February 19, 2014

BP Unfiltered

2013 32 Predictions Contest Results

by Sky Kalkman

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The number have finally been crunched on the 2013 32 Predictions contest. Five entrants tied with 26 points, but with the earliest entry, Vitaly Vinar wins the tie-breaker. Congrats! Full results can be found here.

Now for a little meta-analysis. The average score was 18.9. A few ballots included a significant number of no-answers, but even removing those doesn’t move the needle much. So congratulations team, we were an average of three answers better than a fair coin. I’m not not being sarcastic, as I think that might be the best we’ve ever done. Looks pretty much like a bell-shaped curve, although 19 correct answers was slightly less common than 18 or 19.

The favorite won 20 out of 32 times (highlighted in green below), but the biggest favorite went down, thanks to Carlos Beltran out-healthying Bryce Harper. A whopping four predictions were ties (highlighted in a lighter green), which is really exciting for me. (I basically just root for ties.) Two were somewhat likely, but Mariano Rivera tying Jeff Francoeur in walks was awesome, and James Shields’ wins tying Wil Myers’ home runs was even better, as it was the closest question in voting, with a difference of just five votes. There were a few near misses, too, such as Baseball Prospectus Top 101 pitching prospects who got into a game outnumbering BP 101 hitting prospects by just one, Stephen Strasburg garnering only five more strikeouts than Pedro Alvarez, Carlos Santana playing just two more games than Justin Morneau, Anthony Rizzo out-TAv’ing Yonder Alonso by .02 points, and Scott Kazmir pitching only seven more innings than Roberto Hernandez.

Finally, congratulation to Ben, who whooped me 21 to 17, just as two-thirds of you predicted. I’ll get you next year, Lindbergh!

We'll be running this contest again in 2014, so if you have suggestions for questions, please leave them below.

Sky Kalkman is an author of Baseball Prospectus. 
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