Comments on: Yup, ignore ESPN

By: skyking162

skyking162 — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:17:09 +0000

I’m guessing the 81-81 prediction doesn’t fair quite as well in most seasons. As VegasWatch pointed out, this was a very difficult year for predictions, making a .500 record prediction look better.

Two other mindless predictions to use as baselines would be last year’s record and last year’s Pythag record.

If anyone entered the BPro Predictatron contest, you can look up your own pre-season predictions and compare to the list.

By: gwangung

gwangung — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:20:25 +0000

Quoting Shakespeare again?

Of course. Joser is a learned and erudite man.

A word to the wise, and all….

By: xeifrank

xeifrank — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:58:28 +0000

And it’s easy to make an ass of “your self” by casting stones without lifting a finger to do a little searching in the archives.

Quoting Shakespeare again?
vr, Xei

By: joser

joser — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:20:17 +0000

Did any of the authors of this blog make pre-season win total predictions? It’s easy to make fun of other people’s poor predictions, especially when you didn’t make any your self.

And it’s easy to make an ass of “your self” by casting stones without lifting a finger to do a little searching in the archives.

By: xeifrank

xeifrank — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:05:44 +0000

DMZ, no biggie. I know he is quoting Vegas Watch’s (a great site) work. I just didn’t think it was fair for him to lambast the pundits who were outperformed by the 81-81 method the way he did. He’s preaching to the choir on the overall message, I just didn’t think it was fair to put them down the way he did without adding his own predictions into the mess. Yes, many in the media are “stupid” when it comes to baseball analysis, but without beating those he calls “stupid”…???
vr, Xei

By: DMZ

DMZ — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 22:26:28 +0000

It wasn’t. I predicted 83-79, though you can go read my hand-wringing on the why. I pretty much always find a way to predict an 80-win season. You can search for this stuff. We’ve got five years on the record here.

Also, I don’t see how our one-season predictions enter into an all-baseball prediction set. Or why you seem to think that we made up a method.. actually, I’m not sure what you’re saying there. Dave’s quoting someone else’s work, if that’s not clear.

By: xeifrank

xeifrank — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 22:20:09 +0000

I am not sure if the authors consider that DMB run their predictions or not. If so, they might not have done as well as the 81-81 system if the A’s came out on top most of the time. The Mariners win totals were probably closer than most of the pundits. Really, my only point up above was that if you are going to slam/make fun of somebody elses picks/predictions, why not include your own for public inspection? Especially, since the 81-81 method was made up after the fact. After knowing that an RMSE was used. vr, Xei

By: msb

msb — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 22:15:23 +0000

yeah.

that was fun.

By: DMZ

DMZ — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:58:11 +0000

(addendum: I got the distinct impression the numbers were pushed UP a tad to make them seem more acceptable…but I could be wrong….)

Well, if you go back, you see I bumped Betancourt’s defensive rating up, which in retrospect is embarrassing. It didn’t end up being that big a deal.

And there was another set of projections later where I went through and crippled the A’s pitching staff.

By: Xteve X

Xteve X — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:53:30 +0000

“Did any of the authors of this blog make pre-season win total predictions? It’s easy to make fun of other people’s poor predictions, especially when you didn’t make any your self. ”

Did you bother looking at the archives before you asked? Doesn’t sound like it from your tone.

When you assume you make an ass of … well, just yourself really.