2007 Season Predictions

[Roxpert]

Originally Posted by Newman

Why do you hope your prediction will be wrong, Pert? I much more prefer it when my predictions come true and validate what a genius I am.

That's funny. Occasionally, my wife uses Pert shampoo, so I guess the nickname fits. Of course, I would rather the Rockies win 100 games and prove me a total idiot. Instead, they win enough to confound my prediction, while not winning enough to get to the playoffs.

It does remind me of the Nuggets era about 6 or 7 years ago, after the team was historically bad under Hanzlik. They brought in McDyess, LaFrentz, Van Exel, and were entertaining to watch, and even above .500. But everyone knew they weren't quite good enough for the playoffs or to ever become a serious contender. So, their new GM, Kiki Vandeweghe, blew up that team and started all over again. Fortunately, they rebuilt in just a few years into an even better team, and have an owner willing to spent the bucks (over the salary cap) to bring in Iverson, etc. They could win 55 games this season, even though they are still longshots for the NBA title.

Our Rockies have rebuilt from a woeful 6-year stretch in which we won 73,73, 74, 68, 67, and 76 games. Now, we have reached a level of low to mid-80's in wins, for one season. It was me who wrote that this season success does not have a lot of predictive value for next season. The last time we were over .500, 2000, we followed that up with a 73-win campaign, after having blown the wad on some bad contracts. This led to the team going through the owner-mandated austere youth movement.

Can we expect better this time? I think so. However, ownership commitment to our best players has yet to be proven, and we don't know if we will have the budget to bring in complementary parts to fill holes that we can't fill with our suddenly uninspiring farm system. The jury is definitely out as to whether we can take it up another notch, or whether we regress to the 70-something win team of our past.

[indianadrew]

RockieRooter - 83
BigRapidsJackass - 84
HoyaRoxFan - 83
indianadrew - 85
RMF - 86

[indianadrew]

BigRapidsJackass - 84
indianadrew - 85
RMF - 86

then there were three. i personally think we will be crowning RMF champion.

[indianadrew]

indianadrew - 85
RMF - 86

then there were two. i personally think we will be crowning RMF champion.

damm, i would have never thought that i did not predict high enough.

[RockieRooter]

I thought I might be low, but I went for "realism" this year instead of my usual top of the range optimism. Goes to show. When I picked I was one higher than anybody else at that point. Biggest miss was U-Ball and Morales. They've really come on.

[Heltonfan]

Here's a nice review of pre-season team projections for MLB as a whole: Vegas Watch: Evaluating April MLB Predictions

The table on the right side of the page shows the average error in projected wins for each forecaster. Note that the five most accurate people/systems are Rob Neyer, PECOTA, another Baseball Prospectus system, Diamond Mind, and MGL (the last two aren't in the table, but their results are provided in the comments section). These all have something in common...

There's also an important point made in the comments section, towards the bottom: simply using last year's Pythagorean records as this year's projections yields an average error of 6.9. And, furthermore, because of random fluctuation, a 5.0 is, for all intents and purposes, a perfect score (perfect not in the sense that it's perfectly accurate, but in the sense that it's impossible to design a system that will consistently score better). In this context, the difference between an average error of 5 and an average error of 6, which might not look like much at first glance, is revealed to be quite large indeed - it's half of the distance between as-good-as-it-gets and the results that you can get by spending five minutes on baseball-reference.com.

Oh, and for the record, my predictions (posted at the beginning of this thread, so you can check for yourself if you want) scored a 5.0 (4.9985, to be exact ). So, despite woefully underestimating the Rockies, I win the overall battle of the projection systems. Beautiful.

(Lest anyone think that I'm using this results-based analysis, which I have railed against many times in the past, to claim that my system is the best of them all: I'm not. The difference between my score and PECOTA's or MGL's isn't statistically significant. All that these results show is that sabermetric systems fare noticeably better than non-sabermetric systems, which is about as surprising as the fact that Thanksgiving will be celebrated on a Thursday this year. But we can at least say that the evidence suggests that my system is no worse than any of the others, which, given that I have tremendous respect for MGL, and that I'm working with far simpler data than either he or PECOTA is, is rather satisfying).

[indianadrew]

Originally Posted by Roxpert

wolf213 - 82
Heltonfan - 78
Roxpert - 75 (and I've also said 73 and 76 in this thread, but 75 was my last)
PECOTA - 80
TheIncredibleRox - 75
DieHardRoxFan - 72
hiaspire - 80
RockieRooter - 83
BigRapidsJackass - 84
GerryInCS - 68
HoyaRoxFan - 83
indianadrew - 85
rockieprogress - 79
Newman - 78
RMF - 86

RMF is the champion

congrats

[TheIncredibleRox]

I'm going to review myself piece-by-piece. I think the stats-plus-instincts approach worked pretty well.

Helton: .311/.433/.526, 26 HR in 620 PA

Really: .320 .434 .494 17 HR

Not bad. Generous with the HR power, but nailed the OBP and pretty damn close on the BA.

2B:
Matsui: .288/.324/.406, 8 HR 12 SB (7 CS) in 340 PA
Carroll: .277/.345/.399, 1 HR in 310 PA

Kaz: .288 .342 .405 4 HR 32 SB

Nailed him pretty well other than the counting totals. BA exactly, SLG off by a point. Underestimated his walk rate slightly and his SB efficiency dramatically.

Carroll: .225 .317 .300

Woops! BABIP.

Barmes: .277/.315/.407, 9 HR in 305 PA
Tulowitzki: .269/.321/.425, 11 HR in 330 PA

Tulo: .291 .359 .479 24 HR

Obviously I missed here on playing time. Nailed Tulo's walk rate and HR rate pretty well, obviously underestimated him in terms of base hits.

Atkins: .311/.411/.525, 21 HR in 630 PA. Starts slow then mashes down stretch

Atkins: .301 .367 .486 25 HR

Bonus points for predicting HOW he'd do it. I think I missed on Atkins less than others. He had a rough run of BABIP for quite a bit there, which brought things down.

Torrealba: .251/.309/.402 in 180 PA, traded at deadline
Lopez: .248/.316/.412 in 289 PA
Iannetta: .286/.376/.449 in 210 PA

Iannetta gets screwed and starts year in AAA for a bull**** reason.

Torrealba: .255 .323 .376
Ianetta: .218 .330 .350

Obviously a big PT miss here. I got Torrealba pretty well in terms of overall value, but thought he'd be more power-centric than OBA-centric. Ianetta's .218 BA was obviously not what I saw coming.

Holliday: .316/.366/.602, 33 HR in 625 PA

Holliday: .340 .405 .607 36 HR

Nailed the HR and walk rates. Expecting .340 would have been out there, and Holliday has been beating the living hell out of my expectations since he came to the Majors. Here's to that continuing.

Tavares: .301/.352/.401, 41 SB (11 CS) in 580 PA

A very nice little suprise

Taveras: .320 .367 .382 33 SB 9 CS

Got it pretty well I'd say. I was a little out on a limb there projecting him that high, it seems I just slightly underpredicted his BA and slightly overpredicted his SLG. In terms of total value, pretty spot-on.

Hawpe: .280/.350/.489, 30 HR in 510 PA

Hawpe: .291 .387 .539 29 HR

Later in the post, I buffered that projection with this: I gave sort of a mid-line projection for Hawpe. But I think theres a loooot of variance possible there. I could see as high as .320/.410/.600, or as low as .260/.320/.420. I don't know why I just get that feeling with him.

Well, he took the over; a couple big ticks over my projection in OBA and SLG. A very nice season.

Sullivan: .252/.301/.388 in 190 PA
Baker: .261/.306/.408 in 180 PA
Spillborghs: .280/.330/.420 in 190 PA. I like him, dunno why.

Sully: .286 .336 .386
Baker: .222 .296 .347
Spilly: .299 .363 .485

Hard to project guys with limited PT, but bonus points for being high on Spilly.

Francis: 14-11, 4.22 ERA, 221 IP-- a very good year
Cook: 15-11, 4.30 ERA, 216 IP
Hirsh: 11-12, 5.30 ERA, 189 IP
Kim: 10-11, 5.15 ERA, 118 IP (18 starts, traded at deadline for not enough)
Buccholz: 9-11, 5.65 ERA, 125 IP (half year in pen, half in rotation)
Lopez: 3-7, 5.96 ERA, 85 IP (by May we wonder what we ever saw in him)
Jimenez: 4-2, 5.31, 88 IP (enters rotation in August and holds his own)

Francis: 17-9 4.22 215.3 IP

Nailed the ERA and IP. Bonus for denoting that this would be a very good season for him.

Cook: 8-7 4.12 166 IP

Got the ERA pretty damn well, although injuries took off the IP. I shouldn't really hold myself to trying to predict W-L, that's just silly.

Hirsh: 5-7 4.81 112.3 IP

Injured, obviously. It's amazing the real ERA wasn't closer to my prediction given the homeritis and BB rate.

Kim didn't really pitch for us.

Buchholz: 6-5 4.23 93.6

I thought we'd squeeze more starts out of him, and still think we should have.

Lopez: 5-4 4.42 79.3

Obviously, injured. I think his arm blowing up saved his ERA from blowing up.

Jimenez: 4-4 4.28 82.0

Got that one pretty well. He beat my expectations and my expectations were considered quite high for him.

Fuentes: 3.11 ERA, 67 IP (when he should have thrown 90), 32 saves
Hawkins: 5.11 ERA, 70 IP (Jose Mesa '07)
Ramirez: 5.01 ERA, 66 IP
Corpas: 4.43 ERA, 65 IP
Martin: 5.89 ERA, 21 IP, DFA'd after May
Morillo: 4.45 ERA, 45 IP starts as intriguing mop-up guy, high K and BB rates
Rivera: 3.88 ERA, 44 IP doesn't break camp, but comes up late May and suprises

Nailed: Fuentes and Martin

Missed: Low on Hawkins and Corpas

PT/Injury miss: Rivera, Ramirez, Morillo

--Fogg and Affeldt traded late spring, possibly even packaged together, for any out-of-options and somewhat intriguing RP who wasn't going to make another team. I didn't include whoever that may be in these projections.

That was more wishcasting/roster-guessing than a prediction, but it still missed.

The team is hurt by: A) having a top-heavy rotation. Cook and Francis have stellar years, nobody else really suprises.

Kind of a miss, kind of a hit; our rotation was very top-heavy until Jimenez stepped in. He and Morales were suprises. But none of the real candidates at that time (Fogg, Hirsh, Lopez, Lawrence, Kim, Buccholz) emerged as any sort of rotation force.

B) No consistent, effective bridge to Fuentes.

Well, for the second half of the season, the bridge didn't lead to Fuentes. The eighth inning this year went to Hawkins, then Corpas, then Julio/Hawkins, then Fuentes/Herges. It wasn't consistent, and it wasn't always effective.

C) Mediocre (at best) offense from SS, 2B, and C.

From 2B and C, check. From SS, a big delicious miss.