T
ThomasTomasz
Guest
When you do a lot of work with projections, one of the things that takes some getting used to is the inevitability that your soothsaying will miss the mark on several occasions. Baseball teams have a lot of moving parts, and over half a year there's great potential for assumptions to go awry, askew or afoul.
With a quarter of the season already behind us, we have a great deal of new information on teams -- some good, some bad -- and unless Bud Selig comes up with some crazy new idea to make the All-Star Game "count" even more, there are a lot of wins and losses in the books that nobody can go back and erase. Missing the mark here and there really isn't so bad -- if we could predict the future perfectly, things would be rather boring.
So, which teams have changed their potential position in the standings at the end of the year by the greatest degree?
To answer this question, I used updated ZiPS projections and a set of Monte Carlo simulations to estimate wins during the rest of the season, adding them to this morning's standings. The good news is that most teams still project in the same neighborhood, with 25 of 30 teams coming within six wins of the preseason projection edition.
But if you have a tendency to see your glasses as half full, as I do, that leaves five teams that ZiPS is likely, at season's end, to have missed by more than six games.
1. Los Angeles Dodgers
Preseason projection: 72-90
Current projection: 87-75
Difference: plus-15 wins
ZiPS was down on the Dodgers going into the season, given that the team required the best pitcher and the best hitter in the NL just to eclipse the .500 mark in 2011. The two superstars -- Clayton Kershaw and Matt Kemp -- and the departed Hiroki Kuroda combined for 60 percent of the team's wins above replacement last year. With most of the team's offseason additions looking a bit like the remainder bin at a book store, there were good reasons to be pessimistic about the Dodgers' chances.
Rather than even a minor regression, Kershaw and Kemp have retained the performance of their big 2011s this season. And in Kemp's case, he has safely surpassed last year's performance so by adding nearly 200 points of OPS to last season's shoulda-been MVP year. Add in Ted Lilly and Chris Capuano combining for 101 1/3 innings and a 2.04 ERA, Andre Ethier already at more than 80 percent of his 2011 homer count, and a bullpen with few nasty surprises, and it's not hard to see why the Dodgers are doing so well in the early months.
ZiPS is still not convinced the Dodgers will be a great team going forward -- Kemp probably won't end the year with an OPS near 1.200, and even with the decrease in offense, soft-tossing lefties don't usually finish with ERAs around 2.00. The lineup, so Kemp-heavy it resembles a Little League team that somehow convinced league management that Barry Bonds was a 12-year-old, still is riddled with holes and lacks depth. But with a 29-13 record, even a sub-.500 record the rest of the way gives the Dodgers a strong shot at taking a weak division.
2. Baltimore Orioles
Preseason projection: 67-95
Current projection: 81-81
Difference: plus-14 wins
My favorite storyline of the season -- no doubt due to my bias as an O's fan -- the O's are now threatening to hit the .500 mark for the first time since we were all a lot younger. When the O's were last a good team, Bryce Harper was nearing his fifth birthday.
That the offense (fourth in the league) has been so strong is perhaps not so shocking given the breakout potential of youngish players like Matt Wieters and Adam Jones. The truly shocking thing has been the pitching staff, especially the bullpen, with a collective 2.29 ERA so far.
Baltimore likely won't be fighting for first place when we hit the fall, but the Orioles have reached the point where they're probably a better team than the cellar-dwellers they've been in recent years. Possibly the most important thing going forward is team owner Peter Angelos recognizing the irony of a team that's finally becoming relevant is that it wasn't constructed by feasting on over-the-hill veterans and mediocre relievers in a futile quest for .500.
3. Colorado Rockies
Preseason projection: 85-77
Current projection: 76-86
Difference: minus-9 wins
The team's bullpen is still solid but practically nothing else is. Only one starter, Juan Nicasio, has an ERA better than league-average (when taking park into consideration), and the starter with the second-best ERA (Drew Pomeranz) was demoted to Triple-A for a while.
Without any true juggernaut teams in the division, a lousy pitching staff might have been overcome with a solid lineup, but Troy Tulowitzki is having an ordinary year, and the team is getting little production out of its three starters older than 35. The team is actually third in runs scored, but once you factor for Coors Field, that ranking drops to 13th. Even Jorge de la Rosa eventually having a successful comeback isn't enough to right this ship by itself.
4. Los Angeles Angels
Preseason projection: 90-72
Current projection: 82-80
Difference: minus-8 wins
The only real good news for the last-place Angels is that with the extra wild card and several of the teams expected to be the class of the AL struggling to various degrees, there still are realistic scenaros that have them squeezing into the playoffs.
Even with the Angels finally finding room to play their best outfielder (Mike Trout), there's no way the team can survive with half the starting lineup having numbers akin to good-hitting pitchers. To turn their season around, the Angels need a star in Albert Pujols, a solid Erick Aybar, a Howie Kendrick with an OBP better than .300, and a Peter Bourjos with a gold glove not attached to a .545 OPS.
5. Milwaukee Brewers
Preseason projection: 86-76
Current projection: 78-84
Difference: minus-8 wins
With legitimate major leaguers on the left side of the infield this year, the Brewers looked to have decent odds to survive the loss of Prince Fielder. Instead, the team has lost Alex Gonzalez and Mat Gamel for the year with torn ACLs, leaving holes in the lineup to be filled by Cesar Izturis and Travis Ishikawa.
The bullpen, formerly a team strength, has exactly two players who have made positive contributions this season: Manny Parra and Kameron Loe. The team can still manage without Fielder, but it needs Rickie Weeks contributing again, better performances from Yovani Gallardo and Randy Wolf, and John Axford to summon whatever mystical powers are contained in his mustache. Luckily for the Brew Crew, the St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds haven't lapped the division yet, so there's still plenty of time.
Revised AL projections
How the American League races project after a quarter of the season.
EAST
W
L
GB
Tampa Bay Rays
90
72
--
New York Yankees
89
73
1
Boston Red Sox
86
76
4
Toronto Blue Jays
85
77
5
Baltimore Orioles
81
81
9
CENTRAL
-
-
-
Detroit Tigers
87
75
--
Cleveland Indians
85
77
2
Chicago White Sox
78
84
9
Kansas City Royals
71
91
16
Minnesota Twins
64
98
23
WEST
-
-
-
Texas Rangers
95
67
--
Los Angeles Angels
82
80
13
Oakland Athletics
75
87
20
Seattle Mariners
73
89
22
Revised NL projections
How the National League races project after a quarter of the season.
EAST
W
L
GB
Atlanta Braves
92
70
--
Washington Nationals
89
73
3
Miami Marlins
89
73
3
Philadelphia Phillies
86
76
6
New York Mets
77
85
15
CENTRAL
-
-
-
Cincinnati Reds
87
75
--
St. Louis Cardinals
86
76
1
Milwaukee Brewers
78
84
9
Pittsburgh Pirates
75
87
12
Chicago Cubs
68
94
19
Houston Astros
64
98
23
WEST
-
-
-
Los Angeles Dodgers
87
75
--
San Francisco Giants
85
77
2
Arizona Diamondbacks
81
81
6
Colorado Rockies
76
86
11
San Diego Padres
69
93
18