One of the many little signs that baseball is on its way back is when the various projection systems start spitting out their predictions for the coming season. Several years ago, this was a fun annual ritual in Birdland. What was fun about it is that the O’s exceeded their projections in the venerable PECOTA system by 15+ wins in three out of five seasons, so the release of the new projections was an occasion to ask, “How will they end up being wrong this year?”
When the magic fled, it fled in a hurry, and in the final year of Dan Duquette’s tenure, as Duquette clung to the idea that the team could compete, PECOTA projected 69 wins.