Arizona Diamondbacks look to defy Baseball Prospectus, FanGraph projections

The Arizona Diamondbacks are coming off an encouraging 85-win season. They made several high-profile additions in the offseason. Baseball Prospectus and FanGraphs' projections have them at 79 wins. PECOTA's system has them as the eighth-best team in NL. The team does not agree with the projections. Baseball predictions are difficult and the systems tend to be conservative. Most teams that are alive in October outperform their projections, and rare is the club that is projected to win 100 games. It is possible to get wrong predictions. For example, a player who played well in minor leagues at ages 23 and 24 and then did the same in his third season in MLB at age 25 is not considered a safe bet to do it again at 25.

Luke Weaver had another rough opening frame in his first spring training game. He gave up two runs in the first on two hits and two walks, throwing 31 pitches. Weaver was lifted from the game with his pitch count at 38. He missed most of last year with elbow problems. His fastball velocity is again touching the mid-90s.

Arizona Diamondbacks have a good start to the game against Royals. They scored three runs in the second. Josh Rojas and Kole Calhoun hit home runs. They also scored on Domingo Leyba's double.

Jake Lamb committed an error in the third inning. The game was delayed an hour as police investigated a possible bomb detected by a police-trained dog.

Arizona Diamondbacks take on the Indians on Wednesday at 1:10 p.m.