BY PUMPEDUPJAYS – FAN FUEL BLOGGER
Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm) forecasting system picks the Blue Jays to finish in fourth place this season; one game behind the Rays and Red Sox which leaves them out of the playoff picture. This news certainly irked some fans around here including myself. I mean, how dare they shower Toronto fans with cold water after the off-season we’ve had!
Now DJF wrote a nice explanation for this rather crabby prediction and pinpoints some areas where PECOTA is rather bearish on certain players. If you want to read more about what considerations are taken into account to help calculate PECOTA, you can look here where they also highlight the variance in the 2009 projections and actual standings.
Is 85 wins likely for the Jays? Sure I guess it’s possible especially if there are injuries then anything can happen, but I was wondering myself how accurate PECOTA has been over the years in forecasting the Blue Jays win-loss record.
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Below shows their predictions and accuracy for the previous seven years:
2013 wins prediction (85) – Actual wins (??)
2012 wins prediction (79) – Actual wins (73)
2011 wins prediction (76) – Actual wins (81)
2010 wins prediction (71) – Actual wins (85)
2009 wins prediction (81) – Actual wins (75)
2008 wins prediction (79) – Actual wins (86)
2007 wins prediction (80) – Actual wins (83)
2006 wins prediction (79) – Actual wins (87)
One can see that PECOTA has been rather grumpy on the Jays’ chances throughout the years since they’ve mostly forecasted fewer wins than the club has actually achieved. According to my calculations, the mean in the difference of wins is -3.57, so when I look at their projection of 85-77 for the Blue Jays in 2013, it seems entirely possible that one could add three or four wins thereby pushing Toronto to finish in second place behind the Yankees and securing the first Wild Card spot.
Knowing that kind of makes me feel better about the Jays chances.
Related read:
More MLB: At Blue Jays State of the Franchise