No, YOU are the one who is stoopid!In most baseball circles, the
Published 8:00 am Friday, January 29, 2010
No, YOU are the one who is stoopid!In most baseball circles, the consensus is that no team had a better offseason than the Mariners. They traded for Cy Young Award winner Cliff Lee. Traded away ball-of-suck Carlos Silva. And signed slap-happy Chone Figgins away from those dastardly Los Angeles Angels.And that’s just Exhibit A.Exhibit B looks like some unholy combination of a possibly rejuvenated Milton Bradley, a healthy Junior and the undeniable karma that comes from having the greatest left-handed pitcher of all time (and working class hero) Randy Johnson throw out the first Rawlings in Safeco.But does all this blood-pumping optimism mean a lick once you drain it of its color, render it in black-and-white and enter it into a spreadsheet? No, it does not.Every year, the stat geeks at Baseball Prospectus release projections for how they think the upcoming season will play out. This year they’ve got the Mariners at 86 wins, an improvement from the last, but still not enough to overcome the (surprise, surprise) upstart Oakland A’s.Because the AL East is a baby-eating juggernaut that chews up and spits out any team that doesn’t win more than 90 games, this means that, according to the computers, come October the Mariners will all be scattered across Sun Belt country, chipping and putting while four lucky contestants are deciding who gets to yet again prove that the National League is inferior.The obvious caveat here is that it’s January. We’re still nine months and a lot of seeing-eye singles away from deciding which teams make the playoffs. And these projections often miss their mark; witness last year’s BP prognostication that had the eventual World Series-runner-up Philadelphia Phillies missing the playoffs.In other words, it’s an inexact science.Still, it’d be a lot easier for Mariners fans to disregard this sober outlook if BP hadn’t spawned such impressive progeny: Specifically Nate Silver, a.k.a. the genius who called the 2008 presidential election.
