Seems there's been a lot of hub-ub recently regarding the 2010 ALW standings prediction as "figured" by Baseball Prospectus PECOTA projection system - mainly because (after 3 'corrections') they have the Rangers winning the West with the Halos bringing up the rear. Whodathunk? (M's second, btw).
Anyhoo - this sort of stuff is all Greek to me, but I think I understand this particular deal at least a little better now after listening to Kevin Goldstein (of Baseball Prospectus) with Elise on KJR tonight. He explained that the computer projections for the standings are merely a compilation of individual performance projections and obviously can't take into account things like: injuries, career best years, career worst years, break-out seasons, etc. or, for that matter - gut feeling. So, there are a lot of things that can (and will) contribute to the real outcome.
And there's always good ol' Wikipedia for some additional interesting details on PECOTA ~Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm~ and how it got it's name (hence the photo leading this post - I'd never heard of a "backronym till now).
Thankfully, much to my delight, they have to play the games :-)
No matter what happens, as M's pitching coach Rick Adair tells Kirby Arnold, no one is guaranteed anything and "work ethic and process" will be stressed, including "PFP" (which I assume stands for "pitcher's fielding practice"), which for this defense-loving gal is a very good thing.
Looks to be a fun spring (YES - PITCHERS AND CATCHERS REPORT TOMORROW!!!) full of hard work, fierce competition and, as always, a little dose of hope.
Whoo!
ReplyDeleteNow that we've seen the projections changed three times we can move on to over-analyzing spring training stats!
Yeah!!