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Sabermetric Drive By: Pythag Based Standings Projections

February 17th, 2008 · 1 Comment

I’ve always been a firm believer in basic information as a foundation for making more complicated analysis later on. You have start with the basic info before you start trying to split atoms.

In that vein here’s something basic. It’s the projected standings for 2008 based on the Pythag numbers from 2007 and 2006. The formula is (2007pythagwin%*.505)+(2006pythagwin%*.171)+.164. The numbers below will be slightly different than that since they’re normalized to exactly .500 for the league and the pythag formula slightly more complex (and accurate). But it’s mostly the same as if you did it yourself.

How accurate will this be? Not very. 95% of the teams tend to be within 18 wins of this total. That’s a pretty huge spread, but then I guess knowing that is still valuable info. The lesson is that there’s much more to what will happen this year than what the teams did in previous years. Good news for some teams.

AL Central     W- L  Win%
Cleveland     88-42  .543
Detroit       88-74  .542
Minnesota     83-79  .510
Chicago       75-87  .462
Kansas City   74-88  .456

AL East        W- L  Win%
New York      93-69  .571
Boston        91-71  .564
Toronto       85-77  .523
Baltimore     73-89  .453
Tampa Bay     71-91  .436

AL West        W- L  Win%
Los Angeles   86-76  .532
Oakland       81-81  .499
Texas         80-82  .497
Seattle       79-83  .490

NL Central     W-L   Win%
Chicago       82-80  .508
Milwaukee     80-82  .497
Houston       77-85  .474
Cincinnati    77-85  .473
St. Louis     76-86  .470
Pittsburgh    73-89  .451

NL East        W- L  Win%
Atlanta       86-76  .528
New York      85-77  .528
Philadelphia  85-77  .526
Florida       76-86  .469
Washington    73-89  .452

NL East        W- L  Win%
Colorado      86-76  .531
San Diego     86-76  .531
Los Angeles   83-79  .510
Arizona       80-82  .492
San Francisco 78-84  .483

From there you should take into account how much talent the teams added and lost. This means a boost for teams like the Mets, White Sox and Tigers, and some trouble for the Twins, Marlins and A’s. The age of the team in previous years is also important: good news for the D’Backs, bad news for the Giants. Did the team have an unusual number of unexpected injuries? Do they have some major talent coming up through the system? Did a bunch of guys have “career years” last year?

No one said reading tea leaves was easy. How fun would it be if it was?

Tags: Drive Bys · Uncategorized

1 response so far ↓

  • 1 Vegas Watch // Feb 17, 2008 at 7:11 pm

    Voros- the Vegas Over/Unders for each team are up on http://www.betcris.com. The one that stuck out to me the most was the Rays at only 72.

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