posted on Saturday, February 16, 2008 2:19 AM by Jim

The spirit of 77

Last year, Baseball Prospectus projected the White Sox to finish with a 72-90 record.  The Sox scoffed:

"Seventy-two and 90?" added an amused White Sox hitting coach Greg Walker when informed of the prediction. "I'll go higher than 72 wins. Predictions like that really don't enter our thought process. We know what we have to do to win."

Sure enough, the Sox finished 72-90.  PECOTA had massively underrated the Sox for years, so when zooming out, it's not as impressive as it first appears.  However, it does make this year's projection worth paying attention to.

The prediction? 77-85, 780 runs scored, 822 runs allowed.

Now we play the waiting game...

Comments

# re: The spirit of 77

Saturday, February 16, 2008 3:00 AM by The Cheat
As I recall, after some prodding, Silver applied a bit of human adjustment on PECOTA and predicted that the Sox win 77 last year.

# re: The spirit of 77

Saturday, February 16, 2008 11:08 AM by johnny_mostil
PECOTA seems to be unable to project Mark Buehrle reliably because his strikeout rate is anomalously, and most pitchers who have averaged his (low) strikeout rate decline rapidly. Errors in that projection alone (a near 5.00 ERA?) represent the difference between 77-85 and 81-81.

Nobody can project Jose Contreras, either.

# re: The spirit of 77

Saturday, February 16, 2008 11:14 AM by johnny_mostil
Jeez, I should have read the article before posting!

PECOTA gives Crede 2/3 of the PAs at third, and has him terrible, which won't happen; if you assume Fields is the regular third baseman, add another couple of wins.

All individual projection systems -- PECOTA, MARCEL, CHONE, ZIPS, ACTA/Bill James -- are flawed by the inability to account for the snowball effect. Bad seasons tend to exaggerate bad statistics for everybody, and good seasons good statistics for everybody, because the degree to which players are forced into unnatural roles. Batters on teams having bad seasons face a tougher mix of pitchers because there are fewer opportunities against the back of the bullpen. Pitchers on teams having bad seasons have to take one for the team more often. The witches' brew can result in bad projections for the next season -- and helps to account for Bill James' Plexiglas Principle.

# re: The spirit of 77

Saturday, February 16, 2008 3:16 PM by morsetoad
They didn't really get the why right though. They didn't have the offensive implosion, they called the starters to suck. It came off as coincidental to me.

# re: The spirit of 77

Saturday, February 16, 2008 3:29 PM by morsetoad
Though their predictions this year look reasonable. At some point, Silver needs to add a Buehrle Corrector. How many years in a row has he outperformed his predicted VORP? Aside from that, it looks more or less like I'd guess. I'm pretty sure Fields will exhibit more power than that and that Crede won't get nearly that much playing time. If you take all that into account, that puts them at about .500. I'd take that.

# re: The spirit of 77

Saturday, February 16, 2008 4:07 PM by larry
actually PECOTA didn't get last year's team right. the sox were way worse than they predicted them to be, both offensively and pitching. their pythag was for 67 wins. the reason i give a decent amount of credit to PECOTA, even for missing and even for getting close for (arguably) the wrong reasons, is that few people had the sox even 80 wins bad, let alone 72 wins bad. a projection isn't meant to be perfect - it's basically a compilation of a bunch of player's range of performances. when you look at the breakdown, PECOTA did pretty well. one of the primary differences, if not the primary one, was that no one could have predicted the sox handing so much playing time to players who had no business even being on a major league roster, let alont playing regularly for one.

# re: The spirit of 77

Saturday, February 16, 2008 6:52 PM by soxexile
I think larry has the heart of the matter. None of these prediction systems can account for injuries effectively. Who figured Toby Hall would go down? Did any system predict how many AB's Andy Gonzales would get? This is why the Sox seem more fragile than even the predictions -- if our (weak) the bench players become regulars due to an injury, there's nobody at all to call up to fill the bench.

# re: The spirit of 77

Saturday, February 16, 2008 10:15 PM by Jim Margalus
Buehrle's PECOTA ERA is roughly the same as if you averaged his second halves from '06 and '07, so I don't think it's that unrealistic. But it might undersell his ability to thwart the running game, or if his working faster really does make the defense work better. I'd say 4.77 is definitely pessimistic, but not near "sum of all fears" level.

Fair points all. PECOTA seemed to be making a drastic statement about the team's health (depth and skills-wise), although it had pitching and hitting flip-flopped, and I think the Sox have improved upon that. The fact that they're slated to start three major-league outfielders should be worth several wins in and of itself.

# re: The spirit of 77

Sunday, February 17, 2008 8:13 AM by ChicagoPete
77-85 sounds about right to me, but I reserve the right to revisit that after the first 11 games. If they start well I think they'll have a decent season.

My worst case scenario revolves around the IF defense: Crede gets traded, and Fields is as bad as he was last year. I haven't seen OCab play SS, but he's 34yrs old and he's never had the rep of a defensive wizard in the first place. He'll have to cheat his positioning to make up for Field's lack of range so you have a huge hole up the middle of the left side.

Richar didn't show any range either, if he starts and doesn't improve the right side of the IF with PK has two total fence posts out there. Then if Swisher plays CF you have a total disaster out there defensively. Besides Javy, our pitchers don't strike anyone out. If you start changing the lineup for defensive purposes (Owens in CF, eg) then the offense suffers.

The downside potential looks pretty nasty. But it's spring, who knows. Hopefully Fields and Richar show some big improvement, if they're adequate defensively it looks a lot better. That's the beauty of having some young players, they might give you a pleasant surprise.