Your 2009 AL West Champions?

Baseball Prospectus has released their PECOTA-based team projections for 2009. My Oakland A's are currently pegged to win the AL West at 82-80. PECOTA, for those who don't know, is BP's proprietary predictive system:

"[It] stands for Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm. PECOTA projects player performance based on comparison with thousands of historical player-seasons. Analyzes similarities with past player-seasons based not only on rate statistics, but also height, weight, age, and many other factors."

Two seasons ago, PECOTA famously nailed a 72-90 projection for the 2007 Chicago White Sox. Last year, it saw through the ill-advised Mariners hype and called Tampa Bay's improvement before anyone else.

Still…first place for the A's?

Just so we're clear, PECOTA, you do know that this team features offensive question marks on both infield corners (Daric Barton, Eric Chavez) and an absolute suckhole of suck at shortstop (Bobby Crosby), right? In the outfield, there's the underrated/overrated conundrum known as Jack Cust, while the A's can't be expecting more than league average production out of 2B and CF (Mark Ellis, Ryan Sweeney).

BP frowns on anyone reprinting their individual player projections, so I'll just say that even PECOTA doesn't think the A's starting rotation will make it through an entire season, with every starter predicted to finish with an ERA north of 4.00 (or 5.00!).

And, did you hear that the Angels are this close to signing Bobby Abreu?

My October appears to still be open.