2008 Cubs: Community Projection Review, Pitchers

It appears that the preseason project wasn't quite finished -- I only have final projection numbers for four pitchers, though I know we did three relievers as well as Jason Marquis and Jon Lieber.

Here are the four we did. If anyone would like to go through the Community Projections section and tabulate the others, I'll post the rest of them tomorrow.

Carlos Zambrano

Projected:
G 34, GS 33, IP 221.2, H 172, ER 80, BB 89, SO 203, W 19, L 8,
ERA 3.26, WHIP 1.18

Actual:
G 30, GS 30, IP 188.2, H 172, ER 82, BB 72, SO 130, W 14, L 6,
ERA 3.91, WHIP 1.29

Ted Lilly

Projected:
G 32, GS 32, IP 201.2, H 186, ER 90, BB 67, SO 170, W 14, L 10,
ERA 4.01, WHIP 1.26

Actual:
G 34, GS 34, IP 204.2, H 187, ER 93, BB 64, SO 184, W 17, L 9,
ERA 4.09, WHIP 1.23

COMMENT: Stand up and be proud of this one. We missed the W-L record, but everything else -- dead on.

Rich Hill

Projected:
G 33, GS 33, IP 202.2, H 169, ER 81, BB 66, SO 197, W 15, L 9,
ERA 3.61, WHIP 1.16

Actual:
G 5, GS 5, IP 19.2, H 18, ER 9, BB 18, SO 15, W 1, L 0,
ERA 4.12, WHIP 1.58

COMMENT: Obviously, no one anticipated Hill's utter meltdown and banishment to the minor leagues. The actual line doesn't look all that bad -- except for the walks, which is the reason the Cubs lost patience with him. He still hasn't gotten it back; he had one good start in winter ball and then had to be taken out of his second start with -- what else? -- control problems.

Ryan Dempster

Projected:
G 39, GS 18, IP 122, H 124, ER 64, BB 64, SO 99, W 6, L 8,
SV 1, ERA 4.73, WHIP 1.54

Actual:
G 33, GS 33, IP 206.2, H 174, ER 68, BB 76, SO 187, W 17, L 6,
SV 0, ERA 2.96, WHIP 1.21

COMMENT: Quite a number of people thought Dempster would wind up back in the bullpen, thus the low start projection and the one projected save. I was one of those people, projecting him to have 15 starts, 35 relief appearances and 7 wins, 7 losses and 7 saves. I couldn't be happier to have been wrong.

Again, we also did Jason Marquis, Jon Lieber, Bob Howry, Carlos Marmol and Kerry Wood. If someone would like to total up the projections (use the link above to go to the Community Projections section) and send them to me, I'll post the rest of the pitcher projection review tomorrow.