2008 D-backs ZiPS Projections

The Baseball Think Factory announced their 2008 predictions for the Diamondbacks yesterday. ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Here is their view of the D-backs this year:

As obvious as one of the main storylines of 2007 was, the pitching being top-notch and the offense being, well, otherwise, the park made these actually more extreme, masking to some degree just how good the pitching was and just how bad the hitting was. After all, the surges of the Rockies and Phillies, bringing Jimmy Rollins and Matt Holliday to the front of the pack, might have saved us from Eric Byrnes of the 104 OPS+ in left being taken seriously as an MVP candidate (as he was at times in the middle of the season).

The offense should be better but the pitching shouldn't drop off too much, which makes the Diamondbacks yet another contender in a crowded NL field. What makes the Diamondbacks especially dangerous is those little twos in the age column - the major league squad is chock-full of players that are at ages they can improve. Counting on an individual young player to improve is generally not as good a bet as most people think. However, when massed as they are in Arizona, they act almost as an index stock - it doesn't really matter if it's Mark Reynolds or Conor Jackson or Chris Young or Stephen Drew or Justin Upton make a huge step forward so long as some of them do, which the odds do favor. I don't know if it will be Conor Jackson hitting 25 homers or Chris Young rebounding from a weak rookie season or Justin Upton making huge adjustments carefully, but I know that there are going to be some player on this team that are going to move over a bunch of those dashed lines below.

There are a few interesting prognostications:

• Justin Upton hitting only .248
• Dan Haren going 14-11 with a 3.92 ERA
• Eric Byrnes only playing 134 games
• No surprise here...nobody predicted to hit .300....O-dog best at .295