Well, the regular season ended over 2 months ago, but it's never too late to re-visit the crazy predictions we made way back in March. These are the results of the Batter's Box Record Prediction Contest. Click through to find out who will be taking home the inaugural title of Da Box Resident Seer (and can someone come up with a better title?).
A reminder of how the contest worked. Contestants were asked to predict the regular-season record of every team, and their score is calculated by the average deviation in terms of wins. For example, if you predicted the Jays to win 98 games, that's a deviation of 23 since they only won 75 (sorry to rub it in). The total score is the average of the deviation for all teams. First, some data (sorry about the ugly chart):
By the way, if you want to re-visit your predictions, check out the original contest thread.
Some Analysis
AL East - Nothing terribly out of the ordinary happened in the AL East this year. The Yankees were 12 games better than we thought they would be, but at least we all knew they'd be a very good team. PECOTA actually saw this coming, pegging the Yanks for 99 wins, while the most optimistic (or pessimistic) Bauxite said 95. Props to Mudie and esteBENloaiza who predicted the AL East with the most accuracy - an average of 5 wins off.
AL Central - The top three teams were pretty easy to peg, but we all thought the Indians would be right there with the Twins, Tigers and White Sox, and boy were we wrong. The Indians won 65 games, 20 fewer than Da Box' collective prediction of 85. The closest Bauxite was seeyou, who was still 11 games too optimistic. seeyou did well for the whole division, projecting the Central with an accuracy of 6 wins/team, compared to a Box average of 8.4.
AL West - Boy, was this a wild one. On average, Bauxites missed AL West teams by almost 11 games, and there weren't even any individual teams that we came close on. (In fact, not a single Bauxite correctly predicted any single team in this division.) We were off by 9 games on the Angels, 11 on Texas, 7 on Seattle and 10 on Oakland. electric carrot had the best showing, as he was only a game off on his Seattle prediction, and 3 off on Oakland for a division average of 7.5.
NL East - Another division that was tough to predict, though it was mostly because of the Mets. Bauxites thought the Mets would take the division with 90 wins; they won 70, finishing 4th. Other than that we didn't do too badly. Props to esteBENloaiza for nailing the Phillies.
NL Central - the easiest division to predict in 2009; on average, we mis-fired by 5.6 wins. For the Cubs and Cards, the actual results were just about flipped from our predictions, and other than those 2 teams we were very close. Mad props to the roster's own John Northey, who foresaw this division with more precision than any Bauxite foresaw any division. John was wrong by no more than 6 wins for any team for an average deviation of 3.8 in the division.
NL West - we all knew the Dodgers would win the division, and we all knew the Padres would be bad, but other than that the West was a struggle (we weren't even particularly close on the Dodgers and Pads). Props to Ron for pegging the Giants when most Bauxites were 10+ games off.
And now, the results! The explanation of the scoring is at the top - the lower the better.
Congratulations to electric carrot for taking home the crown! nathanelias takes the silver and Mudie rounds out the top 3. Further congratulations to Ron and esteBENloaiza, who each nailed three separate teams despite finishing in the lower half of the overall standings. Also: congrats to everyone except VBF for besting BP's fancy-schmancy projection system PECOTA! I guess PECOTA just had an off-year. Or Bauxites are just brilliant. Yeah, I like that better.
By the way, in case you were wondering (you weren't, but I was): Predicting 81 wins for all 30 teams would have resulted in a score of 9.53. You just squeaked in there, VBF!
Some more data for your consuming pleasure: each year, Vegaswatch looks back at predictions from projection systems and notable baseball writers. (Here is the write-up for the 2009 edition.) They use a different criteria: RMSE (root mean squared error). I believe RMSE rewards consistency a bit more, so making a wildly inaccurate prediction would have more of a negative impact on one's final score. I'll let the math majors debate the merits of each evaluation method, but for now let's just look at what the standings would like if we combined Da Box' contest with the predictions evaluated by Vegaswatch (which are bolded):
Man, I gotta say, nice work guys. We did just as well as a bunch of "experts" and "projection systems". I'm sure ESPN will be coming knocking any day. They could use someone to fill the Gammons void, anyway - why not an entire online community of brilliant Jays fans???
If you're wondering why the scores/rank order are different, it's because this is calculated using the aforementioned RMSE.
A reminder of how the contest worked. Contestants were asked to predict the regular-season record of every team, and their score is calculated by the average deviation in terms of wins. For example, if you predicted the Jays to win 98 games, that's a deviation of 23 since they only won 75 (sorry to rub it in). The total score is the average of the deviation for all teams. First, some data (sorry about the ugly chart):
| Team | Actual Wins |
Average Box Prediction |
Bang-on Guesses |
| New York Yankees |
103 | 91 |
none |
| Boston Red Sox |
95 | 94 |
AWeb, Ron, seeyou, nathanelias, esteBENloaiza |
| Tampa Bay Rays |
84 |
89 |
none |
| Toronto Blue Jays |
75 | 82 |
parrot11, Ron |
| Baltimore Orioles |
64 |
72 |
electric carrot |
| Minnesota Twins |
87 | 83 |
esteBENloaiza |
| Detroit Tigers |
86 |
81 |
parrot11, 92-93 |
| Chicago White Sox |
79 |
78 |
Mudie, 92-93 |
| Cleveland Indians |
65 | 85 |
none |
| Kansas City Royals |
65 | 75 |
none |
| Los Angeles Angels |
97 | 88 |
none |
| Texas Rangers |
87 | 76 |
none |
| Seattle Mariners |
85 | 72 |
none |
| Oakland Athletics |
75 | 85 |
none |
| Philadelphia Phillies |
93 | 88 |
esteBENloaiza |
| Florida Marlins |
87 |
78 |
none |
| Atlanta Braves |
86 | 84 |
PECOTA |
| New York Mets |
70 | 90 |
none |
| Washington Nationals |
59 | 66 |
none |
| St. Louis Cardinals |
91 | 83 |
none |
| Chicago Cubs |
83 | 92 |
none |
| Milwaukee Brewers |
80 | 83 |
Mudie |
| Cincinnati Reds |
78 | 77 |
Mike Green, electric carrot |
| Houston Astros |
74 | 72 |
none |
| Pittsburgh Pirates |
62 | 67 |
Brian |
| Los Angeles Dodgers |
95 | 90 |
none |
| Colorado Rockies |
92 |
76 |
none |
| San Francisco Giants |
88 | 77 |
Ron |
| San Diego Padres |
75 | 70 |
John Northey |
| Arizona Diamondbacks |
70 | 86 |
none |
By the way, if you want to re-visit your predictions, check out the original contest thread.
Some Analysis
AL East - Nothing terribly out of the ordinary happened in the AL East this year. The Yankees were 12 games better than we thought they would be, but at least we all knew they'd be a very good team. PECOTA actually saw this coming, pegging the Yanks for 99 wins, while the most optimistic (or pessimistic) Bauxite said 95. Props to Mudie and esteBENloaiza who predicted the AL East with the most accuracy - an average of 5 wins off.
AL Central - The top three teams were pretty easy to peg, but we all thought the Indians would be right there with the Twins, Tigers and White Sox, and boy were we wrong. The Indians won 65 games, 20 fewer than Da Box' collective prediction of 85. The closest Bauxite was seeyou, who was still 11 games too optimistic. seeyou did well for the whole division, projecting the Central with an accuracy of 6 wins/team, compared to a Box average of 8.4.
AL West - Boy, was this a wild one. On average, Bauxites missed AL West teams by almost 11 games, and there weren't even any individual teams that we came close on. (In fact, not a single Bauxite correctly predicted any single team in this division.) We were off by 9 games on the Angels, 11 on Texas, 7 on Seattle and 10 on Oakland. electric carrot had the best showing, as he was only a game off on his Seattle prediction, and 3 off on Oakland for a division average of 7.5.
NL East - Another division that was tough to predict, though it was mostly because of the Mets. Bauxites thought the Mets would take the division with 90 wins; they won 70, finishing 4th. Other than that we didn't do too badly. Props to esteBENloaiza for nailing the Phillies.
NL Central - the easiest division to predict in 2009; on average, we mis-fired by 5.6 wins. For the Cubs and Cards, the actual results were just about flipped from our predictions, and other than those 2 teams we were very close. Mad props to the roster's own John Northey, who foresaw this division with more precision than any Bauxite foresaw any division. John was wrong by no more than 6 wins for any team for an average deviation of 3.8 in the division.
NL West - we all knew the Dodgers would win the division, and we all knew the Padres would be bad, but other than that the West was a struggle (we weren't even particularly close on the Dodgers and Pads). Props to Ron for pegging the Giants when most Bauxites were 10+ games off.
And now, the results! The explanation of the scoring is at the top - the lower the better.
| Name | Score |
| electric carrot | 7.33 |
| nathanelias | 7.47 |
| Mudie | 7.53 |
| 92-93 | 7.67 |
| seeyou | 7.90 |
| parrot11 | 8.23 |
| ANationalAcrobat | 8.27 |
| Mike Green | 8.30 |
| brent | 8.43 |
| Dave Rutt | 8.53 |
| John Northey | 8.60 |
| Brian | 8.70 |
| AWeb | 8.73 |
| Ron | 8.73 |
| mathesond | 8.80 |
| Nick Holmes | 8.90 |
| esteBENloaiza | 8.93 |
| PECOTA | 9.03 |
| VBF | 9.47 |
Congratulations to electric carrot for taking home the crown! nathanelias takes the silver and Mudie rounds out the top 3. Further congratulations to Ron and esteBENloaiza, who each nailed three separate teams despite finishing in the lower half of the overall standings. Also: congrats to everyone except VBF for besting BP's fancy-schmancy projection system PECOTA! I guess PECOTA just had an off-year. Or Bauxites are just brilliant. Yeah, I like that better.
By the way, in case you were wondering (you weren't, but I was): Predicting 81 wins for all 30 teams would have resulted in a score of 9.53. You just squeaked in there, VBF!
Some more data for your consuming pleasure: each year, Vegaswatch looks back at predictions from projection systems and notable baseball writers. (Here is the write-up for the 2009 edition.) They use a different criteria: RMSE (root mean squared error). I believe RMSE rewards consistency a bit more, so making a wildly inaccurate prediction would have more of a negative impact on one's final score. I'll let the math majors debate the merits of each evaluation method, but for now let's just look at what the standings would like if we combined Da Box' contest with the predictions evaluated by Vegaswatch (which are bolded):
| Name | Score |
| nathanelias | 9.04 |
| seeyou | 9.06 |
| CAIRO | 9.09 |
| electric carrot | 9.41 |
| RLYW | 9.44 |
| Marcel | 9.57 |
| CHONE | 9.63 |
| Mike Green | 9.64 |
| 92-93 | 9.64 |
| O/U | 9.65 |
| Mudie | 9.66 |
| MGL | 9.66 |
| brent | 9.75 |
| THT | 9.77 |
| ANationalAcrobat | 9.85 |
| Brown | 10.03 |
| Dave Rutt | 10.08 |
| Sheehan | 10.11 |
| SI | 10.15 |
| Henson | 10.21 |
| ZiPS | 10.25 |
| Nick Holmes | 10.26 |
| Law | 10.26 |
| Brian | 10.29 |
| AWeb | 10.44 |
| mathesond | 10.45 |
| parrot11 | 10.47 |
| Passan | 10.50 |
| Edes | 10.83 |
| John Northey | 10.88 |
| esteBENloaiza | 11.18 |
| PECOTA | 11.42 |
| VBF | 11.49 |
| Ron | 11.91 |
Man, I gotta say, nice work guys. We did just as well as a bunch of "experts" and "projection systems". I'm sure ESPN will be coming knocking any day. They could use someone to fill the Gammons void, anyway - why not an entire online community of brilliant Jays fans???
If you're wondering why the scores/rank order are different, it's because this is calculated using the aforementioned RMSE.
