Tuesday, March 11, 2008

PECOTA 2008 Projected MLB Standings Redux - Yankees are still #1

I'm sure all 12 of the loyal NYYSI readers remember this blog post when I pointed out that Baseball Prospectus' infamous PECOTA projections had the AL East Shaping up like this:

American League, ranked by projected 2008 record

East W L RS RA
New York Yankees 97 65 880 727
Boston Red Sox 91 71 838 746
Tampa Bay Rays 89 73 785 714
Toronto Blue Jays 79 83 768 772
Baltimore Orioles 66 96 746 885


Well, now BP has been kind enough to point me in the direction of a Google spreadsheet showing how their projections have fared since 2003. Obviously, any stat geek will tell you that isn't exactly a huge sample size, but it isn't anything to sneeze at.

As the much-smarter-than-me Nate Silver points out:

Overall, though, the PECOTA projections have tended to get more and more accurate over time. The average error in our won-loss projections since 2003 has been as follows:

2003    5.91 wins
2004 7.71 wins
2005 5.14 wins
2006 4.94 wins
2007 4.31 wins
Basically, PECOTA is getting closer and closer to being "deadly accurate" as they claim on the cover of their yearly baseball book. That is good news for us diehard Yankee fans/stat geeks/ computer worshippers. By now we all know that PECOTA is projecting the Yankees to be the best team in all of baseball.

Now lets take a look at how well PECOTA has predicted Yankee win totals since 2003:

YEAR

PECOTA
ACTUAL
DIFFERENCE
2003
109
101
-8
2004 106
101
-5
2005 95
95
0
2006 94
97
+3
2007 93
94 +1
AVG: -1.8

The lesson here? When all of the MLB preview magazines come out with their "ballsy" picks featuring the Yankees finishing in third in the AL East, don't get up in arms. Simply take heart that our friend, the lovable computer PECOTA, says good things are in store for the 2008 New York Yankees.

Talk about it in the NYYSI Forums!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

How can the Yankees still be #1? They got their arses handed to them last year. Sox are clearly still the best team in the division. Get used to coming in second. Everything changed for the Skanks on those fateful nights back in October of '04. Don't cry it's okay... only 82 more years to wait.

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