by Daniel Gettinger

I recently finished a series where I projected the stat lines for most of the Padres players expected to contribute in a meaningful way this season.  Some of those players will outperform my projection, and others will under-perform.  At this point though it is difficult to guess exactly which players will fall on which side. If I had a hunch, I would have changed the projections.

That said, at an aggregate level, I believe my projections can give us a good idea of the upper bound of how many games the San Diego Padres can win in 2010.

I projected the position players to total 17.7 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) and pitchers to accumulate 20.0 WAR.  A team of just replacement players is expected to win about 47 games.  Therefore, if we assume everybody I did not project plays at replacement level (on average), the Padres would be expected to win about 85 games.

Unfortunately, I do not believe the Padres will win 85 games in 2010.  I feel my projections may have been a bit optimistic.  Because there is so much variance in player forecasts, I tended to round up rather than down. I am a fan after all.

At the individual level, those rounding errors do not make much difference.  But over 25 players a third of a WAR here, and a half WAR there certainly do add up.  In addition, this analysis does not account for possible Heath Bell and Adrian Gonzalez trades–moves that are very unlikely to make the team better this season.

The over/under on Padres wins as given by Vegas sports books has the team around 70 wins.  Personally, I would take the over.  I see the team winning between 75 and 80 games.  Because I am a Padres fan, and my projections peg the Padres for 85 wins, I’ll take the upper end of the range and go with 80 Padres wins in 2010. Not bad for a team in transition.