Well... Pecota doesnt like us at all...

[Stradling]

If the team wins 81 games @GrittyVeterans only owes me $50.  

[m0nkey]

[GrittyVeterans]

1 minute ago, Stradling said:

If the team wins 81 games @GrittyVeterans only owes me $50.  

Yeah, that's kind of how a bet works. 

It would be funny to watch you strut around acting all high and mighty if they went 81-81 and miss the playoffs by 10 games again

But I'll still pay you since I'm a man of my word

[Inside Pitch]

Just now, GrittyVeterans said:

Those projections seem awfully optimistic to me. I see a 78 win ball club unfortunately

Because I'm curious.... What's that based on?  I'm not trying to be combative... Im genuinely curious as to how others read these projections.  As I said previously i think they might be too high on the offense but the pitching is a bit of a wild card IMO.   

[Stradling]

1 minute ago, GrittyVeterans said:

Yeah, that's kind of how a bet works. 

It would be funny to watch you strut around acting all high and mighty if they went 81-81 and miss the playoffs by 10 games again

But I'll still pay you since I'm a man of my word

And if they win 79 games or less I will pay you.  Can you imagine your mixed emotions if they have one of those seasons like the Rays or A’s from last year, where you’ll be happy with their performance that comes out of nowhere, but it will cost you $500-800.  

[GrittyVeterans]

1 minute ago, Inside Pitch said:

Because I'm curious.... What's that based on?  I'm not trying to be combative... Im genuinely curious as to how others read these projections.  As I said previously i think they might be too high on the offense but the pitching is a bit of a wild card IMO.   

Imo (and I could be wrong here for sure), the starting pitching high risk and meh reward. The offense is too reliant on 4 players (Trout, Upton, Simmons, Ohtani) and 1 of those players will likely miss a month. 

I look at Harvey the same way I looked at Richards. No one should be surprised if he goes down early in the year with an injury. Skaggs, Heaney...well, you kind of know what you're getting at this point. They're not the problem. Barria had some poor peripherals but maybe he improves with some more experience. And then you have Cahill who I just don't understand the love affair with. He could either get bombed or be mediocre. Hasn't thrown more than 110 innings in 6 seasons.

 

[Blarg]

Baseball, because of roster, injuries, length of season and player volitilty both positive and negative, is an exercise in futility to predict its outcome at almost any given part of the season.

I look at these as simple baseline numbers that only represent abstract averages.

[Inside Pitch]

2 minutes ago, GrittyVeterans said:

Imo (and I could be wrong here for sure), the starting pitching high risk and meh reward. The offense is too reliant on 4 players (Trout, Upton, Simmons, Ohtani) and 1 of those players will likely miss a month. 

I look at Harvey the same way I looked at Richards. No one should be surprised if he goes down early in the year with an injury. Skaggs, Heaney...well, you kind of know what you're getting at this point. They're not the problem. Barria had some poor peripherals but maybe he improves with some more experience. And then you have Cahill who I just don't understand the love affair with. He could either get bombed or be mediocre. Hasn't thrown more than 110 innings in 6 seasons.

Ftr, I see bust potential in Harvey he 's not someone I'm expecting much out of.... but I see Canning and Suarez as legitimate fall-back options and improvements over the slop we threw out there last year.   Thats the entire crux of it for me ...how bad the back end of the rotation was.... It's why Cahill could pitch to an era above 4.50 and still be a significant upgrade.

The young guys are the great unknown, both position players and pitching.  That's where the projections are least useful and where we could see the biggest chance for improvements.

Thank you for sharing your thought process.

[notherhalo]

81-81 seems kinda rosy

[Second Base]

I mean really, you can paint the Angels in whatever picture you want this year....

Pessimist View: Sub .500 team Loses their two best starters, Shohei Ohtani and Garrett Richards for the year.  Also lost a valuable 2B in Ian Kinsler and have so far replaced him with.....nothing.  Are depending on Taylor Ward, Zack Cozart and David Fletcher to be good major league hitters and fix the offense.  Good luck with that.  Still have a black hole in RF that is Kole Calhoun.  They traded aware their best reliever last year for a guy with an ERA over 6.  Albert Pujols is yet another year older and their opening the year with Ohtani on the DL.  

Conclusion: This team is screwed, and might win 70 games. 

Optimist View: Skaggs is healthy again, and we saw what he did last year when healthy. Heaney is another year removed from surgery, and he's clearly a mid rotation starter.  Jaime Barria has another year of development under him, and now better understands how to get major league hitters out, which he was already good at last year as a 21 year old.  Matt Harvey recovered his velocity late last year, and the last time he was throwing this hard, he was The Dark Knight and an annual Cy Young candidate.  Cahill had a shiny ERA last year, and for going on 2-3 years now, has been an EXTREMELY effective pitcher, be it the pen or the rotation.  The Angels also have a potential ace waiting in AAA in Griffin Canning, another kid that's major league ready like Barria was in Jose Suarez, except he's left handed, and another kid that dominated in A+/AA last year in Pat Sandoval that could factor in too.  They've upgraded at catcher with Lucroy, who brilliantly guided the A's last year.  They upgraded 1B with Justin Bour.  They get Ohtani at DH for a full year instead of half.  Kole Calhoun was a different player to end last year.  Mike Trout is now fully entering his prime.  David Fletcher was incredibly impressive in AAA last year and was one of the best players on the team once he was promoted.  Taylor Ward dominated AAA last year as well.  Zack Cozart wasn't healthy last year, but the year before when he was actually healthy, he was a 5-win player. They also added the most clutch pinch hitter in baseball in Tommy La Stella to help stabilize the infield.  Jo Adell, Matt Thaiss, Luis Rengifo, Jared Walsh and Mike Hermosillo will all have another year of development and should be ready for action later in the year. Brandon Marsh and Jahmai Jones shortly thereafter.  They've got a high-powered bullpen that will be further infused with other power arms mid-season like JC Ramirez, Keynan Middleton and Alex Meyer.  They've got a new coach that is more numbers driven, a new hitting coach that fixed Calhoun's swing, and a new cutting edge pitching coach.  They've also used a series of one year contracts to free up money for 2020 and beyond for extensions and free agency. 

Conclusion: The Angels will win 90+ games, and should continue to win 90+ games for the next decade. 

So really, make of the Angels what you want.  You can even create numbers to justify it and call it a projection instead of a prediction.  Whatever your fancy is, that's how you'll see the Angels in 2019. 

[zenmaster]

I don't know how anyone can look at our roster on paper and have us finishing much better than .500. If some of our pitchers end up not going down for the year early on and can have breakout seasons then we could be much better, but as we stand, we are a .500 team on paper.

[floplag]

1 hour ago, Stradling said:

If you showed the slightest bit of balance in your posting you’d have a point, but since you don’t, you get butthurt when called out for being negative.  

Negative to you is anything that doesnt paint the rosey picture you want it to be. 
Im on record as saying this is an 85-96 win team,  hardly negative.   I would argue thats an optimistic outcome if anything.
Yes i am 100% disappointed at whats its done this off season, or more precisely what it hasnt done, damn right as in my opinion it could have been a 90+ win team.   But hey why bother for that right since it wont compete with Hou, lol  
When the team gives me a reason to be less negative ill happily change my tune, till then thankfully i still get to post what i think, not parrot what you do. 

[Stradling]

10 minutes ago, floplag said:

Negative to you is anything that doesnt paint the rosey picture you want it to be. 
Im on record as saying this is an 85-96 win team,  hardly negative.   I would argue thats an optimistic outcome if anything.
Yes i am 100% disappointed at whats its done this off season, or more precisely what it hasnt done, damn right as in my opinion it could have been a 90+ win team.   But hey why bother for that right since it wont compete with Hou, lol  
When the team gives me a reason to be less negative ill happily change my tune, till then thankfully i still get to post what i think, not parrot what you do. 

Ok.  Until then we will continue to be able to predict your threads OPs.  

[Tyler]

Why would they? The moves were awful.

[Docwaukee]

most projections systems are wonky because they don't consider the stream of the season.  they project a player out the whole year and assume no adjustments will be made.  as an example, the team isn't going to let Barria rock a 5 era when it could plug in canning at the 4.2 era that they project.  The same think applies for the pen.  Invariably some guys are going to do better than their projections and some guys worse.  But the guys doing better will be more heavily relied on.  

PECOTA does their projections by creating a baseline for each player and comparing that baseline to the historical data of players that have had a similar baseline.  It uses body type, age, position etc in addition to numbers in order to create that baseline.  So it doesn't take into account rebound years or changing roles and it punishes injured players and essentially projects additional injury.  It also doesn't allow for much improvement for young pitchers with less than great peripherals.  

[UndertheHalo]

There’s still a lot of unsigned players.  I don’t expect it but I won’t be surprised if the Angels still haven’t made their biggest move. 

[Second Base]

26 minutes ago, RBM said:

The thing that jumped out to me at first glance is FRAA (Fielding Runs Against Average). Apparently it's their own metric. They are projecting the Angels will be the absolute worst defensive team in baseball this year. I don't see that.

"FRAA - Fielding Runs Above Average is Prospectus' individual defensive metric created using play-by-play data with adjustments made based on plays made, the expected numbers of plays per position, the handedness of the batter, the park, and base-out states.The biggest difference between Fielding Runs Above Average and similar defensive metrics comes in the data and philosophy used. Whereas other metrics use zone-based fielding data, Fielding Runs Above Average ignores that data due to the numerous biases present. Fielding Runs Above Average instead focuses on play-by-play data, taking a step back and focusing on the number of plays made compared to the average number of plays made by a player at said position. The pitcher's groundball tendencies, batter handedness, park, and base-out state all go into figuring out how many plays an average player at a position would make."

We don't know what will really happen, it's why we play the games. They had the A's at 76 games last year but they won 97. The bottom line is if we pitch and field like they think we will then we will be mediocre. I think we will be better than this.

Which is really hard to believe since the Angels have had an elite defensive unit since Eppler took over.  You have potentially gold glove caliber defense at SS, 2B, CF, RF and catcher. And the spots that aren't elite defensively, are also still passable.

[Homebrewer]

Pecota obviously ignores the new manager factor. No Sosh should easily give them the 6-7 games they need.

I predict playoffs..

[yk9001]

They predicted the Angels to be 79-83 last year. 

https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/fantasy/dc/index_2018_pre.php

 

They ended up 80-82.

Edited February 7, 2019 by yk9001

[Docwaukee]

31 minutes ago, yk9001 said:

They predicted the Angels to be 79-83 last year. 

https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/fantasy/dc/index_2018_pre.php

 

They ended up 80-82.

so you're saying they were wrong?  

[eligrba]

How accurate is Pecota? Experts predict the weather on a daily basis and manage to get it wrong at a significant rate.

[eligrba]

33 minutes ago, yk9001 said:

They predicted the Angels to be 79-83 last year. 

https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/fantasy/dc/index_2018_pre.php

 

They ended up 80-82.

And that record was with disastrous starting pitching. 

[AngelsLakersFan]

Even if these represented completely accurate true talent levels there is still so much noise in sequencing that they could still easily end up 15 games off.

[Docwaukee]

as an aside, I would expect our SP pitching numbers as a whole to project out pretty much as PECOTA has them.  I think they're probably closer to worst case than avg because of what I mentioned above, but I think our rotation could be pretty bad.  I am optimistic of course but there are a ton of question marks with needs for improvement and or bounce backs in order for the higher end projections (in my mind) to come true.  I don't agree with a lot of their individual outcomes but the pen and lineup look ok.  

I agree that the defensive projections are really odd.  Having us as the worst defensive team in baseball with upton as our best defensive player relative to average.  They have Simmons barely above avg and they had him below average last year.  They have Trout as being terrible on defense.  Those are hard things for me to get on board with.  

Truly though, I think this season will once again boil down to the health and success of our rotation. 

 

 

[Hubs]

I’m an eternal optimist because being a pessimist is like praying for bad things to happen. Why live your life like that?

The guys I’m excited about offensively who could make a real difference are Lucroy, Adell, Ward, Cozart and Bour.

Adell is going to be here sooner than people think. I think Ward is going to surprise and hit himself into the starting 3B gig.

The other 3 are as likely to repeat their 2017 seasons as their 2018. All good value adds.

Pitching wise we got 27 total starts out of Richards and Ohtani and Richards wasn’t going deep into games.

I think Harvey will give us what Heaney gave us last year and think Skaggs replaces what we lost in Richards and Ohtani.

Then you have three solid pitchers to front the rotation. Barria slots into the 4 spot and even if he regresses slightly should also give you what they got in Heaney. 

Cahill isn’t my favorite but between he, Tropeano, JC Ramirez and Canning the fifth spot will be just fine.

The addition of Allen to the pen and the dropping of dead weight arms will certainly help the cause.

I think I’m a tad optimistic but at worse they give up 730 runs, at best it’s closer to 660. 850 runs is the ceiling for runs scored and that only happens with Cozart, Lucroy, Upton and Bour repeating 2017, with a Ohtani DHing at least as much as last year, and Adell and Ward breaking out.

but stranger things have happened. Can see this team surprising and winning 95+ but I can see them collapsing and going .500 again.