via www.rotorob.com
For the man that finished fourth in the 2008 American League Cy Young voting, OTM readers weren't even close to predicting his season.
Basically everyone knew he was going to do better than 2007, but no one knew how good in certain categories. Everyone overshot when it came to strikeouts, under-guessed when it came to walks, over-guessed his ERA, under-guessed his WHIP and so on and so forth. Essentially, no one was close at all. Here's how it broke down:
Daisuke Matsuzaka
GS IP W L SO BB ERA WHIP
ACTUAL 29 168 18 3 154 94 2.90 1.32
PROJECTED 32 206 18 8 212 65 3.58 1.20
Only two categories (games started and wins) were close. Everything else was off pretty considerably. It's interesting to compare Daisuke's 2007 and 2008 seasons. Daisuke was definitely better in '08, but he did give a lot more walks while allowing less hits. The result to his WHIP? Nothing. His 2008 WHIP (1.32) was identical to 2007. It's amazing how that worked out.
There was well over 20 responses to the prediction for Daisuke. It was a great response, so we'll definitely do this one again in the spring. Hopefully we'll come a little bit closer next time.