-You don’t know where Oswalt is willing to sign.

-There will be better pitchers than Jackson available next offseason, but you don’t know how much they’ll cost. Recent reports about Jackson’s price suggest that he’d be a pretty good deal. It’s quite possible that Jackson will be signed this year on a more team-friendly contract than any the Royals could get next year.

-Monty+ for Cahill would be a good deal, yes.

-You don’t know what it would take to acquire Wandy.

I’m not saying all of these moves should have happened, but it sure seems like Moore hasn’t tried to make any of them. Signing Chen and committing money to Broxton and Yuni and positions we didn’t need to improve should have been a back-up plan after the better options fell through. And now we’re sitting here thinking that we shouldn’t acquire another pitcher because Chen’s roster spot is a lock and adding a good pitcher would push Duffy or Paulino out of the rotation.

The Tigers would have been the favorite to win the division barring stupid moves that would have mortgaged the Royals’ future, but Moore could have given the Royals a ~25% shot and a hell of a fun season had he used his resources more wisely. As it stands, we probably have a 5-10% shot.

Comparing the numbers you posted from Oliver to ZiPS:

Year-end Oliver wOBA || ZiPS OBP/SLG:

Perez .297 || .303/.393
Hosmer .349 || .354/.474
Giavotella .316 || .320/.384
Escobar .268 || .309/.366
Moustakas .321 || .316/.436
Gordon .354 || ..358/.464
Francoeur .320 || .314/.437
Butler .362 || .362/.462
Cain .314 || ..314/.370

It looks to me like ZiPS is, on average, a little more bullish on Royals hitters than Oliver was when you grabbed their numbers. Butler and Cain’s projections match up between the two systems, but everyone else does a little better in ZiPS.

Escobar does some 30+ points of wOBA better in the ZiPS projections. I wonder why.

I’d love if you did it—they’re always interesting and fun—but I think they’re vastly overrated in terms of the value of the information they spit out.

Maybe you do it differently than BP’s playoff odds report, but I’ve found that BP tends to output the post-season odds given the assumption that each team is exactly as good as the sum of its constituent players’ median PECOTA projection. That’s a pretty huge assumption, and it screws everything up. For example, if KC’s players really add up to a TTL 78 win team, then naturally, a Monte Carlo simulation which only accounts for unpredictability in scoring distribution will give them very little chance of beating Detroit, whose players’ projections add up to 88 wins. But there’s a lot of variance potential in the teams’ TTL as well. Hosmer might be a TTL 6 WAR player in 2012 and Verlander might go down for the season, either of which would go a long way toward leveling the field.

It’s these sorts of TTL swings that boost the chances for a team like the Royals and take away some of the certainty for teams like the Tigers and Yankees, and I don’t believe BP’s playoff odds report properly accounts for them.

pena or damon could probably come close to replacing his production…cespedes replacing delmon in the field with delmon moving to DH might actually improve them. Although, projecting was cespedes will do seems rather pointless.

Moore has work to do, but it’ll be 2 wins easier to get the Royals within striking distance if the young guys start producing early.