be somewhat accurate http://www.diamondbacksfanproshop.com/authentic-zack-greinke-jersey , come October. But what about yours?"Charlie Gebow: 73This team was very bad on offense in the last part of the year. Their two historically best hitters left via trade/free agency. There’s gonna be a lot of 3-1 games unless somebody steps up. I’m not too confident in that. Things could fall apart pretty fast.Michael McDermott: 78I get the sense this is a team that really doesn’t know which way they want to go. They’re not going to commit to a rebuild season and they’re certainly not going all in. This team doesn’t have star power on the roster, but it has a bunch of average to slightly above average production guys. I get the feeling this team will finish about 3rd in the division but will be out of the race by the end of June anyway. Turambar: 95Christian Walker. His name spells doom. His bat unmakes dreams. He supplants himself as the everyday 1st baseman after game two of the season and after that....glory. Jack Sommers: 77Vegas over/unders are 75.5, but FG has 79 and BP has 81. I’m in between. Makakilo: 89Offense improves to 721 runs (2018 league average).Hitting Coach Darnell Coles is an optimist! New hitting coaches will focus on making hitting more consistent – which was a big problem in 2018. Hitting was inconsistent. Two examples follow. 19% of D-back runs were scored in the first inning, while 6% of runs were scored in the ninth inning. May hitting (2.85 runs per game) and June hitting (5.43 runs per game) were 2 standard deviations apart.鈥? Addition of Adam Jones. In an interview with Jody Foster, he indicated the team goal is 800 runs! WOW! Maybe the D-backs will score more than 721 runs! He hit very well in spring training!A small bounce back of Souza, although it may be transformational. Jeff Wiser wrote that Souza’s 43.8% hard-hit rate was above his career average, but his grounders had better results than his fly balls. Perhaps Souza will show he can excel in two types of hitting - power/RBI hitting and on-base hitting.鈥? More players with flexibility in positions they can play will help offense due to strategic changes before and during each game.As a team, offense will regress to the mean (which is an increase in runs). 720 runs In 2015, 752 runs in 2016, 812 runs in 2017, 693 runs in 2018. 2018 was an anomaly – in the previous 3 years the lowest runs was 720. Defense allows 683 runs. Instead of allowing 77 runs under league average (2018), this season will achieve 38 runs-allowed under league average. Loss of Goldschmidt.Loss of Pollock. New playing surface should help in CF, keeping the drop in defense better than it would have been.鈥? Uncertainty of Marte’s defense in CF.Uncertainty of Flores defense at second base. 鈥? Mitigating the worse defense are two factors: position flexibility and the outfield depth.With 721 runs scored and 683 runs allowed, the Pythagorean projection is 85.0 wins. Let’s look at luck to complete my prediction. In last two seasons, D-backs performed 3.6 and 4.3 wins below Pythagorean. Instead of the usual under-performance, what if the D-backs achieve 4 wins above Pythagorean? LUCK RAISED MY PREDICTION FROM 85 WINS TO 89 WINS. Luck accrues to players who are optimistic and prepared, in other word players with winning attitudes. The D-backs have three major reasons to be lucky:to contention deep in the season but can they sustain that when the offense struggles to keep up and teams start asking about Greinke and Ray? I’m not so sure. It doesn’t help this offense lost an MVP-caliber 1st baseman and another solid centerfielder.James Attwood: 73The team limped to 82-80 last season despite the presences of Goldschmidt, Pollock, Corbin, Descalso Jeff Mathis Jersey , and Mathis on the team. This team is even more starved for depth than that unit was. I figure the team goes into hard sell mode at the deadline, making finishing at .500 a monumental task unless every prospect called upon performs as well as can be hoped for.. ISH95: 74I’m not particularly optimistic about this season. I think the offense is a series of question marks, the defense is going to be tough, at least compared to the high standard we’ve had the past few seasons, and outside Greinke, Ray, and Hirano, the pitching is nothing impressive.However, I do think that it’s good enough that they won’t be completely out of it by the deadline. Hazen might even make a couple of small “buy” moves. In the end though I think the same problems the team faced last year with burn out will be even worse, and they’ll end up falling off even harder.On the flip side, if you squint hard enough, you can see a pretty decent team, so who the heck knows.Jim McLennan: 78I actually think 78 is an unlikely figure, but it’s where I’d draw the over-under line. I suspect we’ll probably not end up within five games of that: we’ll either be significantly better, or considerably worse. I can see Hazen hovering over the big red button in the GM’s suite, especially with the tough first month’s schedule, and if things go pear-shaped, we will shift into sale mode. But if we get through April in good shape, then we could be this year’s version of Oakland, if all goes well. That will largely depend on the rotation staying healthy http://www.philliesfanproshop.com/authentic-pat-neshek-jersey , with a lot riding on Merrill Kelly and Luke Weaver being what we want them to be. I tend to think the overall upside is probably lower than the downside, hence the drop of a few games in expectations compared to last season. We’ve lost all the players potentially most likely to put up huge seasons, in Goldschmidt, Pollock and Corbin. But any figure between 65 and 90 wouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Sean Testerman: 85The Diamondbacks are better than people realize and will exceed expectations. A solid lineup across the board and a still above average rotation will carry the Dbacks to a wild card hunt. Look for breakouts from Lamb, Marte, either Kelly, or Souza Jr.Nate Rowan: 75If healthy, I feel like this team has a fair amount of upside. I’m very excited to see what Merrill Kelly and Luke Weaver can do in the rotation, as well as what a Lamb-Walker platoon is capable of at first base. But wow, once injuries hit, this season could get ugly. I don’t feel like the team has any quality depth outside of the middle infield. However, I do expect to enjoy the season despite the low chances of a playoff berth. The prospect of a new era beginning this year gets me a bit giddy.Xipooo: 71With the loss of Goldie, Corbin, and AJ, we’ve just lost too many good players to make a serious run at the playoffs again. I think Greinke will also lose another step this year due to age creeping in, and the fact he knows he’s been shopped around but no one is willing to pay the big price tag. Dano_in_Tucson: 80Sadly, this offseason’s moves, such as the were, cannot convince me at this point that we will even play .500 ball. I very much hope to be proven wrong, but we traded away Goldy for two perhaps-ready-for-prime-time lottery tickets Lenny Dykstra Jersey , we got nothing but a compensatory draft pick for Pollock (our two main engines on offense last year), and we lost Corbin, last year’s most reliable member of the starting staff, as well. The additions of Merrill Kelly, Carson Kelly, Luke Weaver, Greg Holland, Wilmer Flores, and Adam Jones notwithstanding, the roster seems substantially less potent than it was last year.Averaging the sixteen guesses above, we get an mean of 79 wins (actually 78.9), with a low of 71, a high of 95, the most popular choice being 75 and the median (half below, half above) sitting at 76 wins. It should be noted that the above were all made before last night’s injury to Steven Souza. While the extent of the damage is still uncertain, on that basis, you might want to take a win off all of the above numbers. Now it’s time for you to make your bold predictions as to where the D-backs will be at the end of the season. There’s a poll for general voting, but please feel free to call a specific number in the comments. Rockies fans. They know."WhiteFanposts Fanshots Sections Scaling the RocksPebble ReportRockpileRockies Game ThreadsRockies Fan ExperienceBaseball Hall of FameScaling the RocksBaseball Hall of Fame: Community ballot selects 4, including Larry WalkerNew,10commentsRockies fans. They know. MSTShareTweetShareShareBaseball Hall of Fame: Community ballot selects 4 http://www.philliesfanproshop.com/authentic-pat-neshek-jersey , including Larry WalkerA few hours from now, we’ll know who will be included in the 2019 Baseball Hall of Fame class. It looks like it will be either three or for players — Mariano Rivera for sure, Roy Halladay and Edgar Mart铆nez likely, and Mike Mussina maybe. Last month, we published our annual community ballot. Like the official one, the Purple Row community gave four players the 75% minimum for election. They just weren’t the same four. Here are the players selected on our community ballot:Larry Walker (94.2%)Todd Helton (86%)Roy Halladay (83%)Mariano Rivera (83%)Not bad! This year, the election comes from 171 ballots cast. It’s down from last year, but this year we required a Google sign in to reduce duplicate ballots and instill a little more voter accountability. That worked, even though there was still that one vote for Darren Oliver. As far as Mart铆nez, who should get in this year, he received 65.5% of the vote, which is far short. Mussina, who may get in this year but who is still well on his way if he doesn’t, only received 49.5%. That sat behind Roger Clemens (53.8%) and Barry Bonds (53.2%).Overall the vote turned out pretty well. We voted like partisans should while also giving the nod to two other deserving players. It was a huge improvement over the last time we did this, when Walker fell short with just 66.4% of the vote. So, nice job, Purple Row. Let’s hope the people with real ballots are listening.
