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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JRI who wrote (236099)	4/17/2003 9:44:49 AM
From: reaper	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 436258

<<weren't Seattle on paper (gigantic win season on paper a couple years a go) pretty light on paper then>> if Seattle was 'light on paper' going into 2001 then the guys making the paper weren't paying attention. the whole batting lineup with the exception of Bret Boone did pretty much exactly what they were supposed to do (handful of guys played 30-50 OPS points better; handful of guys played 30-50 OPS points worse). Boone was nuts and had perhaps the single greatest outlier season in the history of baseball (Norm Cash in 1961 being the benchmark for huge outlier season). pitching was #2 in the league in ERA the prior year, moved up to #1 in 2001 with the same staff (Garcia/Sele/Moyer/Halama/Abbott). nobody should have been surprised by 95-100 wins from that team; that they won 116 was of course a ridiculous surprise and was due to the insane, completely un-forcastable season that Boone had. in all seriousness, to win more than 80-85 games you need either (i) Mike Sweeney to add 150-200 bps in OPS, thus becoming a better hitter than Giambi and Manny; (ii) Randa to continue his torrid early pace and put up one of the 2-3 single largest outlier seasons in the history of professional baseball; or (iii) have a pitching staff which collectively has almost no big-league experience finish 3rd or better in ERA in the league, which of course is possible but would be historically unprecedented. Hernandez looked pretty good again last night, though the walks and the lack of a good punch-out pitch hurt him. unless he K's more guys, he's gonna have more innings like last night where walks, an error, a fielder's choice and an infield single set him back 2-3 runs. only one guy hit the ball hard that inning (Ordonez just crushed that double) but the Sox managed to score 3 times. meanwhile, the Red Sox continue to struggle with Tampa Bay; not a good sign. i'm downgrading my win expectation every day. Cheers