Season 44 AL South Preview

Richmond High Rollers
bjc30
SEA 43:  87-75

2 seasons for Chick Rosenthal.  A ROY and an MVP on roughly identical stat outputs (OPS's of .957 and .969).  With a vL of 51?  What's up with that?  Well, it is a "reverse split bias", the unusual but not unheard-of righty hitter who hits righties much better than lefties.  How's he done against lefties?  .807 OPS in SEA 42 - well below his 1.017 against righties but not bad at all.  1.018 against lefties in SEA 43!  New respect for the reverse split bias.  Btw, Richmond is a perfectly neutral ballpark.  I also suspect Rosenthal has just had the 2 best years of his career, but we'll see about that down the road.  

Hardly qualifies as "bad" but Richmond has consistently won 85-90 games the last 5 seasons, but has only 1 playoff trip (to be fair, that trip in SEA 42 took them all the way to the WS).  Still a young team with a skinny $40MM payroll.  I think I see the strategy:  keep the payroll down to play in the high-end IFA market every year (which they've done successfully the last 2 seasons) and keep that MiL pipeline pumping out fresh young talent.  Very smart, viable strategy...just needs a tweek here or there to get the average wins up to 90-92 to get into the tournament every year.

The consequences  of the above strategy - some real gaping holes in a few ML roster spots (3B Beltre, both SS's, RP Jaime Daily with dual 48 splits).

Predicted Record: last year I predicted a slight uptick to 93 and they had a slight downtick to 87, even with Rosenthal's MVP season.  This season Rosenthal comes back to earth, and they get convinced to field a consistent contender.  83-79.

Montgomery Scotts
silentpadna 

SEA 43:  109-53, won Division, won World Series.

How many stars do you need to have to win a WS?  In Montgomery's case, it looks to me like 4:  Gerald Lim, Steve Walsh, Julio Cano (last year) and Vic Merced.  Wait, is Edgardo Mercedes a "star"?  Probably not enough power to be a star, he just hits .300 and wins Gold Gloves.  Let's call him an "unsung star".  There are more here:  MR Odrisamer Balboa (3.46 ERA), SR Zeke Sears (3.43 ERA), LR Edgmer Gil (3.23  ERA).  Guess it takes a few of those guys to win a WS too.

They won 109 games and the WS, scored 869 runs, and led the AL in ERA by a mile at 3.50.  So there's not much Angel Eyes going on here.

Apparently a little Tuco in the failure to sign Julio Cano last year.  Yes, I have also discovered the hard way that a pending FA who is willing to re-sign during the last year of his contract will frequently refuse to so so after  the season.  It raises a fun question:  Who would you rather have, Chris Osborne or Julio Cano and Nori Zhang?

Predicted record:  107-55

Florida Poison Dart Frogs
groth911 
SEA 43:  75-87

Florida never yields to the temptation to rebuild (an admirable strategy).  Rather, they seem to tear down an build up somewhat all the time.  Their pattern (if you can call it that) seems to be 90-something win seasons sandwiched between seasons of 70-something to 80-something wins.  If that holds, they'll win 75-88 this year and top 90 again next year.  The roster looks like it could play that way.

The strengths of the roster are the 2 COF's Rodriguez (the on-base and base-stealing savant) and Pickett (the opposite of Rosenthal - I believe he has had 2 of his worst seasons to start his career) and the pitching staff.  Yes, the same pitching staff that posted a 4.88 ERA last year.  See the Ugly section for a discussion of their staff.  I also very much like their double play combo of Garrido and Valdes (at least defensively) - they could surpass the 50 "+" plays posted by Garrido and Oropesa last year.

Outside of the COF's, there's not much punch here.  718 runs is pretty tough to work with, and they haven't really made any moves to improve that this season.

OK, figure this out.  In SEA 42, Florida leads the AL with a 3.55 ERA (en route to 99 wins btw).  Last year, they drop to 4.88, and of the 8 pitchers who were on both staffs, every single one was worse last year.  The mysteries are more in the amount of the increase for some of them:  Chaz Ross went from a 1.74 ERA to  6.02; Jeff Arrieta went from 1.86 to 5.18; Emil Ontiveros went from 4.02 to 8.02!  This looks like some guys were pitching while fatigued for a few outings or something.  Point is, as ugly as last season was for the Florida staff, they're likely to be much better this year.

Predicted Record:  I'm going to say the staff improves enough to get 83 wins.  Not enough runs to get more, even when Picket puts up a .303/42/135 monster.  83-79

New Orleans Voodoo
bigmattr  

SEA 43:  62-100

Well, I don't know if they're  a contender as currently put together, but they certainly get kudos for shaking things up.  First, they shelled out max money for SP Julio Cano.  Next,  a #3 or 4 SP prospect (Balentien) and a very good IF prospect (Alvarado) for ML-ready RF David Seneca and short RP prospect Byron Huff.  Then, they swapped Fergie Jenkins (decent SP prospect, #19 overall in his class), Stan Story (33-yo SP, probably qualifies as a #2 starter), and Chad Haynes, a young vet SP with 2 years of ML experience, for Pat Jodie, a true ace SP with a 3.16 ERA over 7 ML seasons.  Great moves for NO, especially the Jodie trade.  The 3 pitchers they gave up were commodities that are reasonably easy to get, and Jodie, with his extremely high PAT and extremely low temper, will never go FA - they'll have him for as long as they want him, probably another 11 seasons.

Finally, the controversial one, Osborne for Zhang.  I'm not sure what the thinking was here, as Osborne is clearly the superior talent.  Maybe NO felt they needed some payroll relief to sign some hitters, although keeping Osborne at $9MM would've only brought their payroll to around $55MM.  And Osborne is not some short-term rental; his high PAT and low TEM mean he's highly likely to re-sign indefinitely.  Montgomery's going to have Osborne for probably 10 more seasons at $8.5-$9MM.  Zhang will be controlled for 9 more seasons and the will likely go FA.  

OK, at the moment they have 2 aces, a third very good SP who's really cheap for another 3 seasons.  They'll call up 1B Engel Bastardo and MR Quinn Lewis in 20 games.  They have an OF with Henry, Seneca and Epstein.  The rest could be ugly, but sometimes the very best values are found in that sweet spot right after Spring Training Game 8.

Predicted record: Not really a clue, but I love the moves.  I'm saying 92 wins just 'cause I want to see them go from 62 wins to a playoff berth in 1 season.