Thanks for the post, shoe. Just as a comparison, I added the 2007 figures for the players, so we can see how they are predicted to improve...or otherwise. Couple of thoughts otherwise:

Offense. The .734 team OPS does include our pitchers and their .413 OPS. Not sure how much taking that out would affect the figure for the position players - 20 or 30 points maybe? The spots look to be SS, where we need Drew to hit his weight, and RF, where we got a woeful .677 OPS from Quentin and Upton. 100 points more in each of those positions would be a big step forward.

Pitching. Team ERA last year was bloated by the really-dreadful experiments: Kim, Durbin, Kennedy and Eveland, who combined for 11 innings and 28 earned runs. I doubt many teams could boast quite that awful a bottom of the barrel. Take them off, and the rest of the arms had an ERA below four, at 3.99. The predictions have only Webb predicted to beat that by more than a quarter of a run, while we have four pitchers - including two starters - expected to be above 4.25.

Disturbed to see not one of our frontline pitchers is expected to get better this year? That seems pretty harsh. Obviously, the replacement of Hernandez v2.0 with Haren will be a big help, but it's an awful lot of traffic going in the opposite direction to overcome. Though as noted elsewhere, last year almost all our pitchers were under-estimated, by most of the projection systems. Let's hope the defense steps up to help ensure a repeat performance.

I goofed on comparing the OPS. It's still a lot of improvement though,. Basically only Byrnes, Hudson, and Snyder project worse, and by only marginal amounts. As you point out, if they get the expected improvement at SS and RF, that will be the biggest thing.  But Young is projected to get a nice bump too, as is Montero. Don't overlook him.  In my own projections, I have Montero outhitting Snyder in 2008 as well.

As for bottom of the barrel pitchers.....pretty common to have 2 or 3 guys really suck.

In 2006, Jarvis, Nippert, and Bajenaru gave up 32 ER in just 22 innings. Not quite as bad as the Fiasco of the fearsome foursome you point out above, but close enough.

In 2005 Kerry Lightenberg, Matt Herges and Edgar gave up 31 ER in 18 innings.

Throw in Javier Lopez and Randy Choate and you get 22 more runs in 21 innings.  Amazing how bad those guys were.  The 5 of them together gave up 53 ER in just 39 innings.  Take away those 5 knuckleheads and their measly 39 innings of "work" and the team ERA for 2005 drops from 4.84 to 4.64  

(I can do this all night long....LOL)