03 October 2016

Just When We Were Writing Off Those Goofy Seamheads...

It's been fun in recent years to malign the SABR eggheads for their silly attempts to guess the final standings at season's start. I post the Baseball Prospectus projections at the start of every season with a healthy dose of disclaimer.

So just when the ridicule was reaching a critical mass, they nailed it.

Take a look at this. It's the BP projection for the AL East throughout the course of  the 2016 season. You'll notice that, other than flipping Baltimore and Tampa, a not unreasonable mistake, they had the  division pretty dead-on.



Notice how little the Red Sox (in red, duh) wavered from being the favorite on Opening Day. For a couple of days there in late June they slipped beneath the Orioles as Baltimore began pulling away from the division. Then in August the Blue Jays surged ahead, as they did in the actual standings. But Boston always enjoyed high odds of making the playoffs. And BP's number crunching system came to the conclusion by June that the Rays and Yankees were toast.

I won't impose the rest of these projection graphs on you. You can find them here. (That's the AL East you'll see, but you can toggle for each division as you like.) Suffice to say that BP correctly identified the Indians as the best team in the Central, briefly credited the White Sox for their early-season heroics and never gave Detroit much of a chance, even as they bore down on the Wild Card,

In the NL East, BP knew it was a two horse race between New York and Washington, and gave Atlanta and Philadelphia zero chance of earning a slot. Well okay, didn't we all.

And sure, the Cubs were a shoo-in, but it's interesting that BP was squirrely about St. Louis and totally unimpressed with Pittsburgh as far back as April 1.

You might remember some of the adulation for Arizona's big moves in the winter, but BP saw through them, tabbing the Dbacks a 10-1 underdog to play deep into October. Their algorithms correctly tabbed the Dodgers as top dog and Giants as understudy.

Only in the AL West did BP create the mashup that educated guesses get you. At season's commencement, they credited Houston with a 68% chance of making the post-season, Seattle at 32%, the Angels at 25%, Oakland at 20% and lowly Texas least likely at 19%. The Rangers sport the Junior Circuit's best record while Anaheim and Oakland peed on themselves for six months. 

Still, five of the six teams they tabbed as "most likely" made the playoffs, with all but the decimated Mets winning their division. It's a pretty good showing that should quiet the critics like me -- until next season's projections.

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