2009 Baseball Predictions Primer

In the past (2008 and 2007) I have made predictions about the outcome of the baseball season. I based these on the previous year's record and then added in my own personal adjustment. It is a fairly simple formula.

Previous Years Wins +/- Off-season Moves.

This year I am taking a different approach. I have run some regression statistics and will be using those. I figured that I would explain the process before I actually posted the predictions. I have run a regression analysis on the premise that Win Total is a function of OPS and WHIP. To make it simpler, Winning is a combination of Hitting and Pitching. I chose OPS and WHIP as indicators of each respectively. Running a regression analysis on the past 5 seasons, I came up with this formula:

Win Total = 55.19 + (192.8 * OPS) - (86.2 * WHIP)

Now, you may ask, "How accurate is that formula?" A good question. According to the regression model, the adjusted R squared is .7835. In other words, The above formula accounts for 78.35% of the reason wins are the total that they are. For baseball, this is a fairly strong relationship. There is obviously no way to account for random occurrences fully, so a good 21.65% is still left to chance and situational factors.

So with that formula in mind. I calculated how many wins each team would have won if that formula were perfect. I then took the difference between reality and prediction and multiplied it by 78.35%. So with that, I have come up with the Adjusted Win Total for each team last year.

I will use this as my base prior to adjustment this year rather than actual results. Why do I want to do this? I want to know how good teams were, not how lucky they were. Therefore my formula this year is:

Previous Years Adjusted Wins +/- Opinion of Off-season Moves.

So what exactly are the adjusted win totals that I will be working with?

AL East

1. 96 - 66 Boston Red Sox


2. 92 - 70 Tampa Bay Rays


3. 89 - 73 Toronto Blue Jays


4. 87 - 75 New York Yankees


5. 68 - 94 Baltimore Orioles

AL Central

1. 91 - 71 Chicago White Sox


2. 84 - 78 Cleveland Indians


3. 84 - 78 Minnesota Twins


4. 76 - 86 Detroit Tigers


5. 75 - 87 Kansas City Royals

AL West

1. 88 - 74 Los Angeles Angels


2. 77 - 85 Texas Rangers


3. 72 - 88 Oakland Athletics


4. 61 - 101 Seattle Mariners

NL East

1. 88 - 74 Philadelphia Phillies


2. 85 - 77 New York Mets


3. 82 - 80 Florida Marlins


4. 77 - 85 Atlanta Braves


5. 63 - 99 Washington Nationals

NL Central

1. 98 - 64 Chicago Cubs


2. 87 - 75 Milwaukee Brewers


3. 87 - 75 St. Louis Cardinals


4. 81 - 81 Houston Astros


5. 71 - 91 Cincinnati Reds


6. 61 - 101 Pittsburgh Pirates

NL West

1. 86 - 76 Arizona Diamondbacks


2. 85 - 77 Los Angeles Dodgers


3. 74 - 88 Colorado Rockies


4. 70 - 92 San Diego Padres


5. 68 - 94 San Francisco Giants

Which team was adjusted the most?
Los Angeles Angels (-12 wins)

Feel free to post comments or suggestions. Is there a stat that you think would be better to use than either OPS or WHIP?

Starved for Attention

I had to get my camera out and capture the fun that our dogs bring to our lives.

This picture is Mollee trying to get my attention while I am studying by chewing on my chair.


Buddy is a fun dog to have. He seems genuinely happy and frankly excited just to be alive. So you can do all sorts of things to him and he is either clueless or too excited to care. Take today, when Kimberlee decided to put some Easter Bunny ears on him, this was his reaction.


Now Mollee being the spoiled little thing that she is deems silly things like this to be both pointless and humiliating. Therefore, she gives us the evil eye whenever we try to make her prissy.

Outlines and Trenches

If you are like me, this title evokes thoughts of presentation summaries and World War 1 fighting strategies. But, these two words can adequately describe the current state of my house. The builder has put up form boards that will be used later on for the foundation. This is like having a chalk line of your house. It is pretty cool to see where it is going to go, but boy does it look small when you look at it. Kimberlee wanted me to double check that the builder wasn't skimming some of the square footage off. The familiar view across the street is now:

They have dug a bunch of trenches that will be used for pipes of various sorts. They have to get all of that done before the foundation is poured. Because of this pre-design, we should only have 1 hole in the foundation for all of the pipes to enter the house.

Current estimates are that we will have a good amount of the framing done by the end of the month!

Bear Down

How does a baseball team's ability to keep runner's from scoring affect their win total? Today I am going to look at the relationship between Team Wins and Left on Base %.

Team Wins
Number of total wins for a team

Left On Base %
The percentage of hitters that reach base but do not score.

I charted out 2008's values to see what kind of trendline it would generate. The Correlation is only about 60%, but if you remove the 1 obvious anomaly, it jumps to 70%.

It is quite obvious that holding runners or bearing down is a key component to winning. What determines how far a team is above or below the line? Hitting

The anomaly? That would be the 79 win Texas Rangers. The equation Wins = 435.37(LOB %) - 231.28 describes the slope of the line without the Rangers. That would peg the Rangers at 55 Wins last year based upon pitching.

The teams that were farthest from the line were (Actual to Equation):
Can't Hit
Seattle Mariners (61 to 77)
Washington Nationals (59 to 74)
San Diego Padres (63 to 77)

Hit a lot
Texas Rangers (79 to 55)
California Anaheim LA Angels (100 to 87)

Don't Hold Back

In preparation for the upcoming baseball season and because I am finishing up a statistics course, I am going to do a series on interesting stats from the great game. These are not necessarily original statistics, but the ones that I find interesting. All stats come from last season.

Fast Ball Percentage
To what degree do pitchers feel comfortable throwing the heat? Are they pretty sure that you will chase junk in the dirt? I think answers to these questions should help a player focus on areas to improve during the offseason. The average player sees about 60% fastballs when they come to the plate.

Let's start with players around the league who should swing early and assume fastball. Pitchers think that they cannot get around on a good fastball.

Player	Team	Fastball %
Juan Pierre	Dodgers	70.1 %
Chone Figgins	Angels	69.1 %
Placido Polanco	Tigers	68.1 %
Johnny Damon	Yankees	67.8 %
Matt Holliday	Rockies	67.0 %

Two Rangers this year need to take notice:

Player	Team	Fastball %
Taylor Teagarden	Rangers	70.8 %
Frank Catalanotto	Rangers	66.6 %

As far as players who can't hold back on any pitch, the following are in the cellar. Pitchers think that they can get them to whiff on anything with movement. If this group does not stay planted on their back feet, they are toast.

Player	Team	Fastball %
Alexei Ramirez	White Sox	47.0 %
Hunter Pence	Astros	49.8 %
Dan Uggla	Marlins	50.2 %
Aubrey Huff	Orioles	51.0 %
Ryan Howard	Phillies	51.2 %
Geovany Soto	Cubs	51.2 %

The offending Rangers are:

Player	Team	Fastball %
Hank Blalock	Rangers	53.2 %
Josh Hamilton	Rangers	53.4 %
Chris Davis	Rangers	55.3 %
Nelson Cruz	Rangers	55.4 %