Rox Talk

Well after a 74 - 88 finish how did this all look based on some preseason predictions? Well looking back to April, Vegas O/Us for the division was the D-backs at 87.5, Dodgers at 86.5, the Padres at 84.5, and the Roxs at 83.5. Based on returning Win Shares and adding in their off season additions the D-backs were at 78, Roxs at 81, Padres at 68, LA at 83 and the Giants at 71. So what was the final tally?

So for last year based on the team's final standings

	W	L	RS	RA	Ex - W	WS Factor
Arizona	90	72	712	732	79	0.88
Colorado	90	73	860	758	90	1.00
San Diego	89	74	741	666	89	1.00
LA	82	80	735	727	82	1.00
SF	71	91	683	720	77	1.09

2008 Standings

	W	L	RS	RA	Ex - W	WS Factor
LA	84	78	700	648	87 (83)	1.04
Arizona	82	80	720	706	82 (78)	1.00
Colorado	74	88	747	822	74 (81)	1.00
SF	72	90	640	759	68 (71)	0.94
San Diego	63	99	637	764	68 (68)	1.08

Well Vegas did awful but the Win Share method did fairly well.  Boy the Dodgers really helped their cause with pitching.  And well the Roxs just couldn't score.  Based on early projections based on Chone, ZiPs, Pecota, and Marcels the Roxs had a spread of wins from 77 to 93.  The average was 84 wins.  I predicted an 85 win season finishing second to the Dodgers.  Looking at expectations the injury bug certainly hurt the Roxs with Helton and Tulo missing considerable games.  The big hole was 2B where we had 84 runs scored last year thanks to Matsui and this year the patchwork at the 2-hole only produced 65 runs. The lowest predicted run score was 770 runs!  

Looking at the pitching performance

For as much griping as there was for the pitching staff this year, I really think it was the offense that really underperformed. Had the Roxs scored 800 runs they would have won 4 - 5 more games. Oh yeah and if the Roxs weren't 3 - 15 against the D-backs we might have been a bit more respectable too.