Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA projections are out, and they are a big fan of the Cleveland Indians. They don’t care that the Indians lost Carlos Santana, Bryan Shaw, and Austin Jackson. They don’t care that the Indians haven’t perfected cloning technology and don’t yet have the ability to put Francisco Lindor at every position in the field. No, they have the Indians winning a whopping 97 games in 2018.
Those 97 wins would technically be worse than last season, which is remarkable in itself, but they represent the second-best team in the American League behind only the World Series Champion Houston Astros, who are projected to win 99 games.