http://tinyurl.com/amgj45
I finally have them ready. The projected standings come from the same source
that told you, one year ago, that Tampa Bay would win 89 games and be a
contender. That projection was wrong. They weren't just contenders, but
American League Champions. At the time I think the Vegas over/under was in
the mid 70 win range. I should have put some money on them, but I'm not that
into gambling and missed that opportunity.
My method is slightly improved from last year. Last season I assigned playing
time to all the hitters and pitchers based on what I thought was most likely,
added up the runs scored and allowed, and generated Pythagorean W-L records.
Then I looked at how far over I was on the league as a whole (did I project
the league to play at a .515 percentage?) and removed the same number of wins
per team to make sure the leagues add up to .500. I call this removing the
Lake Wobegon effect.
For this year I've gotten a bit more advanced. I've compiled a team schedule
spreadsheet, telling me how many games each team has against each opponent.
Then I match up each team's initial W-L% and see how they will play each
other head to head using the odds ratio. For example, Boston and New York are
both behemoths, but in the 19 games they play they will of course combine to
go 19-19.
I have the American League going 137-115 in interleague play, a .544
percentage. This is how they played in 2007 and 2005, but the AL was even
more dominant than that last year and 2006 (a .611 percentage that season). I
consider my .544 prediction realistic but on the conservative side. I
wouldn't trust any prediction made that puts the two leagues as equal. They
may have reasoning that shows why the NL will catch up this year, but more
likely they are just being lazy and are not recognizing the disparity between
leagues.
So, finally the AL West:
LA Angels 86-76
Athletics 81-81
Mariners_ 78-84
Rangers__ 69-93
Bobby Abreu is a two win upgrade over playing Matthews or Willits in the
outfield, or playing Wood or Rodriguez at third with Figgins in the outfield.
A's have improved the offense but the pitching is unproven and questionable
(check out the 2nd half ERA of last year). In addition, they will have at
least one defensive hole, you can't hide both Cust and Giambi at DH. Mariners
have greatly upgraded the defense, and have intelligent management for a
change. They don't have the bats to contend, but could be a challenge in the
future because they have money to spend and will likely spend it on better
players than Richie Sexson, Jose Vidro, and Carlos Silva. Rangers have,
through position changes, effectively replaced Milton Bradley with Omar
Vizquel in the lineup. They won't score runs like last year, and still have
no pitching.
Here's my track record on the AL West:
2008: Angels, 91 wins, first by 8 games (In my Feb 2008 archives)
2007: Cannot find, I know I picked the Angels but not by how much. I was
writing for MVN but I think the archives have been lost, or at least are hard
to find)
2006: A's 90 wins, 6 ahead of the Angels. This shows I'm not biased in my
predictions, if another team appears to be stronger, I will report that,
however distasteful I find it.
So far I'm 3 for 3, if I made predictions before that it was before the blog
started, and I have no idea where to find them.
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