2-3-2011: Handicapping the AL East

It’s February, and we’re all itching for things to get started. I went ahead and did a little exercise based on my projections. Consider these a back of the envelope prediction for the division.

For offense, I plugged in OBP and SLG into Baseball Musings’ lineup analysis tool, multiplied by 162 games, and took away 8% of those runs based on the play of substitutes and injuries, etc. Historically, it’s worked out that way for the Sox the past few years.

Team Offense	R/G	Runs
NYY	5.57	830
BOS	5.50	820
BAL	5.35	797
TB	5.06	754
TOR	4.77	711

The Yankees still have the most thump, but not by a large margin. Adding Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford is nice, but it’s full seasons of Kevin Youkilis, Dustin Pedroia, and Jacoby Ellsbury that will really narrow that gap. Baltimore has added a lot of pop this offseason, and they could be dangerous to pitchers’ ERAs this season. The Rays’ offense may be a bit better than this, but my projections don’t really like Ben Zobrist or Reid Brignac all that much. The Blue Jays have some potential, but they remain punchless as usual.

12-23-2010: Sox offense in good shape for 2011

Nobody yet knows what lineup Terry Francona will use next season, but we know that whatever lineup he uses will be pretty good. We also know that should a player go down, whether in the infield or outfield, we’ve got some pretty good contingency players in Jed Lowrie and Mike Cameron, guys who could be starters for some teams out there.

If you plug in our projections into the Baseball Musings lineup analyzer, you get an average of 5.502 runs per game, or about 891 runs on the year. Take away 8% due to the play of substitutes, and we project this squad for 820 runs in 2011. This is actually slightly lower than what we projected for the 2010 squad by 12 runs. But assuming that our regulars play more than they did this year, we are still looking good.