THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Saberists predict better than Insiders

Thanks to Vegas Watch, we see that PECOTA and Neyer were off by 10 games, Vegas was off by 11, and Olney/Phillips were off by 13.  Lovely.

Now, here’s the fun part.  Ready?  If you had forecasted every single team to finish as 81-81, the RMSE would have been 10.6.  That is, of the 12 smartest and most experienced guys that Vegas Watch decided to track, here is the list, with the perfectly competitive balanced vote listed:
9.6 PECOTA
10.2 Neyer
10.5 Law
10.6 Perfectly Competitive Balanced (all teams predicted at 81-81)
10.8 Vegas
11.1 Passan
11.3 Sheehan
11.4 Brown
11.7 Kurkijan
12.1 Stark
12.1 Henson
12.4 Phillips
13.0 Olney

Says it all doesn’t it?