Predictions are Bunk

Tuesday, March 14 2006 @ 03:25 PM EST

Like many things in life, this started off as one idea, and ended up somewhere else entirely.

My original plan was to do what I did last year: come up with the best case scenario and worst case scenario for the Jays' hitters and pitchers, and then use those numbers to estimate how many wins the Jays would pick up. Using this method, last year I confidently predicted that the Jays would score between 546 and 891 runs, and win between 45 and 107 games. Out on a limb, I was.

So I thought I'd try it again. First, the good numbers - here's the best-case scenario for each Jay batter for 2006.

             AB   R   H  2B 3B HR RBI  AVG
Overbay     579  91 174  46  2 24 106 .301
Hill        574 102 178  41  7 16  79 .310
Adams       570 102 170  34  7 14  74 .298
Glaus       563 120 160  37  1 47 117 .284
Cat         419  56 126  29  5  8  59 .301
Sparky      398  55 107  21  6  8  58 .269
Wells       678 118 215  49  5 33 117 .317
Rios        514  92 155  31  8 22  89 .302
Molina      410  54 121  15  0 17  74 .295
Shea        544  87 163  38  2 23  90 .300
Hinske      211  37  59  15  1 10  37 .280
Zaun        202  32  54  10  0  6  31 .267

Here's how I came up with these figures:

• Hill and Adams take significant steps forward.
• Rios takes a huge step forward. (This is probably the least realistic of my optimistic estimates.)
• Overbay repeats his best season, but with a few doubles turning into home runs.
• Hinske is extremely effective as a spot player, as he has the platoon advantage.
• For Glaus, Wells, Hillenbrand and Molina, I basically repeated their best seasons. For Zaun, I repeated his best season, but pro-rated.
• For Cat and Sparky, I just put in last year's numbers. Neither of them are likely to surprise in any way.

This team of Uber-Jays winds up scoring 946 runs, which is more than any real-life team scored last year in all of baseball, and is 55 runs more than the Dream Jays of 2005 scored.

Now for the bad news - here are my extremely pessimistic projections:

             AB   R   H  2B 3B HR RBI  AVG
Overbay     579  61 144  27  2 15  61 .249
Hill        574  58 139  19  4 10  46 .242
Adams       546  59 130  25  4  7  49 .238
Glaus       569  79 142  24  1 30  83 .250
Cat         419  56 126  29  5  8  59 .301
Sparky      398  55 107  21  6  8  58 .269
Wells       644  72 169  27  2 24  79 .262
Rios        481  66 126  19  6 10  48 .262
Molina      428  34 105  18  0  5  40 .245
Shea        515  60 144  32  1 17  66 .280
Hinske      211  16  47   9  1  5  21 .223
Zaun        185  18  41   7  1  3  19 .222

Here, everybody either takes a step back or reproduces his career-worst season. (Except, again, for Sparky and Cat, who repeat their 2005 performance.) This team of underachievers scores 634 runs, which is a significantly lower total than that compiled by any real-life team in 2005. (But, once again, this is significantly higher than the low-end total for last year. Yay, J.P.!)

This is the point at which I threw up my hands in despair: why bother making serious predictions about the upcoming season when almost anything could happen? Of course, there's no way that absolutely everything will go right, or go wrong. But we could come closer to either outcome than you might think. Recall the summer of 2003, when the Jays went into a collective hot streak and were scoring about a jillion runs a game. Remember when Delgado and Wells were 1-2 in the league in RBI?

And, for the worst case scenario, you need look no further than 2004. I rest my case.

So the theme for this article is now: predicting the future in baseball is a mug's game. There are too many variables. Luck is too much of a factor. I say let's just sit back and watch the games. Popcorn, anyone?

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