…and replies to the first draft

mark says:

Show your projections from last year.

On the Projections page, there are links to the 2012 and 2013. They are from the saved spreadsheets that I have from the dates given, and run through the same csv-to-webpage script I used to make the current pages.

tangotiger says:
To help people understand how the #1 team is forecasted to “average” 91 wins, can you also show the averages for #1 through #30? That is, take the highest win total for each of your simulations (regardless of team), and show us that average. Then do the same for the second highest and so on.

Tom Sheffield says:
It’s still way too early for projections like this but I do find great fault with 91 wins being the best record in baseball this year. The AL East looks about right standings wise.

There’s an issue here that I find hard to explain.

It is almost certainly NOT the case that the best record in baseball will only amount to 91 wins. In fact, if you looked at the playoff chances page, you’ll see that the AL East says this

Average wins by position in AL East: 95.2 87.7 81.9 76.1 68.5

indicating that it will take 95 wins, on average, to win the division – even though no team in the division, on average, gets above 90. Every division, in fact, takes 94-95 wins to finish first. WTF? Teams don’t win _on average_. The winning team will be the one who combines a good projection AND beats their projection. If the past three years are any indication, the average team is going to be 5 games off these projections – and a couple of teams will miss by 20. In the odds page, I play the season out a million times. In the real world, it will only play once, and how you perform relative to your projection determines your final standing.

There is no doubt in my mind that the best teams will be better than their projection, and the worst teams will be worse. Last year, the six first place teams averaged 8.7 wins better than their projection. Only the Tigers were able to underperform their projection and still win their division.

The six second place teams were +6.5.
The third place teams averaged -0.2…basically zero. Just meeting your projection is a recipe for mediocrity.

The fourth place teams averaged -3.
The last place teams averaged -10.

Whether the projection error comes from mis-estimating the real quality, or just random luck, or a mid-season tradeoff of talent from the weak to the strong that exaggerates the difference…there will be errors, and they have as much to do with deciding the winners as real talent. I’m sorry if that sounds like a copout.

David Lowe says:
You might want to tweak your software. The Royals aren’t going to be 9 games worse than they were last year, bro.
arttieTHE1manparty says:
Insane! How does the computer project the Royals to get worse??? With that defense and relief corps? No way…

Any projection is going to upset fans of various teams, especially if the projection comes in lower than they think is deserved.

With the Royals, the big concern for me is the pitching. I expect Shields to come back about a half run in ERA, and I don’t see quality replacements for Santana and Chen, who surprisingly put up over 400 IP @ 3.50 ERA. Two things I will concede – there is some evidence, looking at the last two years of projections, that I under-count defense…or rather, that teams with good(bad) defense don’t get their runs allowed moved down(up) enough. The Royals and Orioles are two teams who might be suffering from that bias…if it is real. It didn’t show up in the 2011 data with nearly the same effect as in 2012-13.

Now, Guthrie at a 5.00-ish ERA. I’m perfectly comfortable with that projection. He was 20 runs above average in the DR component – my way of saying he gave up 20 runs less than expected, base don his other stats. He doesn’t have a history of putting up that kind of number, and even if he did, that component score heavily, heavily trends towards zero in future years. The issue I have with the projection, in retrospect, is that there’s no way he gets 30 starts with that levelof performance. Its not as though there’s a ton of depth there, though, so its not going to make a big difference, but future iterations are liable to come up a a couple of wins for them. It IS a process to run these stats, and this was just an opener.

JR says:
Sorry, but if you think the Reds will be under .500 your computer has a bad virus.

I predict that Cincinnati fans will become thoroughly sick of the phrase “you can’t steal first base” this season.