NL West Projections

CHONE is the projection system du jour today for baseball stats and the creator of that system (Sean Smith) also put up a baseball 2009 standings projection based on his projections for the players. This is covered in a post on Fangraphs and the projection standings are here.

Here is the projected standings for the NL West:

Team W-L
D-gers 82-80
'Dres 80-82
D-backs 79-83
D-Rox 78-84
Giants 77-85

So there is only a 5 game spread between the top team and the bottom, which is projected to be the Giants.

Giants Thoughts

As anyone experienced with projections know, there is a huge variance in what is projected and what actually happens, often through no fault of the projection system. Injuries happen. One player gets annointed, getting loads of playing time, and another gets benched and does nothing much. Some have a Sophomore slump, some finally hit the old age barrier and then some, others can't figure out how to bring their AAA goodness to the majors.

So 5 games is nothing, Furcal and Kemp could go out with injuries, Kershaw could flop in a full season, Jason Schmidt or Shawn Estes could both prove that the past few years were prologue to the end of their careers, Billingsley could recover slowly from his injury or suffer a setback in his recovery, Loney could show that 2008 is the real him, not 2007, Kuroda could continue the poor showing most Japanese pitchers show after their first good season (he is 34 this season after all, prime real estate location for career declines), Broxton's weight could finally work against him.

Using a Giants example, in 2008, Dave Roberts probably costed us 3 wins by playing with an injury that was so bad that he got in 6 starts and then was DLed and operated on (since the team was .500 for the next two months after that, they most probably would have won 3 of those 6 starts instead of losing them all because of his putrid .118/.167/.118/.284 hitting, leading off for us. So if he would have been professional and DLed himself immediately or even in spring training, we could have been 75-87 instead last season, in third place ahead of Colorado (though ultimately that works out great for us because now we get the 6th pick instead of the 11th, 12th, 13th pick in the 2009 draft, much better position).

So this is another indication that the Giants team, as is today, is capable of playing basically .500 ball and thus should be in contention much of the season, though if the D-gers do sign Manny (seems to me to be the most likely scenario), we would probably be battling more for 2nd place after the All-Star break, while staying close for much of the first half.

However, while Manny can be a huge difference maker, I doubt he's going to bat .396/.489/.743/1.232 for a whole season and hit 50+ homers (which is about the rate he was hitting them in his short time with D-gers). Still, his career numbers of .314/.411/.593/.904 with 30-40 HR is still pretty good (and much better than what they can hope to get from Juan Pierre in LF or Blake DeWitt, if he gets pushed to LF now that they signed Orlando Hudson).

As I've been saying, the Giants should be around .500 this season - and I would be disappointed if they finished below .500 - and with the poor NL West, we should also be in contention for the NL West title for much of the season, though probably will fall short. This is another piece in the puzzle of trying to figure out what is likely and what is possible for the 2009 season. Contention is probable, playoffs are possible but unlikely unless the players can perform as well as their history suggests they could (Sandoval, Ishikawa, Renteria, Rowand, Frandsen, Zito, Johnson, Sanchez, Howry, Romo) and not what is projected for them. It should be a fun season!

Go Giants!