2006 Win Projections

[Willie Bee]

Thought now was as good a time as any to go back and review the o/u lines set for win totals before the season started, as well as fess up how well or poorly I did with my own.

Taking the six division winners to start with, and will slowly get around to the rest of the teams over the next week or so.

* PIN = Pinnacle's o/u break

TEAM . . . PIN . . WB . . .ACTUAL
Yankees. . 98. . . 95-. . . 97
Twins. . . 83. . . 83-. . . 96
Athletics. 89. . . 88 . . . 93
Mets . . . 90½ . . 92 . . . 97
Cardinals. 93½ . . 94 . . . 83
Padres . . 77. . . 81+. . . 88

To be spot-on, my picks here were to take the under on the Yanks, the under on the Twins, the under on the A's, the over on the Mets, the over on the Cardinals and the over on the Padres. Based on that, I went 3-3 on the eventual division winners.

[Willie Bee]

Finishing up the NL Central...

Turns out that I only got half of this 6-team division correct by picking the unders on the Astros, Cubs and Pirates.

* PIN = Pinnacle's o/u/ mark when doing the team previews back in Feb-Mar.

TEAM . . . PIN . . WB . . .ACTUAL
Astros . . 83½ . . 83-. . . 82
Reds . . . 73. . . 70 . . . 80
Brewers. . 81½ . . 84 . . . 75
Pirates. . 76. . . 74 . . . 67
Cubs . . . 85. . . 84 . . . 66

And even though I got the Cubs right as far as picking the under, I still missed their projected win total by a wide margin. What the hell was I thinking picking the Cubs to finish as high as second in the NLC?

In case some of you want to go back and read any of the previews, you can find all 30 threads pretty easily by typing in "camp question(s)" in the search feature near the top of these forum pages.

[Willie Bee]

AL Central, minus Twins

This division pretty much screwed with everyone's preseason projections as Minnesota and Detroit confounded the 'experts' with solid seasons.

* PIN = Pinnacle's o/u mark back in Feb-Mar.

TEAM . . . PIN . . WB . . .ACTUAL
Tigers . . 78½ . . 78-. . . 95
White Sox. 91½ . . 91+. . . 90
Indians. . 90½ . . 90-. . . 78
Royals . . 64. . . 66 . . . 62

Since I don't think anyone should crow about saying the Royals were going to suck this year, the only two things I got right in this division were my suspicions that the Indians over-achieved in 2005 and my notions that the Tigers would battle for third place and maybe, just maybe, if Leyland did everything right, get the team to the 80-win level.

But even then, I felt Detroit would battle Minnesota for third place with the Indians coming home in second with at least a .500 record.