Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Not So Breaking News: The Nats Are Not Thaaat Good

Maybe I jumped the gun a bit, but the abusrdly optimistic projection by Baseball Prospectus (BP) that pegs the Nats for 82 wins has since been changed, twice. The Nats projection dropped to 81 wins, and then 76. This means the Nats have already managed to lose 6 games in the span of a week, and it's only February.

Even though I am a huge stat nerd and believe in the BP metrics, I still am having trouble seeing the Nats win 76 games (76-86). Vegas seems to agree with me, as even though over/under win totals are not available, the Nats have been given the worst odds in the league to win the World Series, even worse than the Pirates. I'd love to be proven wrong, but Jason Marquis is listed as the #1 starter right now, which is all I need to know.

(Image courtesy of cdn1.sbnation.com)

3 comments:

  1. "This means the Nats have already managed to lose 5 games in the span of a week, and it's only February."

    Haha, classic.

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  2. For what it's worth, Baseball Prospectus' adjusted 2009 standings, the set that assesses true performace of a team, not as given to vagaries of bizarre run distributions relative to win totals, and adjusts for strength of schedule, had the Nationals as a true 70 win team last year (and the Orioles as a true 69 win team, even accounting for the tough division they play in). Adding 6 wins to that (which is really all they need to do performance wise, aside from being a little luckier) is far from out of the question. Great, they ain't but if you're going to show a mastery of BP's metrics, you should at least provide some context. This would probably go a long way toward explaining their projection. Most of that 17 win increase doesn't come from "adding talent," but simply regression to the mean. I'm afraid you're, as you say, a believer of BP's metrics, moreso than you are a comprehender.

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