I’ve been hacking on my projections model, and now have a first cut for 2014 available.
In the process of projecting wins and saves I look at projected runs scored and allowed for each team, so in the table below I just take those projected runs and convert them to wins and losses. My model currently does not take defense into account, but I am trying to project playing time based on both a player’s own history and his position on the team’s current depth chart (which also is a major factor in allocating saves).
So without further ado, here’s how my model sees the 2014 MLB season:
Click on a team name to see the individual projections for players on that team at the RotoValue site.
My model sees the Detroit Tigers as the AL’s best team, and they also have the weakest division competition, as their 92 wins put them 14 wins ahead of the runner-up Indians. The other AL divisions project to have tight races, with the Tampa Bay Rays 2 games ahead of the world champion Boston Red Sox, and the Oakland Athletics projecting just 1 game ahead of the revamped Seattle Mariners. Yes, that one really surprised me also. Sure, they added Robinson Cano, but there must be something else going on to cause them to surge so much. One thing that stood out to me was my model’s quite aggressive projection for rookie James Paxton, currently pegged as their #4 starter. Paxton pitched wonderfully in four starts last September, but I think my model is indeed projecting him too aggressively, and quite likely the Mariners team as well.
The AL West does rate as the most competitive division, with the Angels and Rangers also within 4 games of the leading Athletics. Those two teams, along with Seattle and Boston, project to fight it out for the two wild card spots.
By contrast, each NL division has a clear projected leader at least 5 games ahead of other teams. St. Louis’s 93 wins top my projections, and give them a comfortable 8 game lead over Cincinnati. Washington projects for 92 wins, 5 games ahead of Atlanta, while the Dodgers’ 86 wins are 5 ahead of the Giants in the NL West.
The Braves and Reds are the projected wild-card teams, with the Brewers, Giants, and Pirates chasing them.
These win totals should be considered an over-under for each team. The best team will almost assuredly win more than the 93 games I project for St. Louis, and the worst will win fewer than the 65 I see for the Twins. Tom Tango wrote a good explanation of this nearly a decade ago talking about individual players, but the same thing applies to team projections as well.
I’ve tinkered with my model this year, regressing offensive players by position rather than overall, and taking into account team depth charts in my algorithm to project playing time, and I still adjust team totals so that they’re reasonable. This is one more reason why James Paxton’s projection was so optimistic: before that last playing time adjustment, the Mariners did not have enough IP from their pitching staff, and since Paxton had better projected rate stats than most other pitchers, he got a larger boost in playing time.
I’ll continue tweak these projections further, incorporating newer injury information and updated depth charts in the model until the start of the season. You can always get the projections here:
http://www.rotovalue.com/cgi-bin/Search?year=2014&league=4&source=RotoValue
And if you’d like to download the data, the link on the top right corner of the table, saying how many players are found and shown, will download a .csv file of all the data.