Baseball Prospectus released their PECOTA projections, with the Indians and Rays predicted to win the most games in the American League. The Dodgers and Cubs top the NL standings. Only 20 games separate the top AL team, the Indians (92 wins), from the Orioles at the bottom (72 wins). That matches my gut feeling that the AL is basically up for grabs, with no great team and no horrible team. Randomness likely means it won’t play out that way, but it really does look like every team has a shot.
Twenty-nine wins separate the Dodgers (94 wins) from the Phillies at the bottom (65 wins). That’s not so bad, however, as the Braves (68 wins) are the only other non-competitve team.
A Cubs-Indians World Series would be great, as one of the teams would be guaranteed to break a long championship drought. A Dodgers-Rays series would be just as much fun, with the old Tampa Bay front office taking on the the new one.
Once again, PECOTA does not like the Royals. There certainly seems to be an element to that team that we’re missing.
Dave, how accurate do the PECOTAs tend to end up being at the end of the season?
Tom » I’m not sure. I’ll see if I can find anything tomorrow. I suspect it’s pretty random. Teams in February aren’t the teams in July.
Tom » Here’s some information on the accuracy of PECOTA team win predictions. I’d call it six wins in either direction.
PECOTA is fine, but the Astros have used PANKOVITS and it seems to work even better.
See the wiki page for more details –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Pankovits
The standard error is +/- 6 wins over 162 games. So any projection that is within +/- 6 wins is a decent one. But it still means they miss pretty big on about 10 teams.
The Royals hate is interesting. Its not just Pecota, Fan Graphs does not like them much either. Part of that must be a rotation thats not very impressive. Defense and sequencing may be the missing link, or underweighted links, and perhaps the bullpen performance is underweighted as well.
Royals had career years from 3 position players last year and another 3 exceeded projections. Some regression might be expected. In the rotation Young had a career year by ERA+ and Voloquez exceeded projections. Regression expected there and their offseason SP acquisitions are not very impressive. Also, the Al Central looks to be a bit tougher of a division this year
The fellows over at baseball-ratings.com have the Royals projected atop the AL Central heap.
James Crabtree » Love it!
Thanks everybody, especially Dave and James.