Back on March 26 I launched a contest to predict what the Red Sox's OPS's would be through June of this year. We got six entries total (including my own). Now it is time to provide the results!
According to the schedule, the end of June would have coincided with their first 81 games - exactly half a season. However, they ended up playing only 80 games through June. My question, however, asked where they'd be at the end of June, so that's what we're going with.
To get the numbers in the tables below, I took the difference between the actual and predicted OPS, player-by-player, and multiplied by the player's number of plate appearances. Then I summed the numbers across all the players to get each contestant's score. Lowest score wins.
And now, without further ado, here are the final scores:
Results through June 30
Contestant | Score |
---|---|
theloganscorpion | 174.5 |
trespada | 178.7 |
Alfredoz | 186.5 |
On to Lansdowne Street | 196.5 |
tomisphere | 210.2 |
Carras_Prodigy | 291.8 |
Hmm, that can't be right, I came in fifth of six. Er, I mean, congratulations theloganscorpion on your winning score!
Wait, that's odd. I calculated the scores with just one game to go so that I could get a head start on writing my narratives around these results, and when I did, Alfredoz was the winner:
Results through June 29
Contestant | Score |
---|---|
Alfredoz | 188.4 |
theloganscorpion | 189.0 |
trespada | 192.0 |
On to Lansdowne Street | 202.0 |
tomisphere | 224.0 |
Carras_Prodigy | 294.7 |
Could just one game cause Alfredoz to fall all the way to third? Well, admittedly, it was a marathon 11-inning game which saw double the usual number of plate appearances for the Red Sox players. But still.
I wonder what things would look like if we'd gone an extra game, so we got to a full 81 games, exactly half a season?
Results through July 1
Contestant | Score |
---|---|
trespada | 166.8 |
theloganscorpion | 168.6 |
Alfredoz | 184.2 |
On to Lansdowne Street | 190.8 |
tomisphere | 198.3 |
Carras_Prodigy | 286.1 |
Now trespada is on top! We'd have had yet a third different winner!
These scores sure are volatile. But not so volatile as to overcome the bigger differences in score - only volatile enough to overpower the smaller differences in scores among the top three finishers. There is only one thing to do. Declare this a three-way tie!
Congratulations theloganscorpion, trespada, and Alfredoz, you all three are winners!
Now for some eye-opening fun. Back when I announced this contest in March, I captured ESPN's predicted OPS's for all of these players, as well as those given by the projection systems available on Fangraphs: ZiPS, Steamer, and ATC. The results: they smoked us all. Every projection system easily defeated the best of our scores:
Results for projection systems
Thru 6/30 | Thru 6/29 | Thru 7/1 | |
---|---|---|---|
ESPN | 147.4 | 153.4 | 141.0 |
Steamer | 149.0 | 159.7 | 139.6 |
ZIPS | 149.1 | 162.4 | 139.8 |
ATC | 162.4 | 168.3 | 156.3 |
Previous season's OPS | 259.0 | 262.6 | 250.7 |
I tossed in predicting based on players' 2016 OPS's (and 2015 in the case of Pablo Sandoval), which gave comparatively poor results. There's something to these projections systems, I guess.
Originally I had suspected that I might be too optimistic in my predictions. Did that suspicion prove to be correct? I changed the calculation to include negative signs, with high predictions producing a positive number, and low predictions producing a negative one. Now, a positive overall score means that on the whole you were too optimistic; negative overall score means you were too pessimistic. These scores provided a pretty clear answer to my question:
Optimism Scores
Contestant | Score |
---|---|
theloganscorpion | 88.8 |
trespada | 84.7 |
Alfredoz | 101.2 |
On to Lansdowne Street | 81.1 |
tomisphere | 155.8 |
Carras_Prodigy | 49.1 |
ESPN | 20.9 |
Steamer | 34.7 |
ZIPS | -9.9 |
ATC | 1.6 |
Previous season's OPS | 75.5 |
I was by far the most optimistic - not even close. It paid off in giving me the best scores for Mitch Moreland and Jackie Bradley Jr., who everybody underestimated (actually ESPN edged me out on Moreland); my optimism meant that I underestimated them the least. It also gave me a pretty good score on Vazquez, though trespada had me beat there. But my overoptimism did not pay off much apart from those three players.
Interesting to me was that we were all more optimistic than the projection systems. I guess that comes with being Red Sox fans. Or it may just be that we were more likely to base 2017 numbers on 2016 numbers - the optimism score predicted by the Red Sox' 2016 numbers was similar to that of most of us, and a lot higher than all of the projection systems.
Of course, last year optimism might have paid off. By the midpoint of the season, most of the Red Sox hitters were exceeding expectations. Would we optimistic fans have beaten the projection systems through the first half of 2016? Quite possibly.
Also, when we look at the results player by player, we can see that most of the team has underperformed expectations. Six of the 14 have underperformed the expectations of every person and projection system, all 10 of us; two more underperformed all but one of ours. That's 8 overall underperforming, against four overperforming expectations (Mitch Moreland especially, as well as Jackie Bradley Jr., Christian Vazquez, and Xander Bogaerts) and two performing about as expected (Sandy Leon and Deven Marrero, though Marrero's current hot streak may quickly change that situation). The optimist in me looks at the fact that the Red Sox are in first place despite the underperforming, and noticing the offense seeming to get better, and, well, is optimistic about what that means for the rest of the season.
I wanted to make an analysis along the lines of that last paragraph into a full post contribution to this weekend's Fanpost Friday ("What do you think of this team at midseason? What strengths have you observed? What weaknesses can be patched?"), but I probably won't be able to manage the time for it. Instead, I'll just post a fuller breakdown of the results by player and predictor, below. You can then make your own conclusions from the data! Players are listed by number of plate appearances, with those with the most on top.
Red Sox OPS predictions and actual through June 30
Player | 2016 | ESPN | ZIPS | Steamer | ATC | Alfredoz | On to Lansdowne Street | trespada | thelogan scorpion | tomisphere | Carras_ Prodigy | Actual | PA |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mookie Betts | .897 | .870 | .865 | .882 | .871 | .856 | .910 | .915 | .930 | .912 | .910 | .840 | 354 |
Xander Bogaerts | .802 | .784 | .775 | .802 | .770 | .852 | .810 | .760 | .830 | .796 | .780 | .826 | 326 |
Andrew Benintendi | .835 | .822 | .787 | .778 | .813 | .843 | .865 | .815 | .810 | .825 | .840 | .782 | 320 |
Mitch Moreland | .720 | .787 | .720 | .752 | .746 | .755 | .759 | .760 | .770 | .780 | .720 | .818 | 303 |
Dustin Pedroia | .825 | .775 | .758 | .771 | .785 | .805 | .796 | .795 | .800 | .811 | .830 | .746 | 276 |
Hanley Ramirez | .866 | .824 | .830 | .839 | .813 | .879 | .836 | .815 | .860 | .915 | .885 | .768 | 268 |
Jackie Bradley Jr. | .835 | .773 | .775 | .777 | .769 | .804 | .785 | .830 | .800 | .848 | .805 | .860 | 255 |
Chris Young | .850 | .778 | .749 | .760 | .768 | .780 | .808 | .840 | .800 | .822 | 1.015 | .734 | 162 |
Sandy Leon | .845 | .697 | .678 | .665 | .696 | .690 | .657 | .721 | .660 | .732 | .650 | .695 | 157 |
Christian Vazquez | .585 | .624 | .642 | .686 | .623 | .733 | .670 | .698 | .650 | .681 | .605 | .700 | 154 |
Deven Marrero | .298 | .499 | .587 | .599 | .507 | .479 | .510 | .592 | .635 | .660 | .260 | .552 | 119 |
Josh Rutledge | .733 | .609 | .655 | .674 | .677 | .695 | .685 | .687 | .600 | .703 | .505 | .558 | 118 |
Pablo Sandoval | .658 | .737 | .719 | .754 | .698 | .790 | .780 | .724 | .730 | .811 | .740 | .622 | 108 |
Marco Hernandez | .730 | .690 | .672 | .713 | .671 | .785 | .712 | .754 | .720 | .744 | .730 | .628 | 60 |
Brock Holt | .705 | .718 | .714 | .708 | .704 | .682 | .671 | .706 | .670 | .708 | .710 | .449 | 19 |
Steve Selsky | .810 | .683 | .684 | .703 | .673 | .746 | .589 | .768 | .700 | .802 | .710 | .333 | 9 |
Rusney Castillo | .625 | .000 | .671 | .699 | .633 | .000 | .667 | .815 | .665 | .790 | .580 | .700 | 0 |
Blake Swihart | .720 | .683 | .675 | .711 | .705 | .763 | .767 | .752 | .720 | .748 | .695 | .700 | 0 |
Red Sox OPS overestimates times PA through June 30
Player | 2016 | ESPN | ZIPS | Steamer | ATC | Alfredoz | On to Lansdowne Street | trespada | thelogan scorpion | tomisphere | Carras_ Prodigy |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mookie Betts | 20.0 | 10.5 | 8.7 | 14.7 | 10.8 | 5.5 | 24.6 | 26.4 | 31.7 | 25.4 | 24.6 |
Xander Bogaerts | -7.9 | -13.8 | -16.7 | -7.9 | -18.4 | 8.4 | -5.3 | -21.6 | 1.2 | -9.9 | -15.1 |
Andrew Benintendi | 16.9 | 12.7 | 1.5 | -1.4 | 9.8 | 19.4 | 26.5 | 10.5 | 8.9 | 13.7 | 18.5 |
Mitch Moreland | -29.6 | -9.3 | -29.6 | -19.9 | -21.7 | -19.0 | -17.8 | -17.5 | -14.5 | -11.4 | -29.6 |
Dustin Pedroia | 21.9 | 8.1 | 3.4 | 7.0 | 10.9 | 16.4 | 13.9 | 13.6 | 15.0 | 18.0 | 23.3 |
Hanley Ramirez | 26.2 | 15.0 | 16.6 | 19.0 | 12.0 | 29.7 | 18.2 | 12.5 | 24.6 | 39.3 | 31.3 |
Jackie Bradley Jr. | -6.3 | -22.1 | -21.6 | -21.1 | -23.1 | -14.2 | -19.0 | -7.6 | -15.2 | -3.0 | -13.9 |
Chris Young | 18.8 | 7.1 | 2.5 | 4.2 | 5.5 | 7.5 | 12.0 | 17.2 | 10.7 | 14.3 | 45.5 |
Sandy Leon | 23.6 | .3 | -2.6 | -4.7 | .2 | -.8 | -5.9 | 4.1 | -5.5 | 5.8 | -7.0 |
Christian Vazquez | -17.7 | -11.7 | -9.0 | -2.2 | -11.9 | 5.1 | -4.6 | -.3 | -7.7 | -2.9 | -14.6 |
Deven Marrero | -30.2 | -6.3 | 4.2 | 5.6 | -5.3 | -8.7 | -5.0 | 4.8 | 9.9 | 12.9 | -34.7 |
Josh Rutledge | 20.6 | 6.0 | 11.4 | 13.7 | 14.0 | 16.1 | 15.0 | 15.2 | 4.9 | 17.1 | -6.3 |
Pablo Sandoval | 3.9 | 12.4 | 10.5 | 14.3 | 8.2 | 18.1 | 17.1 | 11.0 | 11.7 | 20.4 | 12.7 |
Marco Hernandez | 6.1 | 3.7 | 2.7 | 5.1 | 2.6 | 9.4 | 5.1 | 7.6 | 5.5 | 7.0 | 6.1 |
Brock Holt | 4.9 | 5.1 | 5.0 | 4.9 | 4.8 | 4.4 | 4.2 | 4.9 | 4.2 | 4.9 | 5.0 |
Steve Selsky | 4.3 | 3.1 | 3.2 | 3.3 | 3.1 | 3.7 | 2.3 | 3.9 | 3.3 | 4.2 | 3.4 |