Rays Preseason Goals and Predictions Revisted

As I find myself in a quasi state of still reflecting on last season more than looking forward to next season I was reminded of two open items that merit discussion: Joe Maddon's preseason goal of the starting rotation pitching 1,000 innings; and our Improbable Prediction Contest. 

I've been meaning to research this for some time now, but since the Rays season ended the thought has popped in my head but I've yet to act on it until now.  I suppose part of the reason was that I knew, the five starters couldn't have reached the 1000 inning marker with Niemann and Davis taking a August siesta.  But all in all, the rotation was very healthy.  So how close did we get? 

And for those of that you that are new (or forgot like the rest of us), we did a little preseason prediction contest where Steve asked the community to come up with two predictions that would be outliers to the consensus thought.  I thought it would be fun to go back and look at the preseason predictions we made here on DRaysBay to see how outlandishaccurate we were.  Who had the foresight to predict a Matt Garza no-hitter?  Let's see.

First, with Joe Maddon's prediction (aka Goal); a 1,000 inning rotation.  Tommy Rancel eloquently broke down the possibility here, where we learned that only one rotation (the Cardinals) achieved the feat in 2009.  This year, six teams reached the 1,000 marker led by the Phillies with 1035.1 innings.  The others; Sea, LAA, Bos, ChiSox & SF all rode their horses past the barrier.  The Rays however, ended up with 999.2 innings out of the starters, just one measely K away from hitting a k.  For those sticklers out there that remember Maddon was looking for the original five starters to hit the goal, well they ended up with 955.1 combined, which was more than the opening day five of the six teams above them (and SF was the only other team to use as few as seven starters).  So Joe, while you may not have got your wish, you were pretty darn close.

Now, for you fools.  Let's take a look at some of our wise and sage-like predictions (actuals in parenthesis):

And now for the good (at least better):

And as hinted earlier, the winner has to be BossmanJunior with Matt Garza throws a no-hitter.  Congrats other BJ, I believe Steve owes you a vintage R.J. Anderson rookie card.