ESPN Chalk's Joe Peta is sharing his season win total projections for every MLB team, including a reason for optimism and pessimism.
Plus, he recommends an over/under play, or a pass. This is the entry for the Philadelphia Phillies.
Philadelphia Phillies
Reason for optimism: There are no plans for MLB to institute an English Premier League-like relegation system.
Reason for pessimism: The Phillies haven't come close to bottoming out yet.
The recent news that Cliff Lee will start the season on the 60-day disabled list almost certainly removes the faint hope of respectability the Phillies may have hoped to achieve in 2015. For projection purposes, let's assume Lee is done for the season. While he's eschewing surgery for now, the fact that two bouts of DL-induced rest during 2014, plus the offseason, did not help his arm recover, suggests the worst-case scenario. In any event, his injury helps highlight the drastic marginal effect on a team when it loses an ace in the rotation.
Lee's projected 30 starts will be taken instead by a combination of long relievers, an untested and fairly unheralded Cuban exile or washed-up veterans on Philadelphia's roster. They include Kevin Slowey, Miguel Gonzalez, Jonathan Pettibone and even Chad Billingsley, who has thrown 12 innings in the majors since 2012. Every one of them projects to allow at least one more run per nine innings than Lee, but the shortfall doesn't stop there. Lee averages seven innings a start while spot starters are lucky to go six. Over the course of a season, that means another three to four games worth of long-reliever usage, a collective group which also give up runs at a materially higher rate than Lee does. Lee's injury, therefore, might result in an additional 50 runs allowed by the Phillies this season -- more than five wins' worth.
The bad news doesn't stop there. Slowey, Gonzalez, Pettibone, etc., would be part of a rotation that already includes Aaron Harang, Jerome Williams and David Buchanan. For Cole Hamels' sake, I hope he gets traded; having him go to work each day with that crew would be like making peak-Robert De Niro join the cast of "Entourage."
Unlike Hamels, Carlos Ruiz and the still-valuable Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins escaped that fate having been traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Good for him but a killer drop-off in run production for the Phillies, who will slide Freddy Galvis in at shortstop. A repeat of his .176/.227/.319 batting line from last year and the Phillies will effectively be batting pitchers in both the eighth and ninth lineup spots.
Philadelphia's entire roster is a mess, very reminiscent of the post-playoff Houston Astros teams of the late 2000s, who strung together a string of 70-plus-win seasons with their aging former stars before the bottom fell out in 2011. Phillies fans should be prepared for the possibility of a 100-loss season, especially if Hamels and/or Utley are shipped away in midseason trades. Even if the Phillies needlessly burn Hamels' production for a team that has no chance to outscore its opponents and play .500 baseball, it's absolutely no protection against a historically bad season.
Baseball historians and baby-boomer Phillies fans are well aware of Steve Carlton's heroic performance on the 59-win 1972 Phillies, but there's a recent example as well. One of the historically worst teams of all time was the 2004 Arizona Diamondbacks. Just three years removed from winning the World Series, the '04 edition lost 111 games, "bested" only by the 119-loss Detroit Tigers in 2003. Even more overlooked than Arizona's futility that year was the plight of Randy Johnson. Johnson went 16-14 with a 2.60 ERA for that wretched team. Hamels' place in the hearts of Phillies fans is permanently secure, but he's no Carlton or Johnson. If at peak performance they weren't shields against a 100-loss season, then neither is Hamels' presence on the 2015 Phillies.
The Phillies market before Lee went on the disabled list was 68.5 games, and it's still sitting there. Based on the prospect of assets being dumped at midseason, when the market opened it looked like an "under" play from an intangibles standpoint. Now, it looks like one from a value perspective.
2015 projection: 65-97 (fifth, NL East)
Bet recommendation: Under