Baseball Think Factory released their 2008 ZiPS projections for the Red Sox today. This is what they have to say about the overall predictions:
This might not come as a great shock considering the Red Sox just won the World Series for the 2nd time this decade, but ZiPS sees the Red Sox as the best team in the AL. Well, technically, I haven't done the Orioles yet, but I'm taking a wild guess that the Orioles aren't going to look better than the Sox on e-paper.
No real suprises here. It's a deep team. While they obviously don't have spare better-than-average 1B, DH or LF/RF backups stashed away, nobody really does, and the team is very deep everywhere else. The amount of minor leaguers that project to be non-terrible at up-the-middle positions is downright staggering and I'm not even counting guys like Lars Anderson who should pop up in the 2009 projections.
Some things of note:
- Lowell is expected to have a huge drop-off in numbers: .272/.333/.429 with 15 home runs.
- Ortiz will still be a monster: .297 with 44 home runs and 138 RBI.
- BTF thinks Jacoby will end up swiping 43 bases.
- Papelbon, Okajima and Beckett are expected to all have good years. Papelbon: 87 K in 63 innings.
- They predict Dice-K to lower his ERA down to 3.95 and pick up 15 wins.
Overall there is a lot of good info and predictions. Way too many statistics to post here, though.