. For example, though they know that the NBA regular season is utterly, completely, without exception or doubt, irrelevant, they must still act as if every contest is a matter of life or death. In fact, the Cavs have clinched the playoffs and probably couldn't fall below the second seed even if they stopped trying. But acknowledging that would undermine the foundation of all the inconsequential prattle about LeBron James and the fate of the Cavs.

The result is disputations over LeBron's enigmatic tweets and Coach K's private conversations. They saddle us with the Johnny Manziel industrial complex and two years of deflated footballs, a discussion that is full of hot air about a subject that is not.  They bequeath us shibboleths like student athletes, division champions, unwritten rules and non-apologies.

I guess it diverts the listener from the alarming worldwide tangle with terrorism, the dispiriting presidential contests and the near-certainty of massive and disruptive global climate change. But anyone listening to it should recognize that sports talk is a highly distorted view of reality -- even of sports reality.

The Adam LaRoche-White Sox Contretemps Is Really About Something Else

"If the phone doesn't ring, it's me." --Jimmy Buffett


By now you are awash in the details about 1B/DH Adam LaRoche leaving a guaranteed $13 million and a spot on the White Sox roster because they told him his teenage son wasn't welcome in the clubhouse everyday. If you haven't heard about it, read this Chicago Tribune article from March 18 and this report by the local Chicago NBC TV station three days later.

The outline of the situation is this: LaRoche believed he had an oral agreement with the Sox to bring his son into the clubhouse every day. 14-year-old Drake LaRoche had a uniform and a locker and was a beloved team member, according to most players. White Sox president Kenny Williams says that some team members have privately expressed their displeasure at having a child in the clubhouse and he asked LaRoche to scale it back with Drake.

And so, we can all agree that the White Sox have the right to determine workplace rules and have a responsibility to the entire team, not just Adam LaRoche. And we can admire that LaRoche would sacrifice so much to be with his son.

But this is not about familial relations or clubhouse dynamics or Drake himself. It's not about LaRoche's performance, which was dismal last year in his age-35 season and, if repeated, would clog a roster spot and consume $13 million.

This is about organizational dynamics and in particular about communication. Dissertations and books have been written describing the importance of open and honest organizational communication; about ensuring that loops of communication get closed, that lines of communication run up and down hierarchies, that communication be consistent in content throughout an organization, and that communication cross platforms so that people can learn information with whichever sense works best for them. 

The problem in Chicago appears to be this: the team had a poorly articulated policy that applied to everyone but Adam LaRoche. Whether one or more people expressed dismay over the exception or management simply got tired of it, Williams apparently communicated that in a confused and inconsistent way. LaRoche, who believed the team had broached a clearly understood agreement with him, evidently felt betrayed.

The fallout was public chest pounding by key ballclub figures like Chris Sale and, I'm willing to bet, private muttering by others in defense of the team, all of which amounts to a further breakdown in open, honest communication.

Will this harm the White Sox's performance on the field in 2016? It certainly can't help, but baseball is less a team game than a game of combined individual actions. It's likely to fade away over the long slog of the season, unless the issue of clubhouse visitors pops out of its molehill again. LaRoche performed below replacement level last season, so if his replacement flashes even modest competence his on-field contributions will be easily forgotten.

Bryce Harper In College

No insight here, not that that's anything new. Just happened to look up Bryce Harper's one college season and discovered the following in his 66 games for the College of Southern Nevada, a junior college based in Las Vegas playing in the Scenic West Athletic Conference:

He led the league in batting with a .443 average, 46 points better than the next best hitter.
He led the league in on base percentage at .526, 62 points better than anyone else.
He led the league in slugging at .987, 258 points ahead of anyone else.
He led the league in OPS by 421 points at 1.513
He led the league in homers with 31, more than double the next slugger.
He led the league in doubles -- by double.
He led the league in steals with 20 and was caught just four times.
He led the league in total bases by 50%.
He scored and knocked in 81 more runs combined than the next most prolific run producer.
He had the second most walks and third most triples. Slacker.

He also pitched for the Coyotes!
His 11-1 record accounted for the second most wins and the best W-L percentage in the league.
His 2.62 ERA was second best ERA in the league
He allowed the lowest batting average against.
He fanned 96 in 65 innings.

He had the league's fifth best fielding percentage.

This kid might be a good Major Leaguer. Keep an eye on him.

The Week of the Rant in the Year of the Crazy Uncle

The past seven days appeared to be the Week of the Rant. We had Oscar Robertson's diatribe against modern basketball, Charles Barkley's harangue against numerical analysis and Goose Gossage's frothing over a multitude of imagined sins, best I could tell.

These three gentlemen have three important things in common:
1. They were all spectacular ballplayers.
2. They stopped learning anything about their sport after 1999.
3. They revel in their ignorance.

This appears to be the year of the ascendant crazy uncle -- witness the presidential nominations -- so Big O, Sir Charles and Goose can all be forgiven for assuming their personas, if not their comments specifically, would be warmly embraced. But whereas the electorate, particularly in the primaries, skews towards the visceral and the loony, the sporting public pays attention. After all, sports matter.

Most sports fans recognize these outbursts as cries for attention and dismiss them accordingly. There are enough of us who appreciate that games evolve, tools improve, practitioners get better at their sport over time in an almost linear vector and that those who don't understand it are doomed to fulminate, like the homeless guy on the street pushing the shopping cart and arguing with Jesus.

It's sad for them that they can't see how pathetic their ignorance sounds. It's sad for them that we hear their opinions and know that they are simply condemning what they don't understand. Or perhaps it's merciful. If they realized that their bitter jeremiads were tantamount to proclamations of ignorance, they might be mortified.

Or, they might not.

We all have a choice. I choose to learn new things all the time, some of which contradict what I thought previously. If you're reading this, you have likely made a similar choice. People like Gossage stagnate, wither and die bitter old men tilting against an ever-growing array of windmills. People like us stay relevant, evolve and grow.

That's my rant.

How the Current Compensation System Is Making Older Players Obsolete

Suppose you had a roster spot to fill on your team and you needed a fifth outfielder, utility infielder or platoon DH. You could grab some veteran off the waiver wire for the bargain-basement price of $2 million or promote a kid from Double-A. For the 85 at bats they'll get, the slightly higher quality of the veteran doesn't carry much significance, but at one-quarter the salary, the rookie's lower cost does.

So, absent any other offers, another 35-year-old retires from the game.

Most Valuable Players Are The Lowest Paid
Sports Illustrated's Jonah Keri released a list this month of the most valuable players in baseball,  taking into account their cost. As you might imagine, the list is light on players on the wrong side of 30, not because they're not great, but because they're expensive.

Clayton Kershaw, a generational pitching star, slots only 23rd on the list because he's already commanding $215 million over the next seven years.  Among those ahead of him are Sonny Gray, Gerrit Cole, Chris Archer and Noah Syndergard, all lesser hurlers making near the league minimum.

Thirty-two-year-old Miguel Cabrera, still the best hitter in the game, didn't make the top 50 or honorable mention. He can thank the quarter-of-a billion dollars due him as his baseball AARP discounts kick in for that.

Vastly Underpaying Great Young Talent
Baseball salaries are structured, at least until the next collective bargaining agreement is negotiated after this season (we hope), to compensate the owners for their investment in players in the early years and then compensate players at full market value thereafter. For their first three seasons of roster time, players earn a stipulated amount -- less than $600,000 -- whether they are the 25th man or Mike Trout.

In years four-through-six, arbitration allows players to capture a fractional share of their free-market value, until after their sixth season, when they are eligible for a free agency bonanza. At the current rate of roughly $8 million-per-win, an average starter entering free agency can expect to ink a multi-year deal worth around $16 million-a-year.

Expensive Experience Vs. Cheap Enthusiasm
Given that, who would you rather have manning a corner outfield slot, pre-arb Christian Yelich, a three-win performer under team control for four more years or four-win Jose Bautista, who earns $16 million this year and enters free agency next? Youth is served with extra garnish under the current compensation system.

This has been true for years, but never before have young players arrived so ready for the Big Leagues in such large numbers. Consider: Manny Machado, Kris Bryant, Francisco Lindor, Miguel Sano, Jose Fernandez, Sonny Gray, Xander Boegarts, Mookie Betts, Andrelton Simmons, Gerrit Cole, Anthony Rendon, Anthony Rizzo, Nolan Arrenado, Jake Odorizzi, Noah Syndergard, Zack Wheeler, Joc Pederson, Corey Seager, and of course, Bryce Harper and Mike Trout. All of them under 25 and cost-controlled. And I'm sure that list is incomplete.

Goodbye Graybeards
So, higher quality juveniles are crowding out the oldsters, not just theoretically but in practice. There were more than 30 position players age 36 or older with 100 or more plate appearances in 2012 and 2013, 22 in 2014 and only 18 in 2015, according to Dave Cameron at Hardball Times. This strongly suggests that teams are opting to fill their rosters with higher upside players at low cost than overpay for veterans in their declining years.

Now add a recent development -- the Qualifying Offer. The recent unpleasantness inflicted upon Ian Desmond following his foray into the free agent market is evidence of how artificially low costs for young players are squeezing the market for veterans. Desmond, coming off a bad year and turning 31 this season, eschewed a $15.8 million, one-year "qualifying offer" from the Nationals for a shot at a multi-year deal that would set him for life. Any team signing Desmond would have to relinquish its prized first-round draft pick to Washington. That left Desmond without suitors and lowered his value to the one year,  $8 million offer he signed with Texas.

The Consequences Going Forward
The Nationals would have liked to keep their second baseman, but they might like the draft pick even more. If that pick turns out well, they will have a young star for six years at below-market rates, allowing them the financial freedom to sign expensive free agents elsewhere on the diamond.

The players' union is not unaware of this development. Representing as it does existing members, not future ones, the union has already begun making noises about obliterating this system and about raising the minimum salary. We could be in for the first contentious labor negotiations since the abomination of 1994.

Sports Talk's #1 Bias is for Anything To Talk About

A gentleman named Jordan Murphy made the sports talk show rounds last week wearing the mantle of "Aurora movie theater shooting survivor" who is now "trying out for the NFL." It's NFL combine season, which is the fifth most popular American sport behind NFL playoffs, NFL regular season, NFL draft and NFL pre-season.

This articulate and dignified young Colorado University graduate is a "survivor"of the 2012 shooting (in which a crazed gunman opened fire randomly during a midnight screening of a Batman movie, killing 12 human beings and wounding 70 others) in the sense that he was in the theater at the time. He was not shot or otherwise injured.

He had just completed his freshman year in college at the time of the attack. This tidbit about his life would have been available for discussion during basically his entire college football career, in which he played fullback and special teams. He never carried the ball for the Buffaloes. He was not a star. The position he plays is an anachronism in pro football.

Between a Pipe Dream and a Delusion
In other words, Jordan Murphy's combine attendance and NFL quest falls somewhere between a pipe dream and a delusion, depending on his mindset. He has less chance of being drafted than the best player in the Lingerie Football League.

Jordan seems like an earnest young man, but his story is not news. He isn't a shooting victim. The shooting had nothing to do with his football career. The story could have been told anytime in the previous three-and-a-half years. His presence at the combine is form without function.

Wheat and Chaff of Sports Talk Radio
So why was he all over sports talk radio last week? Because the number one bias of news media is not a left or right bias. The number one bias is a news bias. (Don't believe it? Explain two years of non-stop presidential race coverage.) With 24-hour sports talk on at least five national networks, there can't possibly be enough wheat to dismiss the chaff. So anything involving the NFL, a sweet-if-tortured narrative and a good interview subject is worth dedicating a segment to, especially during the dead sports period prior to March Madness, with baseball and football in hiatus and the NBA and NHL still slogging through their terminally meaningless pre-post-season exhibition calendars.

Certainly many of the interviewers are insufficiently self-aware to realize that Jordan Murphy's story doesn't hold together. After all, they're covering the combine, for god sakes. There are, however, still plenty of sports talk hosts, producers and executives who know better, but still gladly put Jordan Murphy on the air and coo over his pluck and strength of character. It's dreck -- but they can't help themselves.

They're biased -- biased in favor of news.

Why the Projection Systems Can't Get Bryce Harper Right

"History will little note, nor long remember, what we say here." --President Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg battlefield, considered the worst prediction in human history.


The futility of predicting the future in baseball has been amply documented and only weakly lamented. Bless their hearts, the various Sabermetric websites continue to offer the old college try, annually tweaking their systems to finer and finer levels of mediocrity. Fangraphs, Bill James, Baseball Prospectus, Tom Tango and The Hardball Times all provide projections whose mathematical formulas do a 5% better job than you would making educated guesses.

As I've mentioned before, understanding a few simple rules will give you all the tools you need to pull even with, or even out-guess, the projections. The reason is that these systems are prisoners of their calculations, whereas you know something or two about the players.

Take Bryce Harper, who flummoxes PECOTA, ZIPS, Steamer, Marcel, Bill James and all the rest. Harper was a young phenom who flashed wads of unrefined brilliance in his first three seasons but also got himself injured with regularity because of his over-exuberance. Then last year, having learned how to stay on the field and harness his innate power, he blasted 42 homers and got aboard safely at a 46% clip, en route to the MVP.

What the projections systems see is a good player who scuffled along for three seasons batting .270 with 20 home runs before out-performing himself in 2015. Consequently, they are regressing him to the mean. Here is PECOTA's projection of Harper:

2015 (Actual)	22	.386	11.2
2016 (Projected)	23	.313	5.1
2017 (Projected)	24	.322	5.5

(That's age, True Average and WAR listed in the three columns above.)

That's generally the way to treat players, but this is Bryce Freakin' Harper. When it crunches the numbers and spits out its projection, PECOTA doesn't know Bryce Harper from Valerie Harper. It's never seen this prodigy play.  It thinks he's just a guy whose pants were on fire last season.

You know better. You know that's the Harper we've been waiting for, and that putting it all together at 22 makes him a superstar not in spite of three previous seasons of .270 and 20 home runs but because of what we saw during them. 

I'll bet my Pope Francis Fan Club membership that Harper posts a TAv north of .350 this season and, if he stays upright, hands at least another eight wins to the Nationals. It may not work out that way, but that's what PECOTA would say is a reasonable 50% percentile projection if it had the ability to discern the man behind the statistics.

It doesn't, as none of the projections systems do, which is one of the reasons they aren't of much use.

The Top 100 Athletes of the Century

I was listening to a discussion of ESPN's Sports Century list of the greatest North American athletes of the 20th century. The names generally won't surprise you -- Jordan, Ruth, Ali, Jim Brown, Gretzky, Owens, Thorpe, Mays, Nicklaus, Didriksen. 

(Aside -- I've been amazed over the years at the whitewashing [no pun intended] of Muhammad Ali's career; he was an innovative boxer and personality, and I tended to root for him, but I don't think an objective review of his career puts him in the top 30 of the century's athletes. And I have no idea what to do with Babe Didriksen, but I doubt anyone else does, and they just wanted to get a woman into the top 10.)

After Ruth and Mays, Aaron (14), Jackie Robinson (15), Williams (16), Cobb (20), DiMaggio (22), Gehrig (34), Mantle (37), Koufax (42) round out the top 50. Honus Wager and Rogers Hornsby are in the 80s, presumably because no one voting saw them play.

But the point here isn't to quibble about the list, particularly when it doesn't appear anyone defined "athlete;" it's to marvel at how unbelievably long ago the list was created. Consider that the following careers either hadn't started or were in their infancies at the time: Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps, Lance Armstrong, Serena Williams, Jeff Gordon, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Tim Duncan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Sidney Crosby, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Alex Rodriguez, Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter and Albert Pujols. It also wouldn't include the second half of Barry Bonds' career and the marvel that was.

...And I'm sure I've left neglected someone. (Roger Federer would be on the list if Switzerland were in North America.)

Consider that: Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps didn't make the cut.

If we were making a list of the top 100 athletes of the 100 years between 1916 and today,  some of those names would cruise to the top. Woods revolutionized a sport and dominated it like no other. Michael Phelps is, by a wide margin, the most decorated Olympian ever. Serena Williams might be the greatest female tennis player of all time. Lance Armstrong won more of his sport's championships than anyone in history. Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are Mt. Rushmore quarterbacks. LeBron James is a phenomenon hitherto unwitnessed in sports. 

Where does that leave the lowly baseball players? I'm pretty sure none but Bonds could even sniff the list, and that's only if his chemical adventures are disregarded. Maybe Mike Trout, Bryce Harper and their generation can redeem America's Pastime.

For me, the epiphany related to the compilation of this list is how incredibly much has transpired in sports since the turn of the millennium, which hadn't previously felt so long ago. I guess time flies when the Royals win the World Series.

The 2016 MLB Standings -- Not!

For whatever it's worth -- which is to say, for kicks and giggles, here are Baseball Prospectus's projected standings for 2016.

There isn't much worth noting here, particular since these projections are little better than guesses. But it is interesting how little the projection system credits Arizona's hot stove spending spree, despite promising Zack Greinke an amount equal to 2% of the state's 2015 budget. 

You might also observe how little respect BP gives to the team with both the best player in baseball and the guy who's had the best career up to now, slating Anaheim for 87 losses. It also mysteriously loves the Rays and Indians, projecting them for more wins than the Mets, and it hates the 100-win Cardinals team (minus Jason Heyward and John Lackey but plus Adam Wainwright), bumping them down to basically break-even.

Finally, you've probably noticed that the World Champion Kansas City Royals are pegged for last place in the AL Central, with an inferior record to the Milwaukee Brewers, despite the return of almost exactly the same roster. Here's something that is worth noting: BP's projection system has underestimated KC's win total by 44 games the last three years.