With the Cubs making a splash in the free agent market this winter, let's take a look at how the offense looks with the Marcel projections. Last year, the Cubs scored 716 runs, 4.4 per game. With the addition of Soriano and DeRosa, and the return of a healthy Derrek Lee, it looks like a decent Cubs lineup will score about 5.0 runs per game, or almost 100 runs more than 2006. That's about a 10 game improvement on the batting side.

It's an impressive accomplishment if these stats bear out, but it still only brings the Cubs up by about 10 wins. If they are going to be competitive, the pitching needs to reduce run scoring by at least the same amount. We can calculate runs allowed in a round about manner, since the Marcel projections just give us innings and ERA. If you take the top six starters and top six relievers from this depth chart, and then pro-rate the runs out to 1439 innings (same as last year), you get 782 runs allowed, 52 less than 2006. That's another five wins.

So on paper, it looks like the Cubs improved themselves by about 15 games this year. If you use the Pythagorean relationship (810 runs scored, 782 allowed), that may be as high as 18 games. Either total is impressive. With a little luck (a healthy Prior? Soriano repeats 2006? Murton has a breakout year?) the Cubs do even better. It was costly, but Hendry looks like he's put the Cubs close to contention in 2007.