Arizona Diamondbacks Quarter Year Projections

One of the best things about blogging about a sports team is the chances you get to do something completely ludicrous. Projections are one of those things. Today, the Arizona Diamondbacks completed a four-game sweep of the Miami Marlins. It was their first natural sweep of the season. To be fair, they did win two of two against the Rockies earlier in the season, but that was supposed to be a three-game series. One of the games was postponed to a future date.

It’s good for the D’backs to have swept a series in games 37, 38, 39, and 40 on the season, because I get to use one of those awesome, and completely bogus, mathematical theorems to predict the future. I am going to multiply everything by four (x4). That would give the team 160 games and give use a pretty close idea to what every player would finish with statistically if they continued on their current paces.

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A few caveats first: I am not going to include every player, only those expected to be on the team the rest of the year. Also, a few players may have funky looking numbers do to time on the DL (read: Archie Bradley). Finally, this is for fun; I’m not going to use Fangraphs, Baseball Prospectus, ESPN, etc. I am simply taking the first quarter of the season and quadrupling it. So, without further ado, here we go.

First, the team’s record. As the D’backs stand right now, they are 19-21. For the purposes of record, I am simply going to multiply the number of expected games played (162) by the winning percentage. That means, since the D’backs have a winning percentage of .475, they would finish 77-85 on the year. It would put them in 4th place, with the NL West looking like this:

Los Angeles Dodgers 99-63

San Francisco Giants 89-73

San Diego Padres 79-83

Arizona Diamondbacks 77-85

Colorado Rockies 64-98

For the purposes of comparison, here is how some other teams would finish:

Best AL record: Kansas City Royals 105-57

Best NL record: St. Louis Cardinals 107-55

AL Wildcard: Detroit Tigers 96-66, Minnesota Twins 93-69

NL Wildcard: New York Mets 93-69, Chicago Cubs 91-71

Worst AL record: Oakland Athletics 54-108

Worst NL record: Milwaukee Brewers 59-103

Without listing every team, the D’backs would finish tied with the Red Sox for 17th best record in the majors.

Now for the players. Keep in mind, each of these is a simple multiplication of their current stats by four (x4), in order of most at-bats:

[table id=1 /]

And, the pitchers, in order of innings pitched:

[table id=2 /]

A couple of takeaways from this bogus method of projecting include Paul Goldschmidt breaking the 40-homer plateau for the first time while simultaneously setting new personal highs in RBI and SB and Ender Inciarte pushing 200 hits with 40 doubles and achieving more RBI than he had accumulated through the first 158 games of his career.

As for the pitchers, well, I think we all know what is holding the team back right now. Addison Reed is not putting up the numbers you would expect after the D’backs made the trade they did for him. Archie Bradley clearly shows a lack of command for the strike zone, and Rubby De La Rosa would be far and above the rest of the staff. Actually, Re La Rosa has been very impressive and as I would expect the rest of the staff to improve toward the median, it wouldn’t surprise me if the former top prospect De La Rosa continued his rising star status.

Remember, this was just for fun. There is a very small probability of any of this coming true, but for a brief exercise in reading the future, I find it amusing.

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