YFSF

You are correct, sir!

David Pinto of Baseball Musings predicts the AL East. You can tell it's an accurate and sophisticated projection because the Yanks come out on top. Check it out.

Yankees v. Red Sox, the Projections

At long last, we come to the head-to-head comparison between the Sox and Yanks. It's no surprise that the two systems that have figured out their projection-based standings both have the teams within two games of each other -- PECOTA with the Sox up two, CHONE with the Yanks up one. 

The Best Team In Baseball? Your 2009 Boston Red Sox

Baseball Prospectus has run the PECOTA projections and come up with 2009 projected standings.

The AL East:

1. Boston (98-64)
2. New York (96-66)
3. Tampa Bay (92-70)
4. Toronto (81-81)
5. Baltimore (74-88)

The Red Sox end up with baseball's best record, second-most runs scored (to the Cubs), second-fewest runs allowed (to the Yankees), the best run differential (+157), second-highest batting average (to the Cubs), highest on-base percentage (.346), tied for the highest slugging (.433) and obviously the highest OPS (.779).

Sounds good to me!

Projection Time! (Yankees Edition)

This installment will give the Yankees the same treatment I gave the Red Sox, back before The Story. Installment 3, sometime before April, will finally do some head-to-head comparisons.

ZiPS hasn't posted the Yankee projections yet, so we'll go with CHONE, which was determined to be the most accurate system for 2008 -- for whatever that's worth (not much, given how close everyone was).

Without further ado...

Projection Time! (Red Sox Edition)

Finally, PECOTA projections for 2009 are out. They join a whopping five other projection systems jockeying for assessing how well every player in MLB will do next season. Fantasy baseballers love this stuff, but I suck at fantasy baseball; I'm just curious for a semiscientific way of guessing at how my favorite players will do next season.

The projection systems are as follows:

• PECOTA, run by Baseball Prospectus' Nate Silver, generally the most accurate.
• Bill James, run by Bill James, not bad on offense, not that great on pitchers. Generally thought to overrate minor league numbers. 
• Marcel, run by The Book's Tom Tango. Found to generally be the most accurate non-PECOTA system. 
• CHONE, run by Sean Smith 
• Oliver, run by Brian Cartwright of Statistically Speaking. This one's new and builds off the Marcel formula.
• ZiPS, run by Dan Szymborski of Baseball Think Factory.  

That's just a ridiculous number. Why don't we stick to three? The most accurate seem to be PECOTA, Marcel and ZiPS, so let's limit ourselves to those.

What I've done in the past is look at the projections for the principal players on a team and compare them to their performances the previous seasons. This time around, I'll look at the Sox' and Yanks' 2008 performance by position, then compare that to the 2009 projections for the planned starter and principal backup at that position.

Also, I'll average the projections to compare the Sox' and the Yanks' starters in 2009. So here we gooo.

Soothy

It's time for our predictaroo retrospective.  Back in March, a nation looked towards a year of great debate as it set to choosing new leadership while welcoming the dawn of a bright new age of enlightenment and reason.  Instead, the Phillies won the series while a team from the spring training circuit stunned pundits everywhere, and for much of the year, gas cost more than milk, resulting in many people giving up their SUVs in favor of riding cows to work.  Prior to the events that transpired, your intrepid authors donned their fortune teller turbins and peered into the future.  With today's announcement of The Gnat as AL MVP, it's time to take a look back and decide which author was the most accurate.  Or more accurately, least wrong, as we boggle at how ridiculous a lot of those prognostications turned out to be.

Since none of my fellow authors authorized, asked, or really care one hoot about this, I'm going to be completely arbitrary in my scoring and dictatorial in awarding the "Soothy" to the soothiest soother to have soothed a sooth.  And so we begin.

The AL East predictions are the creamed corn.  I don't know what creamed corn has to do with anything.  I just like saying "creamed corn."  Anyway, you get this wrong, you lose.  Everyone got it wrong, so in effect, this contest is already less attractive than a seven-day walkabout in Flint in February.  YF, Nick, SF, and Paul were homers.  John and ag went with Beantown.  +1 point for everyone since all six participants had Boston in the post.  +1 point to YF, Nick, and ag for picking the Rays to finish in front of the Jays.  +1 to ag for being the least wrong in the beast, and therefore, the winner of the coveted RayJay award for being the beast's best handicapper.  Unfortunately, that's all ag will win the rest of the way.

Prediction Throwdown

You know what I think (Sox in six), so as we prepare for what most expect to be a knock-down, drag-out ALCS, it's time to hear from you.

Team, games and why? Go!

Never Fear: Carl Pavano is (Almost) Here

In college, at the end of certain nights of particular debauchery my friends and I would sometimes sit around and play a game of "what's worse?", in which we'd think up - and then force each other to answer - appalling questions like, "Would you rather be forced to wear, for a week straight, a sweater made of X's pubic hair (insert disgusting public figure for "X") or drink nothing but Y for a day (insert hideous concoction that would make Ozzy Osborne gag for "Y")?".  It led to all kinds of deep thoughts, like whether ingesting something gross was worse than donning something slightly less gross.  Why go into this other than to ruin any possible future career in politics for myself?  Because I can't help but think about the "what's worse" game when I raise the following question for all YFs: "Would you rather have the Yankee rotation rounded out by Sidney Ponson or Carl Pavano?"

Bold Prediction

Manny will play for the Boston Red Sox in 2009. I don't know how, but I know it's more likely than Steve Buckley's suggestion:

But now it’s time for the Red Sox to be big boys about all this and either continue with the enabling . . . or, and let’s say it again, toss Manny out.

Literally. Throw him out. No, wait, that would be violent. And we don’t want to be advocating violence here. That’s Manny’s job - you know, tossing 64-year-old men to the ground and all that.

So escort Manny out to the pavement, right out there on Yawkey Way, and tell him to take his whiny agents and sycophants with him.

Literally. That would be quite the spectacle. I'd imagine if I were a Sox fan walking along on Yawkey Way and I saw this situation, I'd think I was tripping the light fantastic.

You Heard It Here Last

The Yankees will make the playoffs this year. Take it to the bank. Okay, maybe better to stuff it under the mattress. I will admit that our Yanks are no great shakes. The bottom of the lineup is anemic, everyone's aging, the back half of the pitching staff is suspect. So be it. Look at the WC standings.Minnesota, Detroit, and Oakland are behind us, and for all of our problems, there's no reason to think any of those teams are in better shape. So the Yanks should be able to hold them off. What's ahead? Boston and Tampa. Realistically, Boston looks like the division winner. Tampa? They're skidding, only 3 up in the loss column, and their run differential (+40) is already worse than the Yanks's (+50). Both teams have talent floating around in the minors/DL that could help down the stretch. But the Yanks are better equiped, at least financially, to go out and make a deadline deal to improve. So, yes, you heard it here first. The Stadium will live for October baseball. But what happens then, well, it might not be pretty. Or maybe it will be. One last title for the House of Ruth? Just could be.