Projecting

The Replacement Level Yankees Blog has taking the Chone projections and plugged them into the Diamond Mind Simulator 100 times to take a very early (very early because there's still lots of free agents out there) look at the divisions (via Baseball Musings). Because it's so early it's hard to take much to heart from these predictions, but what I found interesting is that with the currently configured line-up, the Pirates are projected to score only 680 runs, 17 less than the next worst offense (the Royals, who are the only team within a light-year of 680) and 11 less than last year's 691 (which was second to last in the league, ahead of the Cubs by two runs and the Cubs have obviously addressed their offensive problems). The pitching staff that Diamond Minds predicts is pretty decent, 734 runs against is actually fifth in the National League, but with the offense it's only good enough for 74 wins. It's just more of the same. Minus the Reggie Sanders/Kenny Lofton/Matt Stairs year (2003) the Bucs scored 680 in 2005, 680 in 2004 (no kidding), and 641 in 2002 (you can go here and play around with the years if you're interested in verification of those numbers). It's really just a verification of what I said yesterday; no matter what Tracy and Littlefield want to believe about the second half last year, this team is not going to "mature" into a winning baseball team on its own. Standing pat isn't going to do any thing but doom us to more mediocrity.