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?
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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