Revisiting the 2010 player projections

Every year I write "community projections" posts for all of the players slated for regular playing time, and I invite people to contribute their projections. The goal isn’t to wow everyone with my prescience, but to encourage discussion. Also, it lets people know that I am a man who can admit to being wrong. Very wrong. Wrong in quality, wrong in quantity. I manufacture opinions, bad jokes, and Tony Perezchica references – that’s my job. Expecting the projections to be accurate? Silly.

Last year’s projections were wronger than I’ve ever wrongalated before, though. From Aubrey Huff to Andres Torres, I whiffed on so, so much. Also, the Giants won the World Series, which is something I did not predict. Well, not publicly. I mean, I knew they were going to do it the whole time, but I wanted it to be a surprise for you.

So this is a post to review just how wrong my projections were, starting with Matt Cain:

Projection for 2010

Matt Cain

IP: 223
ERA: 3.15
K: 182
BB: 67
HR: 17

Actual stats

IP: 223.1
ERA: 3.14
K: 177
BB: 61
HR: 22

Oh, wait. So it turns out that my projection system is absolutely awesome and infallible. By exhibiting false modesty, I deceived you into reading further. And here we are. I’ll wait until tomorrow to do a list of the projections I got wrong. Today is all about the ones I nailed. Look at that up there! I was off by a third of an inning for his total innings pitched. I underestimated Cain’s ERA by .01, forgetting his supreme love of pi. The only thing I was off on was his home runs allowed total.

Just look at that projection! It was not altered or retroactively improved in any way. Doesn’t that seem like the projection of a confident, intelligent baseball observer? That's what this whole post is about. Me being smarter than everyone else. After the jump, I’ll go over the rest of the projections I got right..

Matt Cain.