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And I stand by it.
Just eyeballing this team from the surface using DNRA+ and %TBF we had:
King Felix (160) - 15.9
Jarrod Washburn (119) - 8.6
Ryan Rowland-Smith (107) - 6.5
Chris Jakubauskas (79) - 6.3
Jason Vargas (75) - 6.3
Erik Bedard (149) - 5.7
Garrett Olson (62) - 5.6
Mark Lowe (126) - 5.5
Miguel Batista (80) - 5.3
Brandon Morrow (90) - 5.1
David Aardsma (170) - 4.8
Ian Snell (82) - 4.7
Sean White (105) - 4.2
Doug Fister (91) - 4.2
Shawn Kelley (92) - 3.1
Corcoran/Messenger/Stark (40) - 3.1
Luke French (42) - 2.9
Carlos Silva (34) - 2.3
The team DNRA+ for the season was (wait for it)...99!  TADA!!!
I'm not making this stuff up, Doc.  :)  We got some performances that, in isolation, were so foul that they doinked up a staff that was, at least for the firs thalf of the year, noticeably better than average (back when we have Felix, Bedard, Washburn and Aardsma all clicking).  But Washburn's "up" year got aborted and replaced with RR-S who, while solid, was not as good as Jarrod was in a pure-pitching analysis, the team had no replacement at all for Bedard, so it went out and got Snell and French to try to find his innings and they both sucked.  Options they tried that worked well enough were limited to Fister.  Vargas, despite your comments to the contrary, was far from amazing...he was defense-assisted to much better results than he deserved.  Olson was a disaster.  Silva was a disaster.  Most of the relievers, headed by the spectacularly lucky sean White and Miguel Batista, weren't good.  This team without Felix, Bedard, and Aardsma has a DNRA+ of **85**!
So yes...I expect the pitching to improve irrespective of how the defense changes.  THere's a very high probability that the scrubs we try next year will do better than the scrubs we tried this year...that we'll get more innings out of our #2 and #3 starter than we got this year, that we'll find some better arms for the bullpen, and that Felix doesn't regress one iota.  I see only one point to be nervous about...and that's white-knuckle Aardsma.
So even if the defense slides some (had a "career" year)...which is possible...I really don't think we're in any danger of losing lots of runs allowed to the opponents compared to this year.