March 24, 2016

Prospectus Feature

Beat PECOTA: We Dare Ya

by Sam Miller

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I think we all want to prove to ourselves how smart we are, or how much we know about baseball, and here's the way to do it:

Beat PECOTA.

It's a simple game, open to subscribers and non-subscribers alike, that we're debuting this year. It was inspired by, what else, the Royals. When we were about to publish the PECOTA standings this year, and I raised the question of the Royals' once-again low projections, Rob McQuown asked me a simple question: Which individual Royals' projections do you think look wrong? That's all team standings are, after all: A collection of individual projections, laid atop a depth chart, converted to runs scored and allowed and then converted to wins. If I like the Royals that much more than the projected win total, I should like the Royals, as players, that much more than their PECOTA player projections. As confident as we all are, we all should! With that thought in mind, Beat PECOTA 2016 was born.

Rules & Scoring: Players choose players whose PECOTA projections seem too high or too low. There is no minimum or maximum number of selections allowed. Only players who are projected on our depth charts to have at least 251 PA or 50 innings pitched are eligible to be selected. For each selection, the player will identify whether he/she is taking the "high" or the "low" against the PECOTA projection.

For every selection that was correctly identified as underperforming ("Worse") or overperforming ("Better") against PECOTA's projection, the player receives 10 points. For every selection that was incorrectly identified-i.e., a player who was selected to overperform actually underperforms-the player loses 11.5 points.

To receive credit for a correct selection, or to be fined for an incorrect selection, the MLB player in question must deviate from PECOTA's projection by at least 7 points of True Average (for hitters) or .3 runs of DRA (for pitchers). Any player performance that is within seven points of TAv or .3 runs of DRA will be considered a push, and no points will be given or taken away. In all cases, TAv will be rounded to 3 digits, and DRA to 2 digits after the decimal point, before comparisons. Further, a selected batter must collect 81 plate appearances and a selected pitcher must throw 20 1/3 innings to qualify. In the event the player does not, this will be considered a push, and no points will be given or taken away.

We used the BP Annual run of PECOTA as our "official" projections, for scoring purposes. Players who use the weighted means spreadsheet or the projections on player cards might see slight differences, but they really should be slight. It should be safe to use any of those three sources for your picks.

Standings will be posted once the season begins.

Will there be a prize, you ask. Probably. Maybe. But it's hard to predict baseball prediction-game prizes. I will say with pretty near-certainty that I'll be writing about our collective picks (only one of mine, surprisingly, is a Royal) and our collective picking methods (I have four overs and eight unders). I'm fascinated to see what our picks say about us, and about projecting.

Play it here.

Sam Miller is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @SamMillerBB
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