The traditional end to a stathead's pre-season has arrived, as probably the best projections of the bunch are up at Diamond Mind. It's sameole sameole, with the Cardinals heavy favorites to win the NL Central and having a 90% shot at the the post-season. The Cards are projected to lead the league in run prevention and (barely) finish second behind the Bonds-fueled Giants in runs scored. Not bad for all the angst.

For what it's worth, DM had the Cardinals winning 103 in 2005 and winning the NL Central in 2004. Even if you don't buy this stuff, the methodology is an interesting read. The line about managers is particularly funny:

In other words, we don't give a team a few extra wins because they have a highly-regarded manager. In the years we've been doing this, we haven't seen very many examples of a manager consistently over- or under-achieving relative to our projections. Generally speaking, our results have proven to be more accurate when we ignore the managers.