Bruce Bukiet uses a mathematical model to predict team won lost records, and his 2012 predictions are out.
The predictions are based on a mathematical model the math professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology created in 2000 to compute the probability of any one team defeating any other team. He has done quite well with it over the years, winning the website Baseball PHD’s MLB predictions contest for both 2010 and 2011.
He predicts the Cardinals and Rangers will not only win their divisions, but will rematch in the World Series.
Wow, so the Tigers are supposed to smoke their division.
Q re: new playoff format, does the winner of the play-in game face off against the team with the best record, even if it’s in the same division (e.g., Boston wins the game, and faces against the Yankees?)
Wow, that White Sox prediction is way out of whack with everyone else. Be interesting to see how it pays off.
The model is reasonable, but it seems to exclude injuries. It seems that over the course of a season injuries can have a huge effect, a good team with more than their share (or injuries at the wrong times to the wrong players) can sink in the standings, while mediocre teams with injury free seasons can post great regular season records, even while doing nothing remarkable the preceding or following seasons. I’ve seen both.
One thing I found interesting with the projected standings was that if you had those standings with the 1969 – 1993, there would have been a great three way divisional race in the American League East, same with the National League West, and a great two way divisional race in the American League East.
Its another piece of evidence for my suspicion that the expanded playoffs simply moved alot of the excitement that had been in the September pennant races and the World Series to the additional early tiers of playoffs.
Also, I was going to make a snarky comment about the model having the Astros still in the National League, but I looked it up and it appears that MLB has announced the switch but won’t actually make it until 2013. Is there a chance they will reverse themselves?
Hmm. Giants will lose two more games than last year? Does the model project injuries? Giants may not win the division (although I hope they do) but I think they win more than 84 games.
“Is there a chance they will reverse themselves?”
No, unless baseball wants to tear up the entire regular season schedule one week before Opening Day.
These predictions look pretty much like conventional wisdom to me. Sometimes conv-wis is right and sometimes it ain’t. I got an idea. Let’s play the season and see what happens!