Vegas Watch

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.