Extremely Early 2010 MLB Projected Standings - CAIRO Edition

I've been messing around with my Diamond Mind projection disk for 2010 and ran 100 iterations with CAIRO v0.2 to see what things look like right now. I'll mention that there is still a lot roster churn yet to come and until we have stable rosters we shouldn't take exercises like this too seriously, but it's fun to look at anyway IMO.



One thing I'll be doing this year that I haven't done in the past during these projected standing exercises is factoring in higher volatility in projections. The Diamond Mind engine is very good and non-deterministic (ie, players will over and underperform their projections in varying degrees during each individual iteration), I also include random injuries to vary playing time in the various iterations.



However, even with that, the results generally have teams within a standard deviation in wins of around seven in either direction, which is not high enough given the way teams can over and underperform their projections. So a 95 win team will have about 2/3 of its wins clustered in the 88-102 win range. A better standard deviation should be higher, maybe in the 10-14 range. So I'll take the results from the Diamond Mind simulations and then feed them into my Monte Carlo simulator, which I can adjust for a higher standard deviation. I'll use a standard deviation of .065 on team Pythagenpat winning percentage for this, which gives us a range of about 10.5 wins instead of 7.0 and then run an additional 1,000 iterations through the Monte Carlo simulator which should give us a little more variability in the final results.



Teams are updated through the Sheets/Nady/Garland signings of earlier today. The Jim Thome signing is not included here yet. Playing time is based on MLB.com depth charts and what I know about the teams, and I've tried to account for players who are injury risks not playing a full season (ie Ben Sheets, Rich Harden, etc.,) For now, rosters are set at between 35-40 per team to factor in depth on the benches and in the pitching staffs.

Date	1/26/2010
Iterations	1000
American League
TM	W	L	RS	RA	Div	WC	W+/-	RS+/-	RA+/-
Yankees	102.1	59.9	916	695	57.2%	20.1%	-0.9	1	-58
Red Sox	93.6	68.4	837	702	24.7%	28.8%	-1.4	-35	-34
Rays	89.2	72.8	797	714	16.6%	22.7%	5.2	-6	-40
Orioles	69.8	92.2	756	858	1.3%	2.7%	5.8	15	-18
Blue Jays	66.9	95.1	686	803	0.3%	2.2%	-8.1	-112	32
TM	W	L	RS	RA	Div	WC	W+/-	RS+/-	RA+/-
White Sox	87.9	74.1	786	730	44.9%	3.2%	8.9	62	-2
Twins	81.5	80.5	789	793	24.2%	3.3%	-5.5	-28	28
Indians	76.4	85.6	778	833	14.0%	2.1%	11.4	5	-32
Tigers	74.5	87.5	783	850	10.5%	1.7%	-11.5	40	105
Royals	70.8	91.2	753	864	6.3%	1.5%	5.8	67	22
TM	W	L	RS	RA	Div	WC	W+/-	RS+/-	RA+/-
Mariners	86.7	75.3	743	687	42.5%	3.1%	1.7	103	-5
Angels	80.9	81.1	763	756	23.6%	3.5%	-16.1	-120	-5
Rangers	77.9	84.1	803	838	17.0%	2.5%	-9.1	19	98
Athletics	76.8	85.2	713	743	16.8%	2.7%	1.8	-46	-18
National League
TM	W	L	RS	RA	Div	WC	W+/-	RS+/-	RA+/-
Phillies	91.5	70.5	842	734	43.5%	9.1%	-1.5	22	25
Braves	87.8	74.2	776	718	30.5%	9.6%	1.8	41	77
Mets	82.2	79.8	771	760	15.2%	8.4%	12.2	100	3
Marlins	73.8	88.2	754	816	4.9%	3.9%	-13.2	-18	50
Nationals	73.2	88.8	721	802	5.9%	2.3%	14.2	11	-72
TM	W	L	RS	RA	Div	WC	W+/-	RS+/-	RA+/-
Cardinals	92.1	69.9	762	676	42.5%	9.7%	1.1	32	36
Reds	85.5	76.5	755	721	22.2%	9.0%	7.5	82	-2
Cubs	83.7	78.3	749	726	17.3%	9.2%	0.7	42	54
Brewers	81.3	80.7	762	769	13.7%	7.5%	1.3	-23	-49
Pirates	70.2	91.8	730	839	1.9%	1.7%	8.2	94	71
Astros	69.1	92.9	663	771	2.5%	2.3%	-4.9	20	1
TM	W	L	RS	RA	Div	WC	W+/-	RS+/-	RA+/-
Dodgers	87.2	74.8	724	663	32.9%	7.0%	-7.8	-56	52
Rockies	86.1	75.9	831	785	27.6%	8.9%	-5.9	27	70
Diamondbacks	84.1	77.9	773	738	24.9%	6.7%	14.1	53	-44
Giants	75.5	86.5	716	767	9.2%	2.8%	-12.5	59	156
Padres	71.8	90.2	644	728	5.4%	1.8%	-3.2	6	-41

W: Projected 2010 wins

L: Projected 2010 losses

RS: Projected 2010 runs scored

RA: Projected 2010 runs allowed

Div: Division win percentage

WC: Wild card win percentage

W+/-: 2010 projected wins minus 2009 actual wins

RS+/-: 2010 projected runs scored minus 2009 actual runs scored (positive means they are projected to score more)

RA+/-: 2010 projected runs allowed minus 2009 actual runs allowed (negative means they are projected to allow fewer)



My first impression is that these are probably a couple of wins optimistic on the Yanks, and a win or two pessimistic on the Red Sox and Rays. Has Toronto gotten worse than Baltimore? It's possible, although they seem to have the ability to turn out league average pitching from places you wouldn't expect it from. Baltimore's improved, but probably not enough to make any real noise in the division in 2010.



At first glance the White Sox projecting as the class of the AL Central surprised me, but they quietly have put together one of the best rotations in baseball on paper with Jake Peavy, Mark Buehrle, John Danks and Gavin Floyd at 1-4, with some combination of Freddy Garcia and Daniel Hudson in the fifth slot. Combine that with a division that doesn't look so hot otherwise and it's not that surprising after all, although I'm not sure why CAIRO sees their offense improving by 62 runs. I'll have to see how Jim Thome impacts the Twins, although they had a pretty good DH already in Jason Kubel so I don't think he improves them by much more than a win or so at best, assuming Kubel takes away some of Delmon Young's playing time.



Will the Mariners really score 103 more runs than last year? I know Chone Figgins makes things happen, but that seems high to me. Them ranking as the favorites in the AL West doesn't surprise me though, but it's a pretty tight cluster amongst the other three teams, and should be a fun race to watch in 2010.



No real surprises in the NL East. I'm assuming Carlos Beltran will miss about two months here, but getting more from Johan Santana, David Wright and Jose Reyes plus the addition of Jason Bay should push the Mets back to respectability, although it's not likely they'll be better than the Phillies or Braves. The Marlins rarely do well in these simulations, but I'd expect them to be a little better than this. The Nationals look better too, and with Stephen Strasburg likely to debut this season they should be interesting to watch in 2010.



The Cards look good, and may look better if they add another starting pitcher. Their MLB.com depth chart only shows four starters for now, although CAIRO likes Blake Hawksworth and Kyle McClellan who I used as the combination fifth starters. The Reds are the first real WTF for me. It looks like getting full seasons from Jay Bruce and Joey Votto and more Drew Stubbs and less Willy Taveras means more offense. I haven't included Aroldis Chapman in here, but his projection sucks anyway (ERA around 6.00). The Cubs look like they'll score some more runs but allow more runs as well, which essentially leaves them around where they were in 2009. The Brewers pitching should be a little better, but their offense looks a little worse. As far as the Pirates/Astros, it should be an exciting race for fifth place.



The NL West looks tightly clustered at the top, with only three wins separating the Dodgers, Rockies and Diamondbacks. I expected the Giants to look better than this, but CAIRO projects regression from everyone in the rotation. In addition, the defense looks like it could take a big hit this year. Swapping Aubrey Huff for Travis Ishikawa looks like it could be a 15 run defensive downgrade. Losing Randy Winn's bat isn't a big deal, but he was a very good defender in the OF corners in 2009 (+17.5 UZR combined in LF/RF), and Mark DeRosa for Eugenio Velez also looks like a defensive hit, although it's an offensive upgrade. The Padres don't look good, but hopefully they don't trade Adrian Gonzalez to Boston.



I'll be running the same exercise with a few other projection systems as we move towards spring training, but that's how CAIRO sees things as of 11 pm on January 26.