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.

After thrilling us with their AL predictions yesterday, ESPN released their NL team capsules today. They're all linked from the MLB Index (although the Rockies' link is broken; their preview is here). I don't really care about the actual previews at all, but the win predictions for each team from ESPN's analysts sure are fun.

These previews have predictions from Jayson Stark, Tim Kurkjian, Buster Olney, Keith Law, and Steve Phillips. I'll get to the more interesting specific predictions next week, but first some more general stuff.

Average Win Predction
This is not complicated. If all 30 teams play a full season, the average team will win 81 games. I don't think this requires any further explanation.

Kurkjian: 82.1
Stark: 82
Olney: 81.3
Phillips: 81.1
Law: 81

Congratulations to Keith Law. The only ESPN analyst who can add. Give that man a raise.

That money should probably come out of the paychecks of Kurkjian and Stark. I would like to see the process these individuals go through when making their predictions. I am pretty sure they look at the list of teams, arbitrarily assign a win total to each one, and that's that.

Here is my question: what's the point? Clearly, the guys who don't consider numbers at all are not good at this. Would it be that hard to add up your predictions and make sure that they're, uh, possible? Also: do they not have editors? If they do, do they not know how to add?

PECOTA Correlation
Law: 0.93
Kurkjian: 0.81
Olney: 0.80
Phillips: 0.80
Stark: 0.78

This is not rocket science. Law's predictions will most likely do very well. He clearly at least put some thought into this. The others will do about as well as yours or mine would do if we arbitrarily picked numbers for each team. I find it amusing that ESPN trots out these predictions like they mean something. They do not.

Standard Deviation
Phillips: 10.7
Olney: 10.4
Kurkjian: 10.1
Stark: 9.7
Law: 9.0

For reference, PECOTA's standard deviation is 8.4.

Phillips is so absurd. Here's my favorite little stat from all of these: he has 14 teams winning 88 or more games. Think about that for a second- that's one team away from half of baseball. Here is my prediction: Steve Phillips' predictions will not fare well in this post at the end of the year.

ESPN now has their AL team capsules linked on the MLB page. Each capsule has five anlalysts' predictions on how many games that team will win. For example:


88 Wins + Bedard = 92!! The man does have a history with this team, I suppose. It's the predictions of the first three that really surprise me. Law's "voice of reason" title has never been more appropriate.

Much more on these after the basketball this weekend.

Schilling obviously talks too much, but the above is one of my favorite quotes from an athlete. The Yankees didn't win games 4 and 5 because they have 26 world championships- they won them because Byung-Hyun Kim made bad pitches to Tino Martinez and Scott Brosius, and they got crushed.

I picked Duke to reach the Final Four not because they're the best team in their region (UCLA is), but because thinking like this was causing very few others to do so. Has anyone actually looked at their resume? You do not go 12-1 against the 12th most difficult non-conference schedule in the country, and then 13-3 in the ACC, if you suck. This is a very good team.

An objective look at the Blue Devils reveals they are very good at things you wouldn't necessarily notice- not turning the ball over, and not allowing their opponents to get looks from 3. It would be difficult to watch a game and come away thinking "Wow, Duke really is great at limiting their opponents' three-point opportunities; I can't think of a team in the country that's better."

I would not be difficult, however, to come away thinking, "The Blue Devils really don't have an 'inside presence', or "Greg Paulus is an [expletive]."

This is why I find articles like this to be so silly.

"'It's all about winning, whether by one or 100,' Duke's Jon Scheyer said. 'We're relieved. We won our first game, and we're going on.'

There was a time when those words would have been heresy."

No. You could go back to any 1 or 2 seed in the history of the NCAA tournament, including all those Duke teams, and after a close first round game, I'm sure at least one player gave a similar quite in every instance. What else would you say? "We had them all along"?

"Put simply, the Devils and all their ACC heft and national titles and mystique and aura and NCAA tradition couldn't guard the Bruins...The aura is tinged, the mystique has dissipated."

Do people actually think that in the first round in 2001 Duke beat Monmouth by 43 because they won back-to-back titles in '91 and '92, and that effect carried over?

"This year, with no threatening big man and a team that looks imminently ordinary, what with a bunch of 3-point shooters, Duke was the 2-seed everyone wanted to get."

This is what gets me. You can't have it both ways. Was this game close because their mystique played bad defense, or because they don't have Tyler Hansbrough? It's one or the other. And you can't say that their lack of a big man caused them to lose their aura, which caused them to almost lose to Belmont. I don't think I need to explain why that logic is flawed.

"Byrd spread the floor, enticing Duke out to the wing with the danger of 3-pointers, then he sent his players driving to the hoop as though there was no one there. Mostly because there was no one there."

Okay. Sure. But did you see the winning basket? Did it look like Henderson had a particularly difficult time getting to the rim? I'm certainly not offering this as a reason, but wouldn't that be as good a time as any to say that Belmont was overwhelmed by Duke's history, and that's the reason nobody stepped in and actually, you know, defended him?

I'm not saying Duke is a great team, or that they'll go all the way. But if/when they lose, it won't be because of mystique and aura- it'll be because they shoot poorly from 3 (as they did on Thursday) and Kevin Love (or whomever) goes off for 28 and 12 against them.

(H/T to TMLJ for the WWL link.)

The St. Louis under won, 39-14 (74%). Arizona is up now; we're going alphabetically the rest of the way.

Baseball Prospectus 2008 comes out on Monday. Probably the best $13.17 you'll spend this year. Unless Xavier (80:1 at BetUS) wins it all.

Very old, but this Russell Westbrook dunk against Cal was absolutely filthy.

Baseball Musings predicts how many R/G each team will score in '08. A commenter alertly notes, "Looks like another long year for Matt Cain."

STF interviews SI's Luke Winn.

Ozzie Guillen, being awesome:

‘’Then if you’re a nice guy, they are going to treat you the same way. [Expletive] it, be an ####### then. I would rather be an ####### winning than be a nice guy [expletive] losing. Give me an ####### who can win, don’t give me a nice guy who can [expletive] lose.’"

ESPN jumped the gun on the UAB-Memphis game. How does that happen? Is it really so difficult to wait two minutes?

Silver adjusts PECOTA for strength of schedule. Seattle's prediction descends even lower. 85 wins. Right.

With Leather was on the foxnews.com front page. Also from WL:

"Seriously, if I said that Raul Ibanez could run down a routine fly ball, I'd punch myself in the face, because I'd be lying."

Derek Jeter: a below average fielder!? Man, what are they smoking down at Penn?

I happened to, accidentally, see the cover of this week's ESPN The Magazine today. Here is the top third*:


*The issue I have in front of me actually says "The 7 Smartest Super Bowl Bets (And 1 That Could Break Your Heart)", but that's far from the point.

Naturally, I was intrigued by the top headline. This sounded vaguely familiar, so I looked through it. Not surprisingly, on page 50 they have a collection of wacky Super Bowl props, including "Length of National Anthem", and "Will Tom Petty Perform 'Free Fallin' At Halftime".

Sure, it's strikingly similar to my post (which did appear on freaking Hashmarks), but I'm over that. My issue with it is this- it's terrible.

First of all, the Tom Petty thing is idiotic. There is no line on this, and where they have put the line for other props they say, "LINE: Technically there isn't one, but go find yourself a Radiohead fan and see what he'll give you". Cute. They then proceed to explain why Tom Petty is going to play "Free Fallin" as part of his 12-minute set. Revolutionary. I know this song, of course he's going to play it at some point. There are odds on the first and last songs everywhere- why not use those?

Also, if you're going to write an article on Super Bowl bets, you should at least have a basic understanding of odds. For their MVP section, they have Brady at 1-2, Moss at 4-1, Welker at 5-1. These make sense.

But for their "First Team To Score A Touchdown" writeup, they have the Pats at 2-1. And "First QB To Throw A Pick" has Eli at 5-2. Both of these are completely wrong. You can bet $1 to win $2 on the Pats scoring a TD first? Really? Of course you can't. The line is 1-2. Same for the Eli line- it's 2-5.

If you are going to write an article that is essentially the same as my post, fine, coincidences happen (maybe). But at least do at decent job on it.

The 2008 Hall of Fame voting results will be announced at 2pm on Tuesday. This is good, because it means no more articles like this (Stark, ESPN):

"Unfortunately for Morris, even though he's trending in the right direction, he could double his vote total and still fall short. So even though he seems doomed to spend 15 years in ballot limbo, at least there's a greater appreciation now for what this man was in his time: the unabashed No. 1 starter for every team he pitched for."

I don't know what this means. I really have no idea. I do know this:

1978: 90 ERA+
1980: 99 ERA+
1982: 100 ERA+
1988: 98 ERA+
1989: 79 ERA+
1990: 89 ERA+
1993: 70 ERA+
1994: 83 ERA+

He was "the unabashed No. 1 starter" for his team every year, despite being league average or worse in eight of the 18 years of his career. This is good to know.

"That may not make his 3.90 career ERA -- which would be the highest of any Hall of Fame pitcher -- irrelevant. But does that ERA really tell the whole story of a pitcher who won 41 more games than any other starter of his generation during his 14 peak seasons (1979-92)? Not when we're talking about a pitcher who threw a no-hitter, started three All-Star Games, established his acehood on three World Series teams and pitched the greatest Game 7 (Morris versus John Smoltz, 1991) most of us have ever witnessed. So I have no second thoughts about checking his box, every single year."

105 career ERA+. But he gets into the Hall of Fame because:

1. He threw a no-hitter. True. Good sample size there, and definitely not included in his overall numbers.
2. He started three All-Star Games. True. Also meaningless, and included in overall numbers (stats from those first halves, I mean).
3. He established his acehood on three World Series teams. No.

1991 Minnesota Twins
Morris: 246.7 IP, 3.43 ERA
Kevin Tapani (!): 244 IP, 2.99 ERA

1992 Toronto Blue Jays
Morris: 240.7 IP, 4.04 ERA
Jimmy Key: 216.7 IP, 3.53 ERA
Juan Guzman: 180.7 IP, 2.64 ERA

4. Pitched the greatest Game 7 most of us had ever witnessed. He did? I hadn't heard.

To recap, we started with a pitcher with a 105 ERA+. We added these four factors, which range from meaningless to blatantly false. We arrive at this conclusion:

"So I have no second thoughts about checking his box, every single year."

Meanwhile, Buster Olney is pulling a Heyman and voting for Morris but not Blyleven. Rich Lederer went over his flawed logic regarding Blyleven last year. Here's my favorite part:

"I can't find another Hall of Famer voted in by writers with less than three All-Star appearances; Blyleven had two. Blyleven never finished first or second in Cy Young balloting and was never the most coveted free-agent pitcher or the object of a huge bidding war in trade talk, the way that Tom Seaver and even Vida Blue were."

Bert Blyleven did not make the All-Star team in each of the following years:

1974: 281 IP, 142 ERA+
1977: 234.7 IP, 151 ERA+
1984: 245 IP, 144 ERA+
1989: 241 IP, 140 ERA+

Each of these are better than any year Morris had, ever. Morris made five All-Star teams. In his career, Blyleven had a 3.47 ERA in the first half, and a 3.12 ERA in the second half. This probably caused him to miss out on a couple All-Star teams. This is an awesome reason to keep him out of the Hall of Fame.

Also, if Cy Young results are a great measure of dominance (they aren't), guess how many times Morris finished first or second in the Cy Young voting. None.

One final time:

-Blyleven pitched more innings than Morris (4970-3824)
-Blyleven had a lower ERA (3.31-3.90)
-Blyleven had a better ERA+ (118-105)
-Blyleven had a higher peak (more seasons with ERA+ above 150, 140, 130, 120)
-Blyleven struck out more guys (6.70 K/9 for Blyleven, 5.83 for Morris)
-Blyleven walked fewer guys (2.39 BB/9 for Blyleven, 3.27 BB/9 for Morris)
-Blyleven gave up fewer HRs (0.78 HR/9 for Blyleven, 0.92 HR/9 for Morris)
-Morris backers like to talk about the one WS game, but Blyleven was a better postseason pitcher. In 47.1 playoff innings, Blyleven had a 2.47 ERA. For Morris, it's 92.1 innings, but a 3.80 ERA.

Tough choice.

Rob Neyer and Keith Law don't get into the BBWAA, and thus don't get a Hall of Fame vote, because they don't attend enough baseball games. Woody Page is a BBWAA member, and get a HoF vote, for reasons that are entirely beyond me.

Now, Woody is asking for help filling out his ballot. In doing so, he's making it quite clear that he needs help in a variety of areas.

"Gossage — During a visit to Yankee Stadium in the late 1970s, I wanted to talk to Goose but was told he was cruel and gruff to reporters. I sheepishly introduced myself and said I was from Colorado, his home state, and he talked pleasantly for 30 minutes. We've been good friends since. I would vote for him even if he wasn't deserving."

Doesn't this violate some kind of rule? It should. I'm kind of amazed that someone, even a man who aimlessly yells on TV for a living, would write that they don't care if someone is deserving, they're voting for them because they're friends. How is this okay?

"Murphy — Got my vote, but he won't get in. He was two short of 400 home runs and hit only .265, but he won back-to-back MVP awards, made seven all-star teams and earned five Gold Gloves. He played 26 games for the Rockies in their first season, 1993, before retiring. I vote for Rockies. He was who a ballplayer should be. And he always remembers my name. I'm a sap.

"Andre Dawson and Tim Raines — I'm voting for them. Both are borderline. But I was amazed by, and wrote columns about, Dawson and Raines when they played for the Denver Bears. Dawson passed through in 1976 on his way to the Montreal Expos, and Raines was the 1980 minor-league player of the year as the Bears' second baseman. (Raines did have a cocaine addiction problem but overcame it.)"

Notice that there is no ellipsis. This is the entirety of his reasoning. "They're borderline, but they played for a local minor league team, so I'm voting for them." End of discussion.

Article II, Section I of the BBWAA constitution (as described here), "spells out four objects as its reason for existing":

"Subsection D: To foster the most credible qualities of baseball writing and reporting."

Credible is the first would that come to mind when reading this article, really. Back to Woody:

"Jim Rice — He has been shut out for 13 years, mainly because he primarily was a DH..."

Little known fact (definitely not avaiable with six seconds of research on B-R)- Rice played 1543 career games in the outfield, and 530 as a DH. There was exactly one year in which he played over 100 games at DH. So I really don't think the fact that he "primarily was a DH" is keeping him out of the HoF.

"Don Mattingly — Another former player, now a coach, who I became friends with, so I'm prejudiced. I like voting for friends.."

From the Posnanski interview with BBWAA President Bob Dutton again:

" Most of the criticism of this decision seems to argue that Rob and Keith know much more about baseball than many current members. That might be true."

Just maybe.

The BBWAA tries to take itself all seriously, and makes entry into its little club very difficult (well, sometimes). Which is fine. And it's somewhat inevitable that their members aren't going to be perfect, and may even have some questionable voting tendencies. But don't write an article advertising just how little you care- that makes it really difficult for anyone else to take your organization seriously.

Hat tip: BBTF.

As the Rookie of the Year awards for both leagues are going to be announced sometime this afternoon, ESPN.com posted the picks of 20 of their writers. 16 picked Pedroia, which is not at all surprising- he's going to win easily. Jeremy Guthrie got one vote (from Keith Law), which is entirely defensible (his VORP was actually higher than Pedroia's, 38.2-35.9). So that leaves three people- one would figure they voted for some combination of the other pitchers; Bannister, Guthrie, Okajima, or even Matsuzaka.

All three of them (Howard Bryant, Phil Rogers, John Shea) voted for Delmon Young. I went to check where Young ranks among rookies in VORP. It took me awhile, as he's not on the first page- he's forty-second. Among rookies. He is behind Yovani Gallardo. As a hitter. Yes, him.

Dustin Pedroia: .317/.380/.442, 8 HRs, 50 RBIs, 7 SB, 39 2B, 112 OPS+, plays second base
Delmon Young: .288/.316/.408, 13 HRs, 93 RBIs, 10 SB, 38 2B, 91 OPS+, plays right field

I could almost understand doing this like ten years ago (almost). But today? Don't you have lack even the most basic understanding of on-base percentage and positional values to vote for Young? Or I guess just look at RBIs, and ignore absolutely everything else?

Dustin Pedroia: 35.9 VORP
Delmon Young: 5.7 VORP

VORP is a counting stat, obviously. So you would think Young would be helped by 681 PAs. Nope. They only help if you're significantly above replacement level. A 91 OPS+ from a right fielder doesn't qualify.

In any other profession, if you were this clueless, you'd immediately be fired. Not in baseball.

This was a lot of fun, and there's more to look at, so I thought it deserved another post.

First, the final standings. Methodology is slightly different, as I'm using RMSE (Root Mean Squared Error) rather than just average error. This penalizes large misses more (sorry, Buster), and is more widely used.

As we'll see, Neyer comes out on to pretty much any way you do this. Notice the top five are all at least based on statistical systems. Be sure to remember that when you're watching Baseball Tonight next March. Your time is probably better spent subscribing to BP.

Just for fun, I also looked at how many of the Vegas over/unders everybody chose correctly. A lot of this is luck- if the line is 83.5, and your prediction is 84, you get the same credit if that team wins 84 or 104. (BTW, Silver is Nate Silver from BP; he's the "PECOTA guy", among other things. As I understand it, he took the PECOTA predictions and just made adjustments where he saw fit.)Again, pretty meaningless, but Caple and Law both jump way up. Gammons is last, but I wouldn't be too worried about that- I'm pretty confident he didn't place any wagers.

Now, the following is very interesting. Sky beat me to this (although I believe he did straight difference rather than RMSE), but if we really want to know how good these predictions were, we should look at Pythag record.

Basically, Pythag record is how many games a team should have won, based on how many runs they scored and allowed. It's a better at predicting future performance than actual record, and thus is a better indicator of team strength. It's great for this exercise, so lets take a look.

These numbers are noticeably lower. This makes sense- there is less variation in Pythag record than actual record (I think). I found this table to be very interesting. Sports Interaction jumps up considerably, which doesn't surprise me. Think about how much money these guys have at stake with this stuff. It's their job to post a number that will entice people to bet equally on both the over and the under. I would hope they are good at it- it's a lot different than Steve Phillips handing in a list of completely arbitrary numbers to some ESPN editor.

Beyond that, the list is once again dominated by the "numbers guys". I am somewhat surprised that Olney did so poorly.

The obvious next step is to see who got lucky, and whose picks were better than they originally appeared. Since the average Pythag miss was 1.39 smaller than the average actual miss, I have taken that into account in the final column. A negative "Adj Diff" means you got lucky.

Phillips' picks were poor to begin with, and he got unlucky on top of that (which is only fair, considering his recent good luck in other areas). Olney had the worst picks according to Pythag by a pretty wide margin, but had luck on his side, which allowed him to almost catch up to Phillips.

The numerical systems all obviously did better than others regardless of what metric I've looked at, but they were also on the lucky side. I would be interested to see if this is also true in previous years (which would indicate that it's not actually luck). The PECOTA predictions for each year since 2003 are readily available, so when I have time I figure I'll look into those.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been very critical of ESPN analyst Steve Phillips on this site. First it was his prediction that the Yankees would miss the playoffs, and the Mariners would be the Wild Card winner. Then, in looking back at the accuracy of preseason predictions, Phillips came in dead last.

Today is different. Today, Steve Phillips is smarter than all of us.

On the morning of August 14, the Mets had an 85% chance of reaching the playoffs. At 65-52, they had a three game lead in the East. The Postseason Odds Report had them winning the division 70% of the time, and having the Wild Card to fall back on half the time they didn't. Nobody was picking the Mets to miss the playoffs- despite their flaws, all logic pointed towards the Mets playing in October.

Not one to be deterred by logic, Phillips predicted that the Mets would fall short of the playoffs. I can't find a link to him specifically saying that, but MetsSox wrote about it on August 16. In the days prior to that, he was all over ESPN telling anyone who would listen that the Mets weren't going to make it. His reasoning? (Beyond, you know, this...)

"Chris (NJ): Thoughts on moving John Maine to the bullpen if Pedro comes back healthy? That could be the right handed reliever the mets need.

Steve Phillips: Boy I would not dream of doing that if I were the Mets They are going to have to find a solution from within, but Maine is to critical to remove from the starting rotation. I have some concerns as to wehther Pedro can comeback and be a force, as shoulder injuries are very hard to comeback from. I think Pedro takes Brina Laurences spot in the rotation. I think what you see is what you get from the Mets right now and I have pretty significant concerns about their pitching over the next month and a half."

I'll ignore the typos (Brina Laurence?), because I'm a nice guy. From that point on, the Mets' team ERA was 5.13, as they suffered through the second worst collapse in baseball history, missing out on the postseason after having a seven game lead with 17 games to go (without even needing a Monday playoff, which is truly incredible).

So sorry about being so critical, Mr. Phillips. Apparently you had this all planned out the whole time.

Update: OMDQ points out that this situation could potentially come back to haunt us.

Bristol, 2014: “Steve, Prince Fielder will not win the Cy Young award this year. He’s not a pitcher.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re probably right, I’ve never been good with these predictions. Remind me- who won the NL East in 2007?”


Related: What happened to the guys who managed some other teams that fell apart down the stretch?

Everybody makes baseball predictions in late March/early April. A lot of people just predict who will win each division, and who will advance to the World Series. Anyone can do this- you really only have to have a general knowledge of the top teams.

There are also people who predict how many wins each of the 30 teams will have. There are various complications with this (Jayson Stark's predictions have the average team winning 83.6 games, which is quite unlikely), but the thing about this is you actually have to know what you are doing. People make these predictions differently- some rely strictly on numbers, others on "feel".

I found 13 sets of these predictions- 10 from ESPN (Gammons, Stark, Crasnick, Olney, Neyer, Kurkjian, Phillips, Law, Caple, Karabell), two from BP (PECOTA and BP Hit List), and also the over/unders from SportsInteraction.com (via SoSH). I thought I'd take a look at some of the best and worst individual predictions, as well as whose overall predictions were most accurate.

(Note: These lists aren't just based on who was the closest- I also factored in how far off the other predictions were. So predicting at team within two games if the average prediction was eight games off would be higher than predicting a team exactly if the average was just three games off.)

The Best

1. PECOTA, Chicago White Sox
Predicted wins: 72
On pace for: 71.0

The over/under for the White Sox was 89.5, and the ESPN analysts average prediction was 84.6. Chicago won 90 games in '06 after winning 99 in 2005. Much was made of PECOTA's pessimism, but this turned out to be, pretty easily, the best prediction of the year.

2. Jayson Stark, Seattle Mariners
Predicted wins: 85
On pace for: 86.6

The average for everyone else was 76.5, and PECOTA had them winning only 73 games. They only won 78 games in '06, while finishing last in the AL West. ESPN's preview had JJ Putz under "Bust", as they were worried about his elbow pains. I feel like that turned out OK for him.

3. Steve Phillips, Minnesota Twins
Predicted wins: 78
On pace for: 78.6

Steve Phillips: Not Smart! Well, for now at least. Nobody else at ESPN had the Twins winning less than 83 games, and PECOTA pegged them at 90. On the ESPN Message Boards, Twinsdude08 remarked that, "The Twins just have too much talent to not win the division." I don't know how Phillips came to 78 wins, but, as well see later, this accuracy certainly isn't a trend.

4. Rob Neyer, Washington Nationals
Predicted wins: 69
On pace for: 71.1

People (especially Buster Olney), thought the Nationals were going to be really bad. The second most optimistic ESPN prediction was 64 wins; six had them losing over 100 games. Neyer, who always refers to his predictions as "running the numbers", was more realistic- it's hard to lose 100 games in the NL, since all the other teams are really bad too.

5. Peter Gammons, Colorado Rockies
Predicted wins: 84
On pace for: 87.2

The Rockies have far exceeded all expectations- their over/under at SportsInteraction was 74.5 wins, and nobody else had them winning even 80 games. Even Gammons didn't see this coming, but everybody else was so far off that his prediction makes the list.

The Rest (Predictor, Team, Prediction, Actual Pace)
6. Phillips, Orioles, 70, 69.4
7. Karabell, Pirates, 69, 68.9
8. Caple, Marlins, 68, 68.6
9. PECOTA, Oakland, 80, 77.3
10. Stark, Red Sox, 96, 96

Now for the fun part...

The Worst

1. Buster Olney, Washington Nationals
Predicted wins: 49
On pace for: 71.7

Pretty much everyone was a little off on the Nats, but this one stands out. Sure, things didn't look good back in March, but 113 losses? No NL team lost more than 96 games in '05 or '06- it would be quite amazing if someone was actually that bad. Olney is a smart guy, but I'm not sure where he got 49 wins from.

2. Jim Caple, Kansas City Royals
Predicted wins: 54
On pace for: 70

I don't know, maybe people just think it's funny to pick teams to be amusingly bad. I kind of see Caple's reasoning here, as he predicted the other four AL Central teams to average 89 wins. But seriously, how did he see this playing out? Did he figure they would all go like 16-3 against the Royals? Thats the only way they could average 89 wins, since they have to play each other so many times.

3. Steve Phillips, Boston Red Sox
Predicted wins: 82
On pace for: 96

This only came out third in my little formula, but that may be generous. Boston was a mess in '06, and they still managed 86 wins. Nobody else had the Red Sox winning less than 90 games. Between this and repeatedly predicting the Yankees to miss the playoffs in August, I feel like Phillips just makes predictions for the shock value of them.

4. Keith Law, Seattle Mariners
Predicted wins: 65
On pace for: 86.6

Law and Stark didn't quite see eye to eye on this one, as their predictions were 20 wins apart, the highest such margin. Seattle has surprised people, but their over/under was 79.5 wins; there really wasn't any reason to think they would approach 100 losses.

The Rest (Predictor, Team, Prediction, Actual Pace)

5. Philips, Diamondbacks, 78, 90.8
6. Phillips, White Sox, 92, 71
7. PECOTA, Devil Rays, 78, 66.4
8. Karabell, Cubs, 75, 86
9. Stark, Reds, 85, 74.2
10. Karabell, Astros, 88, 70.5

Now, let's look at whose overall predictions were the most accurate. The table on the right is ranked by how close people were, on average of all 30 predictions.

The top three are all predictions based on numbers. PECOTA is 100% quantitative, and both Neyer and the Hit List rely heavily on numerical predictions.

Those are the only three that did better than Vegas. Neyer did really well- his picks are 19-10-1 against the over/unders so far. Even more impressive, of his seven predictions that had large discrepancies with Sports Interaction, he was right on six of them.

On the other end of the spectrum is, not surprisingly, Mr. Phillips. If you watch Baseball Tonight and SportsCenter (or are a Mets fan...) this probably doesn't come as much of a surprise. Luckily, Steve Phillips isn't paid a lot of money to analyze baseball for a living- if he was, his incompetence would be pretty embarassing.

Pictures: Pecota, Phililps, Olney, Law.

In case you somehow missed any of Steve Phillips' August ESPN chats, here's a recap:

August 15:

"Mike (Fresno): True or false - the Yankees will make the playoffs.

Steve Phillips: False. The easy thing to say right now is that they will make it because of how they have played out of the All-Star break. But the reason they are winning now is because of their offense, which is very, very good. But to be a playoff team you have to pitch. And I have my doubts that the offense will continue to go as it is going, and I do not think they have the pitching to bail them out when the offense is not there. But they deserve a lot of credit for fighting their way back into this race, because myself, along with many others, counted them out a long time ago."

Yankees' team ERA since August 15: 4.80
Mariners' team ERA since August 15: 5.66


August 22

"Vinny (New York): With a gun to your head, still Seatle over the Yanks for the Wild Card? Yankees are looking pretty impressive, just taking care of most people's "best team in baseball."

Steve Phillips: The Yanks looked good beating an undermanned Tigers team, I agree with you. But I think the Mariners will hold on and win the Wild Card. Their starting pitching is just good enough and their bullpen in unreal. They have one of the best defenses in babseball, and they are starting to produce on offense. I think it is too little too late for the Yankees to make the playoffs."

The Seattle Mariners are third to last in the majors in Defensive Efficiency.
They have scored 4.24 R/G since August 22. This season, the Royals are second to last in the AL at 4.49 R/G.


August 27

"Lee, CT: With the Mariners up 2 games in the wildcard why does this team not get talked about more as a team that is making noise in the AL?

Steve Phillips: Well, I feel like I talk about them just about every show I do. think they will win the Wild Card despite their difficult schedule down the stretch. They have everything you want from a playoff contending team excpet that dominanting starting pitching, but they make up for it with their amazing defense and quality bullpen. This is a big series this week against the Angels, as the Mariners have no fared that well against them (4-8 this season), but most of those loses came earlier this seasson before the Mariners became what they are now. "

Current Wild Card standings:


Photos: Steve Phillips, Steve Phillips, Steve Phillips.