Projected win totals have Astros winning West

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the over/under totals on Houston Astros wins for 2022 at WynnBet. That number is set based on the betting market, not necessarily the talent level on the field. Over at FanGraphs, they use more traditional tools based on baseball talent to project the standings.

For the Astros, there’s good news and bad news based FanGraphs’ projected win totals.

First, the good news — FanGraphs projects the Astros to win the American League West by a comfortable seven games. The bad news? The site only projects the Astros to win 89 games, six less than the 2021 season.

More worrisome for me is that FanGraphs projects the Astros to score a half-run less (actually .51 less) per game this season, while giving up .27 more runs per game. Over the course of a 162 game season, these numbers equate to 83 (rounded) less runs for the Astros and 44 more runs for their opponents compared to 2021.

You’d have to imagine a good chunk of the reduced scoring is due to Carlos Correa wearing a Minnesota Twins uniform this spring.

As for the rest of the AL West, it’s mediocre to not very good. The site projects the Los Angeles Angels to have their first winning season since 2015 (barely) at 82-80 and for the Seattle Mariners to fall back to earth and finish with 10 less wins than the 2021 club did.

Meanwhile, the Texas Rangers apparently spent a half a billion dollars to get 14 games better and crawl out of the cellar, finishing just above the Oakland A’s, who appear to be in a rebuild.

Projections are just that — projections — usually based on past seasons and performance expectations for this season. That said, how the season actually plays out is one of the fun aspects of following a baseball team throughout a 162 game season.

You may recall from last season that I have my own win projections, but they’re based solely on what’s happening in the current season and are weighted using a combination of the Pythagorean method and actual winning percentage and are updated as the season goes along (as are the FanGraph projections.).

For the 2022 season, I plan to update the expected win totals periodically, beginning the week of May 1.

Astros Orbit:

Prospects Colton Shaver and Joey Loperfildo were assigned to the Astros, while Scott Manea, JJ Matijevic and J.P. France were reassigned to the minor league. Joe Perez was also optioned in the latest roster cuts.

Jonathan Bermudez, Tyler Ivey and Shawn Dubin were all optioned in the first round of roster cuts, while Corey Julks and Scott Schreiber were reassigned to the minors. Right-handed pitching prospect Normar Torres was suspended 60 games after testing positive for Stanozolol.

Righty reliever Tyler Clippard continues his journeyman career, signing a minor-league deal with the Washington Nationals.