(Update: I've fixed up the Braves roster, updated the Baseball Prospectus projections, and replaced Sean's own Chone projections' standings rather than my approximation of his methods)
Unsurprisingly, winning the World Series did not seem to make the Phillies the NL East favorites. The magic bullpen fix that fat men in jerseys on the subway told Omar Minaya was necessary to fix the Mets’ problems apparently did the trick of fixing the Mets, according to the media and Vegas traders. The Mets currently have a 9% chance of winning the World Series according to Vegas and the Phillies only have a 6% chance of repeating. Last week, Baseball Prospectus released their projections for the Phillies. Their projections are proprietary, but there standings’ projections are not, so I will post those here with a link:
Baseball Prospectus Standings (updated based on recent edit by Clay Davenport):
TEAM |
W |
L |
NYM |
90 |
72 |
PHI |
87 |
75 |
ATL |
85 |
77 |
WAS |
75 |
87 |
|
69 |
93 |
I did projections for the Phillies, Mets, and Braves, and while I do not entirely go by a formula, I highly doubt I was systematically biased. I do not think their projections for the Phillies were very far off at all, but I think that Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA system was way off on many Mets and Braves players. I think that Baseball Prospectus’ system is spitting out insanely high BABIP projections for many Mets hitters—for Beltran and Reyes, for example, they project higher BABIPs than any of their BABIPs in the last few years. Rather than questioning all of their methods here, I will simply post my standings for the projections I did, and some implied standings (based on my roster guesses, which probably does not affect the numbers much if I am wrong for a few bench players) for many other projection systems, all of which put the Phillies in first for 2009. Then I will summarize my projections for the Phillies, Mets, and Braves.
MattS’ projections for the Phillies, Mets, and Braves:
TEAM |
W |
L |
PHI |
90 |
72 |
NYM |
87 |
75 |
ATL |
80 |
82 |
As for the other projection systems…
CHONE projections for the Phillies, Mets, and Braves (I've replaced with Sean's actual projections for these, since he seems to have a systematic way of doing this, and may very well be more appropriate):
TEAM |
W |
L |
PHI |
87 |
75 |
NYM |
86 |
76 |
ATL |
86 |
76 |
ZIPS projections for the Phillies, Mets, and Braves:
TEAM |
W |
L |
PHI |
91 |
71 |
NYM |
88 |
74 |
ATL |
85 |
77 |
Marcel projections for the Phillies, Mets, and Braves:
TEAM |
W |
L |
PHI |
90 |
72 |
NYM |
90 |
72 |
ATL |
89 |
73 |
(This actually had the Phillies at about 90.4 and Mets at 90.3, so it’s still technically true that the rest of these systems all had the Phillies ahead.)
Ron Shandler projections for the Phillies, Mets, and Braves: (these are proprietary but that website is where to get them)
TEAM |
W |
L |
PHI |
95 |
67 |
NYM |
92 |
70 |
ATL |
84 |
78 |
Bill James projections for the Phillies, Mets, and Braves: (these are proprietary but that website is where to get them)
TEAM |
W |
L |
PHI |
93 |
69 |
NYM |
92 |
70 |
ATL |
91 |
71 |
(here, the Braves did finish a few points ahead of the Phillies).
Also, none of these Braves’ projections except maybe for Baseball Prospectus, including Kawakami, their new pitcher who does not have MLB or MiLB stats yet.
All in all, this average to:
TEAM |
W |
L |
PHI |
90.4 |
71.6 |
NYM |
89.3 |
72.7 |
ATL |
85.7 |
76.3 |
Looks like another photo phinish.
I updated my Phillies projections a little bit (actually, just for Rollins, up a little bit, since he was the only one who seemed to significantly look different afterwards) based on a slightly updated version of the model that I did on a blog that I am now also writing for called StatSpeak.net, but here are my Phillies, Mets, and Braves projections that led to the projections I got above. I do think that the Braves are a bit more of a risk than my numbers are saying, only because their outfield is such a gaping hole that I think if they are close near the break, they will have a huge ability to improve by bringing in even an average couple of outfielders.
PHILLIES:
HITTERS (AVG/OBP/SLG)
Ruiz: .266/.348/.370
Howard: .265/.358/.547
Utley: .291/.375/.505
Feliz: .264/.309/.429
Rollins: .291/.351/.462
Ibanez: .280/.340/.468
Victorino: .281/.339/.434
Werth: .266/.360/.478
Coste: .279/.328/.432
Paulino: .272/.324/.390
Dobbs: .275/.320/.467
Bruntlett: .243/.315/.328
Jenkins: .246/.300/.394
Stairs: .254/.340/.416
PITCHERS (IP/ERA)
Hamels: 206/3.45
Myers: 190.2/4.11
Blanton: 197.1/4.83
Moyer: 200.1/5.08
Happ: 171.1/4.83
Lidge: 67.2/3.19
Madson: 80.1/4.26
Romero: 41.1/3.70
Durbin: 74.2/4.70
Eyre: 58/3.72
Condrey: 70/4.89
Park: 98.2/4.65
METS
HITTERS
Schneider: .258/.332/.338
Delgado: .260/.337/.443
Castillo: .281/.360/.337
Wright: .301/.381/.518
Reyes: .293/.350/.454
Tatis: .275/.350/.460
Beltran: .281/.365/.496
Church: .252/.330/.424
Castro: .243/.305/.421
Murphy: .284/.346/.424
Evans: .258/.309/.393
Reed: .242/.277/.335
Cora: .234/.310/.314
PITCHERS
Santana: 234.2/2.76
Pelfrey: 178.2/4.48
Perez: 186.1/4.65
Redding: 179/4.83
Rodriguez: 66/2.73
Putz: 55.1/3.58
Sanchez: 58.1/3.70
Feliciano: 56.1/3.36
Stokes: 59/4.27
Muniz: 51.1/4.73
BRAVES
HITTERS
McCann: .300/.356/.509
Kotchman: .291/.338/.435
Johnson: .295/.358/.450
C. Jones: .334/.422/.521
Escobar: .301/.367/.421
Diaz: .280/.315/.399
J. Anderson: .250/.294/.328
Francoeur: .261/.305/.409
Sammons: .232/.335/.411
Prado: .298/.354/.398
Infante: .261/.307/.386
Blanco: .243/.360/.322
B. Jones: .263/.306/.401
PITCHERS
Vazquez: 211/4.27
Lowe: 202.1/3.74
Jurrjens: 191/4.43
Kawakami:156.2/4.65
Glavine: 122.2/4.70
Gonzalez: 44/3.89
Soriano: 48.1/4.10
Acosta: 55/4.25
Boyer: 67/5.10
Moylan: 50.2/2.84
Bennett: 81.1/3.98
It seems like I regress a bit more to the mean on my projections than most systems. I think that I am somewhat bearish on Ryan Howard for once, and I am certainly very bearish on Delgado and a little bit on Pelfrey too. I also have virtually no confidence in anyone in the Braves’ outfield or bullpen. Keep in mind that if you predict a team’s abilities perfectly, random chance will send them five wins or more in either direction half of the time. So really the Phillies odds of winning the division are probably less than 50%, but given that the NL East has about a 33% chance of having a wild card, I would approximate our playoff odds at 65% or so, making our odds of repeating approximately 8%. It sounds low until you think about what 8% odds of a dynasty might sound like. If I ask who won the World Series in a random year, most baseball fans might not know or remember the answer, but most fans remember the teams that won back-to-back World Series. I’ll take 8% odds of that.