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March 29, 2006

Lies, Damned Lies

PECOTA Breaks Hearts

by Nate Silver

I’ve done a lot of local radio over the past week or two, which means that I’ve broken a lot of hearts. No, Kansas City, not even the Good Witch of the North can bring Carlos Beltran back to the prairies, and no, Baltimore, not even Leo Mazzone can give Eric Dubose a decent cutter, and no, San Antonio, the Marlins aren’t coming, and neither is the Easter Bunny.

PECOTA is a heartbreaker too--especially when it gets around to the annual exercise of projecting the season’s final standings. Oh, PECOTA can be wrong, and sometimes it comes slithering back in the middle of the night for forgiveness, just after you’ve given up hope and deleted its cellphone number. But some of you, particularly those of you in American League cities, are going to have some lingering doubts to contend with: the abruptly-canceled date, the pitching staff that isn’t going to gel, the unreturned text message, the favorite shortstop who is projected to flop.

The method that we’re using for this sadistic exercise has been pretty well established. We take the raw output from the individual PECOTA projections, put them into depth charts, translate those depth charts into wins and losses, and adjust those wins and losses for each team’s schedule. This schedule adjustment is particularly important this year because of the emerging disparity between the leagues--the average AL club is now several wins stronger than the average NL club. Let me highlight just a couple of other wrinkles new to the system this year:

• The projected standings now account for reliever leverage. That is, the performance of higher-leverage relievers is weighted more heavily in a team’s W-L projection than that of mopup guys, to the benefit of teams with good, stable frontline bullpen talent.
• The PECOTAs have also become more sophisticated about accounting for positional defense. We look at the projected defensive performance of the actual players in a team’s depth chart and “transfer” this to the team’s pitchers as warranted. So the Blue Jays' pitchers project to be a little bit worse now that they don’t have Orlando Hudson in their infield, and so forth.
• Finally, I’ve added a new series of columns this year. “BatDelta” and “PitDelta” represent the “true” strength of the team’s offense and defense, respectively, relative to its league, and adjusted for its ballpark and strength of schedule. Positive ratings are favorable in both categories. The Red Sox have a +82 BatDelta, meaning that we expect them to score 82 more runs this season than an average team would given their ballpark and their schedule, and a +28 PitDelta, meaning that we expect them to allow 28 fewer runs than an average pitching staff.

AL East      W    L    RS    RA    BatDelta   PitDelta
Yankees     94   68   910   777      +117        +2
Red Sox     93   69   913   783       +82       +28
Blue Jays   79   83   788   809       -36       +23
Orioles     77   85   777   817       -11       -21
Devil Rays  69   93   744   869       -24       -81

The Yankees and Red Sox are in a virtual dead heat, separated by only a fraction of a win. This wasn’t so until about a week ago, but the acquisitions of Wily Mo Pena and Hee Seop Choi have substantially improved the Red Sox’ offensive options in a way that could be very helpful come September.

If I had to put money down, it would be on the Red Sox. Although these projections can account for depth to some extent, they can’t really account for the flexibility that the depth provides. For example, if Mark Loretta proves that Kevin Towers had some reason for selling him so cheaply, the Red Sox will have Dustin Pedroia ready to go. If there are a couple of injuries on the pitching staff--and with a group that includes Curt Schilling, David Wells, and Josh Beckett, this is a near certainty--the Sox can select from the best of Jon Papelbon, Jon Lester, and Lenny Dinardo. (This is one reason why this exercise usually tends to underrate a team like the Braves, who produce major league-ready players from their farm system like the Taiwanese produce semiconductor chips).

The Yankees, of course, have the sort of flexibility that $300 million in annual operating revenue tends to provide. They may well need to use it. This would be a good year for King George to operate in Donald Trump mode: the Yankees shouldn’t waste too many at bats on Bernie Williams or too many innings on Shawn Chacon before pulling the plug.