watching paint dry

with the cubs having received their coat of whitewash for 2007, january and february look to, for cubs fans, amount to watching the paint dry. endless iterations of prognostication are sure to hit the web, here as elsewhere, and will almost surely be the main source of conversation between here and the reporting of pitchers and catchers (when we get to start talking about mark prior).

as such, maddog over at tcnlbc points out one of the early projections, which uses this data to land the cubs squarely behind the cardinals at 87 wins and a wild card berth.

the base data is interesting, caveat emptor, and here's how some key cubs players look. first the starters:

Pitcher	Age	IP*	H*	HR*	BB*	SO*	hb*	Run	ER*	ERA
Zambrano,Carlos	26	205	173	21	87	196	9	89	82	3.60
Hill,Rich	27	167	143	23	68	181	7	78	72	3.89
Lilly,Ted	31	169	160	24	68	155	6	88	81	4.32
Marquis,Jason	29	200	226	34	68	107	13	127	116	5.23
Prior,Mark	27	110	100	16	41	118	7	55	50	4.11
Miller,Wade	30	74	74	9	34	57	3	40	37	4.50

and then the bullpen:

Pitcher	Age	IP*	H*	HR*	BB*	SO*	hb*	Run	ER*	ERA
Wuertz,Michael	28	64	53	7	24	75	2	27	25	3.53
Howry,Bob	34	61	57	7	14	49	3	27	24	3.56
Dempster,Ryan	30	78	74	7	35	69	3	38	35	4.05
Wood,Kerry	30	68	61	10	25	68	3	33	31	4.12
Eyre,Scott	35	62	57	8	26	61	2	31	29	4.18
Ohman,Will	30	55	48	7	26	60	3	27	25	4.07
Cotts,Neal	27	58	54	8	23	56	3	29	26	4.02

compared to some others -- notably bill james' projections for the pitching staff or even the 2007 zips -- these look somewhat more pragmatic and possible to this writer's eye. there just as little to object to in the individual offensive estimations.

is 87 wins then a good estimate of the approximate level of output for this club? this writer still finds that to be somewhat optimistic considering recent history, despite the ongoing difficulties of the major rivals within the division in finding starting pitching. it's hard not to agree with buccoblog when it wonders:

Someone tell me how the Cubs are going to be +184 runs. Anybody? 75 I see.. 125 a long shot.. but 184???? Man.. I do believe Diamond Minds blew a gasket on that projection.

indeed -- unless soriano turns out to be a minor god, squeezing 804 runs out of this offense will be impossible. perhaps there's a methodological error afoot in the diamondmind simulation, but the results are at least within the bounds of rational analysis.

however, clearly much is being laid at the doorstep of rich hill and mark prior (and, to a lesser extent, wade miller). in the estimation of this page, how they fare in 2007 remains the focus of real aspirations for october.