Vegas Watch

Comparing preseason predictions from various sources is a lot of fun, and also a pretty good way to get a feel for what's expected from teams from various sections of the media. What I've done here is take predictions from a few different places- 5 ESPN analysts in their season preview, three Yahoo! guys, the SI staff, Joe Sheehan (AL, NL), and PECOTA- and find the biggest discrepancies bewteen win totals for each team. The first largest differences are below, followed by a discussion of why there's such a lack of consensus, and who looks to be correct.

By coincidence, this ended up being all AL teams, which is fine by me.

Seattle Mariners
Average: 86.2
High: Steve Phillips (ESPN), 92
Low: PECOTA, 75

Do you think Phillips can spell "Pythagorean"? I don't.

That being said, 75 is really low. The PECOTA projection does come with something of a disclaimer, since it has Ichiro hitting .303/.346/.384. In 4774 career ABs, Suzuki has hit .333/.379/.437; this is his age 34 season, but thats a huge drop, and Ichiro has outperformed his PECOTA pretty much every year.

Still, even if we bump PECOTA's projection up to 77, that's a 15 win difference. And this is far from an isolated incident. The four ESPN guys (Stark, Kurkjian, Olney, and Phillips) and the three Yahoo! guys (Henson, Brown, and Passan) have the winning an average of 90 games. Sheehan, Law, and various computer projections predict an average of 79 victories.

They won 88 games last year, while being outscored by 19 runs. The high predictions employ the "88 wins + Bedard" logic. The others are starting with a baseline of 79, and giving them a boost for Bedard but factoring in some regression for their aging lineup. I don't think it's particularly hard to figure out who to side with here.

Tampa Bay Rays
Average: 77.3
High: PECOTA, 88
Low: Steve Henson (Yahoo!), 72

The thing you have to love about PECOTA is that it's 100% unbiased. When it runs the numbers and comes up with 88 wins for a team that's never won 70, it doesn't adjust that to something that seems a little more reasonable. This paid off with the White Sox prediction last year; considering its history of success (not limited to that one example, obviously), the extreme predictions for Seattle and Tampa are hard to ignore.

I don't really know who this Steve Henson fellow is, but that's okay- he's got some wacky predictions, which are always appreciated. Here is his analysis on the Rays:

"The Rays are improving but are still middle-school level to the Red Sox graduate students."

This is a little over the top, but I think that's the mainstream consensus. Personally, I have no idea how many games this team is going to win (although I'd certainly take the over on 72). There's no big Pythag gap here- last year their expected record was 67-95, and their actual record was 66-96. Three things are causing the huge expected jump- a vastly improved defense, additions to the bullpen, and the development of young players. They were a horrible fielding team last year, but PECOTA expects them to be a little above average this season. The biggest upgrade is going from Brendan Harris (-19 in Dewan's system) embarrassing himself at short to Jason Barlett's +18 glove. The also have Upton finally spending a full year in center, and the (eventual) addition of Longoria to the lineup will allow Iwamura to slide over to second.

Combine that with the addition of Matt Garza, and the progress of Kazmir, Shields, Sonnanstine and Co., and it's easy to see that their run prevention will be much improved. PECOTA has a team that allowed 944 runs last year decreasing that by a whopping 226 runs. Without looking it up, I'm going to go ahead and assume that that'd be the largest reduction in the history of baseball; that's about three months worth of runs for the Giants' offense.

Henson's prediction of 72 wins for the Rays is insanely low; 88 is high, but not that high. It's hard to both see and quantify these internal improvements- switching up defensive alignments, young players improving, old ones regressing- which is why PECOTA is so far off from the general consensus.

Texas Rangers
Average: 73.0
High: Joe Sheehan (Baseball Prospectus), 80
Low: Steve Phillips, 64

This is not a fair fight.

I watched Phillips' "analysis" of the Rangers on their ESPN season preview page, and I must say, he didn't really enlighten me. He doesn't think Millwood and Padilla are top of the rotation starters, which is reasonable. He goes on to explain that Texas is going to have to outslug their opponents. I don't know how he came to that 64 number (he probably doesn't either), but we should remember that they do get to play almost 60 games against that increasingly horrific division.

Sheehan is bullish on their offense; he has Texas scoring 840 runs, which is 60 higher than PECOTA. He seems to be high on Blalock who absolutely tore it up (.313/.405/.656) after returning after missing three months last year. Because of his disappointing '05 and '06 campaigns, PECOTA is very down on Blalock with a projected .263/.331/.436 line, so that's probably causing a decent amount of a difference. Because of how unique he is, Josh Hamilton is obviously a hard guy to find comparisons for; PECOTA has him going from .292/.368/.554 last season to .283/.349/.481 this year. This makes some sense, since last year was in the easier league and a better hitters park, but it still seems low. In writing this paragraph, I have convinced myself that the Rangers are going to score a whole lot of runs this season, and certainly win a lot more than 64 games.

Baltimore Orioles
Average: 63.6
High: Steve Henson, 70
Low: Buster Olney (ESPN), 56

Olney does love the extreme predictions- 49 wins for the Nationals last year is one I'll never forget. This one is much more sane though. They have a decent outfield, but they forgot about the whole "shortstop" thing, and that is a truly awful rotation in an impossible division. Our new friend Henson thinks they will win just two less games than the Rays; now that is a bet I'd like to make.

Toronto Blue Jays
Average: 86.2
High: Joe Sheehan, 91
Low: PECOTA, 78

This is very interesting- a third huge discrepancy in the East, but this time between two "people" that look at things similarly. These are the only two sets of projections that also offer RS/RA, which is helpful. PECOTA has Toronto at 762/775, while Sheehan predicts 761/676. So it's pretty clear where the disagreement is here.

This may be partially caused by different opinions on their defense- they are good, it's just a question of how good. But I think it's mostly their top 3 starters. Burnett can opt out of his deal at the end of the year (thanks, Keith). PECOTA has him throwing 185 innings with a 3.83 ERA; it's worth noting that in his last contract year he threw 209 innings with a 3.44 ERA in 2005, his last contract year. That's certainly too optimistic of an expectation, but it's been shown that players perform better in contract years, and I don't believe PECOTA takes that into account. So that's something to keep in mind. Staying healthy is the first step, obviously.

PECOTA has Halladay at a 4.06 ERA, which is certainly conservative, as his career ERA is 3.63- I'm assuming that's caused by his relatively weak peripherals.

Finally, PECOTA is very low in McGowan, with a 4.60 ERA. Obviously, it hasn't been reading The Baseball Analysts. Beyond that intriguing article, I've read a few other things on McGowan. I think he's expected to improve on last year's 4.08 ERA, and certainly beat his PECOTA projection. So yeah, it looks like Toronto will have some excellent run prevention this year, as one can reasonably expect their top three starters to be significantly better than what PECOTA suggests.