David Pinto's been running his divisional previews as we lead up to Opening Day and today he's got his AL East Preview. You might need to have a grasp about what "WAR" means, and I'm not talking about the 1970 song by Edwin Starr. Before we get to Pinto's preview, let's define WAR, thanks to tangotiger: WAR is wins above replacement. Replacement is defined very specifically for my purposes: it’s the talent level for which you would pay the minimum salary on the open market, or for which you can obtain at minimal cost in a trade.
If you want to actually try to calculate it yourself, have a ball.
With that as a background, here are Pinto's projections:
Tampa Bay Rays
- Position player WAR: 28.2
- Starters WAR: 12.5
- Closer WAR: -0.7
- Total WAR: 40.0
- Said Pinto: "Without much effort other than normal improvement, I can see Tampa Bay bringing their core WAR up to 44. They are in a good position to compete and repeat."
Boston Red Sox
- Position player WAR: 29.2
- Starters WAR: 15.6
- Closer WAR: 3.0
- Total WAR: 47.8
- Said Pinto: "The Red Sox come into the season in better shape than the Rays, but Tampa Bay looks like they have more upside, and the Red Sox more downside."
New York Yankees
- Position player WAR: 26.6
- Starters WAR: 23.1
- Closer WAR: 3.1
- Total WAR: 52.8
- Said Pinto: "Without any help from the bench, New York is looking at a season with their wins in the high 90s. That’s the floor, not the ceiling. The Yankees are going to be tough to beat unless everything goes wrong for them."
Toronto Blue Jays
- Position player WAR: 16.1
- Starters WAR: 12.2
- Closer WAR: 1.0
- Total WAR: 29.3
- Said Pinto: "The Blue Jays do have some upside, they are likely to have the curvature of the earth between them and Tampa Bay, Boston and New York by August."
Baltimore Orioles
- Position player WAR: 24.2
- Starters WAR: 4.4
- Closer WAR: 0.4
- Total WAR: 29.0
- Said Pinto: "Adam Eaton, one of the worst pitchers in the majors over the last two years, pulls down the third spot in the rotation, and it gets worse from there. The Orioles offense is going to need to be a lot better than they project to win with this staff. Still, they may be good enough to finish ahead of the Blue Jays."
And finally, Pinto's views on each team's chance on winning the division:
- Yankees, 32%
- Red Sox, 30%
- Rays, 28%
- Blue Jays, 6%
- Orioles, 4%
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2 comments:
If they Yankees win the division, especially by the kind of maring 5-6 games, I'll write a complimentary post about them on my blog.
Or give you 1000 words to say what you want.
That's how confident I am.
On a side note, I watched Game 5 of the 1976 ALCS right up until the end of the top of the 9th, when Joe Brinkman made the worst call in history before Don Denkinger. Then I cried myself to sleep.
Chris Chambliss can still kiss my a$$.
Should have been:
margin, 5-6 games.
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