In all seriousness, forecasting a .500 season is never a radical prediction, not even for a team that looks pretty awful on paper. The teams play 162 games. Regression to the mean is a powerful force for both the good and the bad teams in the league.
Smizik writes:
The team has lost Brian Giles, Reggie Sanders, Kenny Lofton, Aramis Ramirez and Matt Stairs and replaced them with Jason Bay, Raul Mondesi, Tike Redman, Chris Stynes and J.J. Davis.I'm a bit underwhelmed by this argument since I'm high on Bay and low on Ramirez. Sanders and Mondesi are even. Lofton is an old man and Redman, though he clowned around the bases last year, has shown more promise than Adrian Brown ever did. Smizik attempts to heighten the gloom of subtraction by citing the 2003 numbers. Never mind that Matt Stairs had a flukeish breakout season at 35 last year, posting numbers that were well above his career averages, and couldn't be expected to repeat them this year even if he was returning to PNC. No one knows what J.J. Davis will contribute as a fourth outfielder or, should injuries strike, as a starter. Matt Stairs or J.J. Davis is Matt Stairs or Door Number 2.
Let's say that Davis fails this year. We can still play Devil's advocate and say, if we are just looking at the Bucs offense, that Kendall is hitting for more power this spring, Jack Wilson is another year older and still on the good side of the development curve, and any combination of Bobby Hill, Jose Castillo, and Freddy Sanchez is pretty sure to represent a significant upgrade over the offensively inoffensive combination of Jeff Reboulet, Pokey Reese, and Abraham Nunez. All you squeamish, look away: Reboulet gave us 300 PAs of 660 OPS, Reese 200 PAs of 530 OPS, and Nunez 350 PAs of 670 OPS. That was one marvelous three-in-one Out Machine.
The offense should be about the same. Instead of scoring 750 runs, maybe they'll score 725.
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