The Predicticator

Dave Paisley

With the annual madness that is the All Star Break out of the way, we can resume normal programming in the baseball world. Which means, naturally, that the teams of the American League West will promptly lose 13 out of 16 games to inferior opposition over the past weekend. Not only that, two of those meager three wins will be by the Texas Rangers. And even that required that the Rangers be playing the terminally inept Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Which just goes to show that there?s no predicting on a daily basis just what will happen in baseball. In the grander scheme of things, though, prediction is the name of the game, and I?m going to take a look at just how the American league has fared over the almost 100 games played so far relative to my predictions.

Before we get to that, though, I?m going to show you just how run scoring has correlated with OPS this season to date. Not only run scoring, but runs allowed?

Here?s the American League numbers in graphical form:

The blue symbols are runs scored by each team vs team OPS, while the red symbols represent the runs allowed by each team vs OPS allowed. Not surprisingly, the two sets of data are pretty much indistinguishable from each other and show an excellent and similar degree of correlation.

Even the end points are well in line with the trends. Just in case you?re wondering, the lone blue diamond at the bottom left is the hapless Detroit Tigers. The sad little red square at the top right is the Texas Rangers, whose pitching once again is sinking into the sunset long before the end of the season draws nigh.

The good points? The blue diamond way at the top right? The Red Sox. Yes, they are that punishing on offense. Two red squares at the bottom left? Seattle (lowest point) and Oakland.

Now here?s a table that summarizes the run scoring and run allowing prowess of each team, as well as a few of my predictions.

Team	G	W	L	RS/G	Off Rank	RA/G	Pitch Rank	Pyth W	Pyth W Deficit	My Season Projected Wins	Season Proj W	Season Pyth W Deficit
NY Yankees	97	61	36	5.5	3	4.4	5	59	2	100	102	2
Boston	97	57	40	6.2	1	5.1	8	58	-1	111	95	-16
Toronto	99	51	48	5.8	2	5.4	12	53	-2	82	83	1
Baltimore	95	45	50	5.1	5	5.1	9	48	-3	71	77	6
Tampa Bay	96	34	62	4.3	12	5.5	13	36	-2	60	57	-3
Kansas City	96	54	42	5.3	4	5.1	10	49	5	68	91	23
Chicago White Sox	98	48	50	4.3	11	4.3	4	49	-1	86	79	-6
Minnesota	97	48	49	4.7	9	4.9	6	46	2	79	80	1
Cleveland	98	41	57	4.3	13	4.9	7	42	-1	70	68	-2
Detroit	96	26	70	3.3	14	5.2	11	27	-1	61	44	-17
Seattle	97	59	38	5.0	7	3.8	1	61	-2	91	99	8
Anaheim	96	49	47	4.9	8	4.3	3	54	-5	93	83	-10
Oakland	97	54	43	4.5	10	4.1	2	54	0	93	90	-3
Texas	97	40	57	5.0	6	6.3	14	38	2	71	67	-4

First looking from the left, there?s the current games played and W-L record, followed by the runs scored and allowed per game and the league ranking of each.

No shock that the Tigers are the worst team in the league, with the worst offense and fourth worst pitching (despite living in the pitching friendly confines of Comical Park. No team dominates clearly as best based on these numbers, but the Seattle Mariners (#1 pitching, #7 offense) and the Yankees (#3 offense, #5 pitching have been the cream of the crop so far. Boston, Anaheim and Oakland aren?t far behind. The best Central division team, the Royals, are well behind them.

The next set of numbers, tipped off by the grey, are the number of games each team should have won so far based on runs scored and allowed using the Pythagorean projection. There aren?t many surprises here, the only two being Kansas City being five games to the good fortune side of the ledger, and Anaheim being five games to the bad. That tells me those World Champion Angels aren?t having quite as bad a season as it seems ? there?s some bad luck involved (which maybe balances out lat year?s extreme good fortune.)

The next grey column is my pre-season projection for total wins for each team, followed by the number of wins the teams will have if they continue their current winning percentages to the end of the season, followed by the difference. Given that random chance and a good or bad weekend makes plus or minus five games a wash, I?m going to claim victory for everything within six games of my prediction, which covers nine of the fourteen teams. Pretty good, eh? So what happened to the other five?

First, I predicted 111 wins for the Red Sox, which was kind of sporty I know. They?re on a pace to underperform that by 16 games and still win 95. But it was based on getting the same league leading pitching and an offense that has been heavily upgraded from past years. Picked right on the offense, but the pitching has been crap. The Sox have been down in the 4.0 range for runs given up in the past, but are way over that this year. Injuries, crappy form, closer by committee, there have been various reasons, but the fact is the pitching has stunk. For all that, they?re safely ensconced in the wild card slot and could still turn it on and beat the Yankees for the East.

Then there?s the Royals. Currently set to beat my predicted 68 wins by 23, they will be the genuine surprise team of the year. Still not as good as they seem (remember those 5 wins over Pythagorean?) they nevertheless are not a pile of crap. Call it good luck throwing a bunch of rookie pitchers out there. However, the pitching is only 5% better than I estimated. The offense is 15% up, and that?s the big driver.

Next comes Detroit. I had them pegged for 61 wins and they?re on a pace to win 44. Does anyone even care? The pitching is about where I expected, but the offense has been so full of woe I can?t even be bothered to come up with a simile for how bad it is. It?s as bad as something that?s very, very, very bad.

Finally, in the AL West we have the last two teams. Seattle is outperforming my expectations by 8 games, primarily due to 12% better pitching. No shock there. Coming into the season, nobody expected the #4 and #5 starters to be as good as the top three,. But Meche and Franklin have been every bit as good as Garcia, Moyer and Pineiro. So far, anyway. The Angels, however are within a percent or so of where I expected them to be in offense and defense, but they have just underperformed in being able to turn those runs into wins. Five wins down so far means close to ten by the end of the season.

Just to toot my own horn one more time, I have five teams pegged to less than 3% error on both offense and defense so far ? the Yankees, Angels, Twins, Indians and Devil Rays. Sometimes I amaze even myself?

about the author

Sure, tell Dave Paisley there's no such word as predicticator and he'll scoff and ask you if there's no such word as prognosticator too. So have your dictionary handy when you write to him at drdjp@strikethree.com.