30 A's in 30 Days – The Recap Show

A reader whose work I enjoy writes:

Hi Aaron. I found your blog through your link on Baseball Reference. This is a little late, but I loved your '30 A's 30 Days' feature. Now I have to ask how your over/under predictions turned out? You looked pretty good from the handful I knew from memory. Keep up the good work.

I'm pretty sure this lightly-read blog is exempt from accountability, as I was grandfathered in under the recently enacted "Deadspin Proviso". But, since I just finished punching the numbers into an Excel spreadsheet – and, liked the results – let's see how my statistical guesses from March stood up.

For those of you who inexplicably aren't reading my material from eight months ago, here's a quick refresher. Back in March, I lifted MLB Network's "30 Teams in 30 Days" concept and turned it into a season preview of sorts for the 2009 Oakland A's. I profiled 30 players and included an "over/under" prediction based on their projected OPS (for the hitters) and ERA (for the, uh…throwing guys).

Of the 30 A's who were profiled, two (SP Justin Duchscherer and RP Joey Devine) missed the entire season due to injuries and another (17-year-old phenom Michael Ynoa) didn't have a projection to begin with. That leaves us with 12 pitchers and 15 hitters.

I guessed the correct over/under on eight of the 12 pitchers. Most of their individual preseason ERA projections were pure lunacy (a 3.66 ERA for RP Santiago Casilla and his batting practice catalog of crap?!), so I wasn't actually going out on any limb. I will, however, pat my own damn back for believing in SPs Brett Anderson (projected ERA: 4.71, actual ERA: 4.06), Trevor Cahill (P: 4.82, A: 4.63) and Dallas Braden (P: 4.15, A: 3.89) before any of 'em threw a pitch in 2009 and taking the under.

As for the hitters, I went 9 for 15. Eight months after the fact, I still can't believe I took the over on 3B/DL Eric Chavez's projected .758 OPS. I guessed the over on 1B Jason Giambi (P-OPS: .823) and DH Nomar Garciaparra (P-OPS: .749), but theirs was an expedited decomposing that hardly anyone saw. I took the under on Jack Cust and his actual OPS was more than 50 points less than his projection. Matt Holliday only saw a five point drop between projected and actual, but I took the under and I'm countin' it as a win.

And, shout outs to additional "overs" I nailed – CF Rajai Davis for your unexplainable breakout campaign and 1B Daric Barton for another one of your productive Septembers in a meaningless season. Much love to two of my accurate "unders" – 3B Jack Hannahan and UT Bobby Crosby.

No matter how low we set that bar, you continually fail to reach it. Huzzah!