Add new comment

...I made no personal attack in my post...I gruffly rebuked your contention, but not you. There is a huge difference.
As for your argument...if you're arguing that the 2010 Mariners hit 180 runs worse than the 2009 counterparts because the guys they brought in were replacing superior bats...I'd like to see some sign of that...because...from where I sit, the only big bat we "lost" was Branyan...and he was back three months into the year. What defense first moves did we make in the off-season that explains ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY RUNS of change? We went from Branyan to Kotchman...that probably costs us 30 runs. We went from Griffey in his last quasi-productive year to Griffey and Bradley DHing and that probably cost us another 20 runs...but we thought Bradley would hit somewhat better than 80. Figgins was every bit as productive an offensive player as Beltre in '09...in fact he was a better player than Beltre '09.
There's no evidence that the Mariners made any changes to this line-up that should have resulted in ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY runs of change. Nor is there any evidence that every move we made was to bolster the defense and hitting be damned.
You really think Jose Lopez had his worst year since 2006 and Figgins had an off year and Gutierrez tanked from 2009 and Bradley didn't pan out and Kotchman was a disaster...all because we didn't have that one or two big-bopper-core in the line-up? That's a lot of whooie if you ask me.
And my win projections every year are not "off by 20-30 wins"...that happened this year and I was not alone. I even reported this offseason, because I intended to hold myself accountable for biases in my projection attempts, that I have a small high bias in projection, generally caused by my underestimating the role of scrubs (I overestimate playing time going to starters because it can be difficult to predict injuries). But that bias is not 20 wins of bias...it's 3-5 wins...and I worked hard to address the source of that bias this time around.