It's been a busy offseason for most of the teams in the competitive NL West. Using my baseball simulator, I am having each NL West team go head to head against every other NL West team. Each team will play 1000 games, both home and away, against every other team, with their #1 starter facing the other teams #1 starter, with the same being done for the #2, #3, #4 and $5 starters. From this I will get an average winning percentage for each matchup. The totals are then added up and averaged, viewable in the table below, sorted from the top to bottom team. Rosters are still not 100% decided and I had to made some assumptions as to which 5th starter to use on some teams. The sim analysis is not taking into account, pitchers that are injury prone and won't likely make every start for their team, so there is some margin of error. During spring training I will run a more thorough sim test. This will do for now. Please leave comments if you feel like it.
| Team | LAD | SD | ARI | COL | SF | Total |
| LAD | NA | .5049 | .5256 | .5330 | .5718 | .5338 |
| SD | .4951 | NA | .5035 | .5301 | .5485 | .5193 |
| ARI | .4744 | .4965 | NA | .5084 | .5550 | .5086 |
| COL | .4670 | .4699 | .4914 | NA | .5263 | .4887 |
| SF | .4282 | .4515 | .4450 | .4737 | NA | .4496 |
Skinny: There is a nice separation between all five teams now that ZIPS projections are in for all 5 NL West teams. The Dodgers and Padres matched up evenly head to head. The Dodgers gained some separation with their better performances against the Diamondbacks and Giants. I did not use Jason Schmidt in this sim study, but I did use Randy Johnson. The Dodgers would get a nice boost from Jason Schmidt, as Loaiza would get kicked to the pen. The Diamondbacks would suffer somewhat with the loss of Randy Johnson. The Rockies come down to earth in this study and will be challenged to repeat last years exeptional season. The Giants are a mess!
Think of each sim game as:
Team A(Starting Pitcher, Bullpen, Offense)
VS
Team B(Starting Pitcher, Bullpen, Offense)
4 comments:
Boy, you really nailed it last year with your prediction for the Rockies to finish last (if I remember right). Good to see you're right back at it again, drastically underestimating them!
Let's just see how well ZIPS fared in predicting our bullpen ERA last year?
Cruz - ZIPS 4.50, Reality 3.10
Lyon - ZIPS 4.68, Reality 2.68
Peña - ZIPS 4.97, Reality 3.27
Slaten - ZIPS 4.22, Reality 2.72
Valverde - ZIPS 4.21, Reality 2.66
Now, obviously it's harder to predict relievers, with a smaller amount of innings, but when the results are wrong by such a huge amount (between 1.4 and two runs!) and consistently in the same direction, I am very, very skeptical of the 2008 projections. Naturally, if you'd run the same projection before the 2007 season with the 2007 projections, you'd have been wide of the mark. So here's a suggestion: re-run the projection with the actual 2007 performances.
Jim - AZSnakePit.com
I don't see the benefit of running the Diamondbacks with actual 2007 data. Last year was last year, I am trying to rank this years bullpens/teams. If I use the Diamondbacks 2007 stats, then I should do so for all the other teams and then all I am doing is rating the 2007 bullpens. According to 2008 ZIPS, the Diamondbacks lack a dominant bullpen pitcher, that is why they didn't fair too well in the bullpen comparisons. Sure, ZIPS will mis-project a few players, all projection systems do. There is a good chance you will see some regression to the mean from a few of the Diamondback relief pitchers.
vr, Xei
very cool site, stumbled upon by accident.
I don't use as many tools as you do when making my predictions. Instead I tend to focus on my own subjective analysis. Last year I was 1 game off for my Padres.
http://danielbalc.wordpress.com/2007/03/20/the-long-awaited-padres-prediction-post/#more-43
Unfortunately there is no way to be able to predict the incredible amount of luck involved in the Rockies torrid streak last year or the D-Backs incredible ability to win despite a negative run differential. The D-backs and Rox were aberrations. I agree that this year s going to be between the Padres and the Dodgers with the difference makers being Schmidt and Prior. If either team gets decent production from those guys it's like making a mid-season blockbuster without actually trading anyone.
D-backs blew their chances this year by trading Valverde and the Rox failed to acquire the pitching necessary to win. And the Giants? hahaha
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