I just glanced at the standings on Baseball Reference. Here are the division leaders, with my prediction in parenthesis:
Baltimore (5th)
Kansas City (3rd)
Oakland (3rd)
Florida (5th)
St. Louis (6th)
Arizona (1st)
There is probably a good chance this represents the limited number of games played more so than terrible predictions on my part, but I thought it was interesting. Does it really change our thoughts on these teams, or any teams for that matter? I’m not really sure that it does, to any significant degree, but our expectations of their final records are likely changed. Let’s say we projected Baltimore for 65 wins, a rather gracious number if you were to ask some analysts. That’s a .383 winning percentage. They’re 8-5 now — if they play .383 ball the rest of the way, the O’s will finish with ~65 wins, 3 above our initial guess.
The Tigers case is even more extreme. Let’s say they were pegged at 92 wins (.568 wp). Detroit’s 3-10 so far – .568 ball for the next 149 games will give them about 87-88 wins. So, even if we say that early performance has no impact on our preseason projections, it will still change our projected results. Not exactly revolutionary insight, but I thought the standings looked a little strange (and that the current order probably won’t last for long).
Game recap post comin’ later on tonight ….
