09 May 2011

Predicted Wins and Playoff Probability: Week 6

This past week, the Orioles were 1-6, managing a win against the Kansas City Royals.  Each projection system thought the Orioles would do better than they did and so we find the new predicted wins to be less than they were last week.  However, it is about in line with where the predictions were two weeks ago.  PECOTA has the Orioles at a 1.8% chance of making the playoffs.  We have them at 0.41%.

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So, once again, this team is about as good as the systems thought they would be.

EDIT: It appears that we are getting considerable traffic from ESPN on this post.  I think I might need to explain some thing here as this is one of our weekly updates.

We are using three "systems" to predict the number of wins the team will win over the course of the season.  The three systems we are using are:

PECOTA - Baseball Prospectus issues updated projections on a daily basis.  We use this as an industry standard.  These figures are based on updated PECOTA player projections, playing time projections, and strength of schedule.

Camden Depot - At Camden Depot we used Tango's MARCEL projections and account for playing time to generate a WAR prediction.  We then generate a prediction for each team in baseball and weight the Orioles schedule according.  Expected wins are derived using Bill James log5 method.  The MARCEL projections are not updated, but the Orioles record in past games is incorporated in what we expect them to do in future games based on the projections and strength of schedule.  We will change our projections if major trades or injuries occur.

Pythagorean - This method is the simple well known Pythagorean method where we predict wins based on runs scored and runs given.

Playoff predictions are done by PECOTA in their daily update and by us.  We use a simple binomial function and adjust it to the expected Wild Card win total or AL East win total (which ever is lower).

Feel free to ask more questions.

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