SPECULATOR: Searching for 2012's surprise teams

One of our favorite annual pre-season exercises is to take our player projections and see what they can tell us about our expectations at a team level. Thanks to our favorite draft prep tool, Rotolab, it's easy to roll the individual projections into team-level projections and run some rough-cut projected standings. By looking at the races on a division-by-division basis, we may find some teams (and players) that are not being properly valued in the pre-season analysis.

Let's start with a look at the American League projections. (First, an explanatory note about how virtually every team is projected for a positive run differential: In our projections, we generally don't anticipate injuries. Many top players and top pitchers will...

Almost!

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