I also have Jeremy Reed and Fernando Tatis on the bench, as well as Castro. Benches don’t add a ton and it isn’t as if this would vastly shift the projections.

i explain my (very simple) method poorly here:
http://eightoclockthelightsareonatshea.blogspot.com/2008/12/im-completely-replaceableeven-though-i.html
(please note, it’s not a sports blog, although sometimes i blog about sports sometimes.)

anyway, i’ve updated my numbers quite a bit since then and will probably have a more in depth post up this weekend with numbers that i think are legit with legit playing time forecasts. i will post both my mets and phillies projections.

i have the mets winning 86 games right now (without lowe) and the phillies winning 88. i’m curious to see your numbers as well…looking forward to your post.

right now i have the phillies 2 wins up on the mets heading into 2009. if it comes to be, my projections are for lowe to give the mets a 3 win bounce. so on paper, that means pretty much means the mets and phillies are just about even. this should, at the very least, be a very exciting season to look forward to for mets and phillies fans.

I’m not arguing against the value of FIP here, just that it isn’t always the *only* thing to look at. In this case, we also have one guy who is 32 years old next year, whose best years and stuff are likely behind him, and whose actual results haven’t been that good since 2003, and another guy who is only 27 next year, who was still averaging 91.2 mph on his fastball, and getting reasonable results.

FIP certainly is generally more reliable than relying only on ERA. But best results will usually come from considering some combination of both, as well as external factors and observation. Most often, I think you would weight FIP more heavily. But I commented on this case mainly because I think it’s one of the exceptions. This is one where I think the monkey will beat the machine.

If the Mets bullpen has a +0.5 win advantage now, that means the Phillies lineup would have to be +11 wins better than the Mets for +8 wins to come to fruition. I can’t see that happening.

These teams are much closer.

Perez’s controllable skills do not project as favorably as Wolf’s. Could Perez prove to be better than Wolf? Sure. But if you put Wolf’s controllable skills in front of the Mets defense, as opposed to the ones he played for recently, you might be surprised to see a very similar, if not better, pitcher.

Over the last two seasons, Wolf has actually had ERA+ of 97 and 93, while Perez has been at 120 and 100. Yes, Perez has had the benefit of being an extreme flyball pitcher, in a reasonably neutral park with some great outfield defense behind him. Maybe he’s not as good as the raw numbers suggest. But he also has some plus stuff that probably contributes to keeping BABIP a bit on the low side.

This is one where I’d guess Marcel ends up closer than Chone. It’s not a big difference, maybe, but I’d guess Olie for the Mets next year would again supply an ERA around 4.25, while Wolf I would expect more around 4.45.