First PECOTA Projections Released

As I told Hambone, this feels like Christmas Day to me. Should I go just ahead and kill myself now?

Here they are.

As regular readers know, The Man says I can't look at wagering lines at work. There will obviously be a lot of updates to follow, including extensive work on Win Total wagering. But for now, Hambone was kind enough to forward Pinnacle's World Series futures to me so I could get started. A couple initial thoughts that will likely turn into half-unit or quarter-unit plays at some point:

Oakland A's at +3832 looks like value to me. They've got a good chance to win the AL West by default as much as anything else. Semi-regular readers of MLBTradeRumors.com like myself know that the Angels front office hasn't made a lot of noise about replacing the production they lost when Teixeira walked. In fact, the scuttlebutt suggests that the A's are as likely to sign Dunn or Abreu as the Angels, so there may be value in acting on this one very soon. Also, if the A's are in the running come July, you have to like the idea of having Billy Beane on your side, trying to find the #4 starter that they desperately need.

The Diamondbacks at +2604 are the other one that jumps up and grabs you, as PECOTA has them winning the NL West by a good margin. Obviously, there is cause for concern from the Dodgers, whose current projection puts Juan Pierre in LF instead of, say, Manny Ramirez. So it's safe to say that the Dodgers might pick up a few games, and the D-Backs might even lose one or two, if L.A. find someone more productive than Pierre to run out there every day. Still, 90 wins from PECOTA is 90 wins from PECOTA- that kind of squad can take a run at the wild card even if it misses out on the division. This team is under the radar, and a great value at that number. They'll get decent production from almost every spot, with potential for breakout seasons from a number of young stars. And in my opinion, they have the best starting pitching rotation in the National League. And before you laugh, check the PECOTA projections for Max Scherzer.

I still like the Indians, even at +2224 instead of the 30-1 I fell in love with so long ago. However, even though my prediction that PECOTA would call the AL Central for the Indians by a decent margin was correct, I'm not as enthusiastic about them as I once was. Most significantly, I don't like the fact that they lean so heavily on Hafner, with 600 PAs. I worry that the mechanisms of PECOTA, which uses comparables from different eras, might get thrown out of whack by a guy who was in all likelihood using PEDs. If he stops using, his comparables would obviously continue to produce at a higher level than he will. Still, I find it difficult to believe that a guy like Carmona is gonna put up a 1.54 WHIP, so it probably all evens out in the end. And evening out in the end is the reason that the teamwide PECOTA projections are so incredibly accurate.