Baseball Prospectus has run its PECTOA (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm) projections for 2009 and come up with the following division winners: Yanks, Indians, A's, Mess, Cubs, Dodgers with the RedSawx and D'Backs as the wild card teams.
These projections are interesting for various reasons, not least of which are that BP has a good track record for picking sleepers (they had the Rays with 90 wins last year).
But some of the numbers they come up with are weird. They had only two AL teams hitting better than .265, which was below the league average last year (.268). They had the Yanks at .264/.337/.413 for average, OBP and SLG but the '08 Yanks were .271/.342/.427 with a weak year from A-Rod, too many at bats for Jose Molina and no Texeira. And BP predicted the Yanks would allow just 634 runs -- the last time the Yanks allowed less than 656 (the 1998 total) in a full season was 1978.
BP also predicted that the three best overall batting teams would be from the National League and even predicted the Rangers would score fewer than 800 runs, something they've never failed to do since The Ballpark in Arlington opened in 1993.
Review the numbers . . . and have some salt grains handy.
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