Vazquez was the Braves best pitcher last year, but it wasn’t likely he was going to keep up those numbers, or even close to them really. Sure, I would’ve preferred Lowe moved…..but losing Vazquez doesn’t worry me much at all. Technically, he’s being replaced by Tim Hudson, who when healthy….is the better pitcher.

As for the offense not being upgraded, I disagree. Their offense outperformed the Phillies during the 2nd half last year when they traded Frenchy, put Diaz in RF full-time, and put Prado at 2nd full-time. Also, Chipper hit around .210 during his final 80 or so games. Now that he’s got a bit more protection, he should be able to rebound.

McCann was also battling vision problems to start the season, and it seems they’re completely corrected now.

So:

Prado>Johnson
Diaz>Frenchy
Glaus>Kotchman
McLouth>Schafer
Melky>Anderson

So yeah, they’ve improved the offense. Can’t forger about Jason Heyward, who’s likely to start in RF with Diaz and Melky platooning in left. I would prefer Diaz starting full-time, but it won’t happen.

You’re right, the Braves under-performed their PWL by 5 games.

The Braves will be hit or miss, in my opinion. There’s a lot that can go wrong, and there’s a lot that can go right — much more so than most other teams. For instance, Troy Glaus could play a significant role all season, or he could miss five months when a stiff breeze rolls through. Chipper Jones seems like he can’t go a week without something in his body going awry. How good are their young pitchers? Is Billy Wagner really the answer to losing Rafael Soriano and Mike Gonzalez?

I’ve been a bit surprised by the early projections for the Phils. Seems they are – reasonably – getting dinged for having somewhat unusual players – as you point out, Howard and Halladay – and for having some older players like Ibanez and Polanco. Systems like these can’t help but think poorly of aging players because, on average, aging players decline. The Phils, it would seem, really think they know how to pick ‘em when it comes to older players. As long as they got it right again, I’m guessing the Phils will beat both of these projections; but it is a gamble to rely on aging players. As an illustration of how projections view old guys, check out PECOTA’s take on Ibanez vs Francisco.

The other side of the coin is Atlanta. I think it’s easy to say, Atlanta traded their best pitcher and didn’t really upgrade their offense, how can they possibly be projected close to or ahead of the Phils? One thing to keep in mind here is again age – Atlanta has some quality young arms that are duly getting bumped up. The other thing is that it’s likely Atlanta underperformed last year (don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I believe they underperformed their Pythagorean by 4-5 games last year). If you consider last year’s braves team a 88-92 win team, and you think they simply trod water this off season, then these projects make plenty of sense.

For instance, players like Ryan Howard and Roy Halladay aren’t going to have too many favorable comps, and they’re two key cogs of the team.

I think the Phillies are a 90-91 win team so the projections aren’t too far off though.