Baseball Think Factory Loves the Red Sox

Baseball Think Factory is the group responsible for ZiPS Projections, considered by some to be the most accurate projections available to the public. On Monday they released their projections for Red Sox players. If you're interested in the full projections, they're available here.

But even more interesting than the projections themselves, were the kind words that Baseball Think Factory had about the Red Sox. They had the following to say once they analyzed projections of American League teams:

"This might not come as a great shock considering the Red Sox just won the World Series for the 2nd time this decade, but ZiPS sees the Red Sox as the best team in the AL. Well, technically, I haven't done the Orioles yet, but I'm taking a wild guess that the Orioles aren't going to look better than the Sox on e-paper.

No real suprises here. It's a deep team. While they obviously don't have spare better-than-average 1B, DH or LF/RF backups stashed away, nobody really does, and the team is very deep everywhere else. The amount of minor leaguers that project to be non-terrible at up-the-middle positions is downright staggering and I'm not even counting guys like Lars Anderson who should pop up in the 2009 projections."

Could it be that the Red Sox are actually the favorites going into 2008? If so, it would the first time that I can ever remember it happening in my lifetime. These ain't your Daddy's Red Sox.