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Read: BP Projects Mets 1st In NL East
By D.J. Short - Feb 16, 2008 1:00 pm

Baseball Prospectus have unveiled their PECOTA projected standings for the 2008 season.

They predict the Mets to finish first in the NL East with a 96-66 record, while the Braves (86-76) and Phillies (84-78) are projected to finish second and third, respectively.

The team depth charts also project runs scored, runs allowed, team batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.

In BP’s Unfiltered, Nate Silver writes, “The Mets really might be the best team in baseball, regardless of what league they happen to play in.”

…yikes…no pressure, right…

…just a point of reference to the potential value of Johan Santana’s addition…the pitcher with the highest VORP (value over replacement player) of any Met last season was John Maine, with 33.7….Santana’s VORP, in what many called on “off-year,” was 57.7…wow…needless to say, BP predicts pitching to be the difference between the Mets and the rest of the division…

…by the way, if VORP sounds like a foreign language to you, check out this column Rob Neyer wrote for ESPN.com, which does an excellent job of explaining it for the layman…i know i’m making it a goal of mine to better understand how it works…my first step is picking up the new Baseball Prospectus book for the 2008 season, which is supposed to ship next week…

34 Responses to “Read: BP Projects Mets 1st In NL East”

  1. Danny1986 says:

    Yawn.

  2. Tidewater says:

    I like VORP with milk. Sometimes I cut up a banana and put it on top. Blueberries and strawberries are good with VORP as well.

  3. METS08WSCHAMPS says:

    Im sure VORP didnt predict the Mets would choke up a 7 game with 17 games to go. this thing is a waste of space

  4. bonatom says:

    Is Baseball Propectus worth the subscription?

    • metsftw says:

      if you want to win your fantasy league, yes.

      but seriously, if you want to become an informed baseball fan, you should read BP.

    • Nightlife says:

      Its very good for researching saber type stats and excellent for fantasy purposes. The articles are usually pretty good too (well interesting to some, I don’t know how many people find breakdowns of Royals rule 5 draft picks fascinating). Its only 5 bucks a month, so its not that big of an investment to see if you like it.

  5. Nate W. says:

    position by position the Mets are the best team in the NL. of course, they were in 2007 as well and that didnt seem to pan out…

  6. Jawlkin Jointz says:

    can you post all the projections for every player?

    • Nightlife says:

      The player cards aren’t up yet.

      Get your own subscription! :P

      • Nightlife says:

        Well, actually they do have the projected stats for each player in the lineup on the team page.

        They predict DWright and Reyes are going to combine for 233(!) runs.

  7. metsftw says:

    also: OMG NERDY STATS. NUMBERS DON’T PLAY THE GAME PEOPLE DO.

    /ignorance

  8. Number41 says:

    Just reading where Hank Steinberger is very concerned about Andy and wishes his team had a real #1 ace. “Someone like Santana”. He says he hopes he does don’t get ******** off for not persuing Johan later this season; as he people predict Chamberlin will fill the void.
    (Schadenfreude; German word for happiness at the misfortunes of others – in this case the Skankees. People taking pleasure in Hank’s pain)
    You can learn a lot on MetBlog!

  9. Nightlife says:

    I’m kinda shocked that the Yankees are projecting over the Sox.

  10. Jawlkin Jointz says:

    thru all of this johan and pedro excitement, im VERY excited to see Ollie pitch

  11. upstatemetfan says:

    VORP tastes like chicken.

  12. EastFallowfield says:

    2007-BP predicted the Mets to win the division and ALMOST got it right!!

    2006-picked the Braves-wrong.

    2005-picked the Mets-nope.

    2004-picked the Phillies-I wish.

    2003-picked the Phillies-ouch!

    Looks worse than getting the cover of SI!

    • perezh says:

      Actually last year PECOTA had the Phils winning the division with 87 wins and the Mets behind with 85. They also made some solid picks like Arizona first place and White Sox being terrible. They were mistaken on Texas and the Twins (and the Nats) though.

  13. PhillR says:

    BP’s “prediction” system PECOTA is really not designed to predict team results. PECOTA is designed to predict player results along multiple threads with odds assigned to each.

    The use of PECOTA to predict team results is actually a bastardization of the system and not really reflective of its underlying worth. For team results they create a depth chart that weights players by playing time and then does the pythagorian W/L projection based on the RS/RA of the weighted depth chart.

    My point is that team projections are more a reflection of the Pythagorean projection. That said, RS/RA pythagorean is damn accurate as far as these things are concerned.

    These projections are more probabilities then anything else. If the season was played 1000 times, the majority of times the projection would be the result.

  14. Xavier22 says:

    …the pitcher with the highest VORP (value over replacement player) of any Met last season was John Maine, with 33.7….Santana’s VORP, in what many called on “off-year,” was 57.7

    So VORP is a function of the player’s jersey number?

  15. Cactus says:

    nobody look where heath bell and brian bannister show up on the VORP rankings from ‘07.

    • metsftw says:

      nobody look how lucky bannister got. he’s going to be god awful this season and you retards will shut the hell up finally. thank god.

  16. s-mets says:

    cant wait for this season…it will be a great race the whole year, but in the end,,the mets will come away with the division. In 2007 we lead the division for pretty much the whole year and lost it due to an historic collapse…with santana, forget about it, we will win the division by 10 games…

  17. metsluc says:

    im prediciting 102-60 ..

  18. Ryn5 says:

    Pelfrey 130 IP with a 4.32 ERA.

    hahah, one could only hope