Hello there, baseball fans! Welcome to Lookout Landing. You are probably interested in predictions about the upcoming season. Sorry, you will not find that here. We don't really fancy predictions because the future is unknowable (for you) and so predictions are just excuses to engage in speculation and that makes us all blah really? We do have some projections though. Those are different. Please understand that those are different so that you might stop bitching about projections being wrong when it turns out they didn't exactly predict the future. You sound like a cretin when you do that.
Today's featured projection system is CAIRO. It's in all capital letters so I assume it is either an acronym or an initialism. I also don't consider those to be the same things. The official definitions are fuzzy but I believe we should have different terms for abbreviations that become words (radar, scuba) on their own and ones that are strictly letters (HTML, FBI). There are border cases though and something's weird about ones that become words but are still used in all caps like NATO. Compare that to Interpol which is a word now and also represents an organization but I feel comfortable writing Interpol in place of INTERPOL, but have to write NATO, not Nato. See how weird that looks? This is confusing. We need more terms.
So, CAIRO, whatever it stands for. Who cares? Here's the link to the latest crop. Looking over it I noticed that most of the good teams were good last year. That's not a big shock or even an aftershock, but it led me to making this graph.
Notice the best fit equation. Hey look, it's regression! That right there is regression. It takes the magnitude from 0 from last year and spits back a little over 75% of that number. Another way of putting that is saying the 2012 projected run differential is three parts actual 2011 run differential and one part league average (0). Regression! Catch the wave!
The above chart doesn't do anything to identify which are the good teams and which are the bad teams. We're (not us we, people we) all about categorizing things into groups of preferably two. People like things in only two possible categories because "black or white" and "either you're with us or you're against us" is just so much less mentally taxing than actual reality. I will indulge it this one time.
Here are the remaining 13 teams. The terrible thirteen. I tried to come up with an alliterative and catchy moniker to saddle them with but I faltered in identifying an English word that's a synonym for bad and prefixed with a "th" sound. Any suggestions from linguists or other writers are welcome. It could even be a foreign word if appropriate enough. If you come up with one that I find delectable, I will bestow this...uh...free...pen on you. It's a wonderful pen. It has a clicky thing at the top and a good balance for twirling.
I arranged the teams in ascending order based on projected wins and broke the ties by using 2011's record just as the MLB draft order would do.
60 - Astros
67 - Twins
68 - Pirates
70 - Orioles
71 - Cubs
74 - Mariners
74 - Royals
74 - White Sox
75 - Mets
75 - Dodgers
76 - Padres
76 - Athletics
78 - Blue Jays
The Padres have the highest combined playoffs projections of any of those 13 and it's just 8.2%, which gives you a notion of the gap between these two groups. By the way, on average, American League teams had two more wins than their National League little brothers. Basically, that means the Mariners and the Padres are like the same team.
0 recs | 39 comments
Threnodic, maybe?
It’s a stretch, but it could work.
A bit better looking than the Davenport projections, but it’s unfortunate to see the M’s lose 3 wins (and slip below the A’s) following the Montero trade.
marc w - February 8, 2012
The Throesome Thirteen.
Yeah, the dictionary doesn’t like it, but the dictionary is reactive, language is productive and creative.
Tamuzi - February 8, 2012
Thucky
J0SER - February 9, 2012
Do lisps count?
JLProck - February 9, 2012
Thumbsucking Thirteen
gotohappyplace, gotohappyplace, gotohappyplace
rjjunior - February 8, 2012
Does your happy place have a floor?
Then it’s probably not the Mariners.
eponymous_coward - February 8, 2012
There are projection systems that are thinking the M's will score over 600 runs? Sweet!
Ah, the soft bigotry of low run expectations.
eponymous_coward - February 8, 2012
Bad Baker's Dozen
Yeah… flip the script!
spikefriedman - February 8, 2012
Craptacular Thirteen
It isn’t clever, but it certainly reminds me of what we see from our offense.
Tezlin - February 8, 2012
Mariners Baseball: Let's Not Kid Ourselves.
Here’s to another season of depressing pragmatism!
Hoorah.
Toutonghi - February 8, 2012
This reminds me:
Of the year that the Mariners’ slogan was “Anything Could Happen.” Which my friend converted to a happy, optimistic “Mariners: What the F&@%K?”
extavernmouse - February 9, 2012
Cohoes?
As I recall, there was a minor hubbub when the M’s picked Nathaniel Cohoes from Germany in the 8th round. Cohoes then went on to sign for a higher-than-average bonus. Do we know anything about that guy? Haven’t seen anything about him for a while…
Irwin Yanwen Shung - February 8, 2012
This is probably in the wrong thread
Matthew - February 8, 2012
For a moment, I thought it belonged in the 'new team names' thread.
phiat - February 9, 2012
Cohoes is an endangered species.
But a great Northwest name nonetheless.
extavernmouse - February 9, 2012
With the "e" it looks wrong, but without the "e" it looks worse
Either a set of communal gardening tools, or a set of communal, uh….
I suppose they could treat it like Moose and go with the Seattle Coho, but that still has the latter problem (except with just one to go around, it’s even more communal)
J0SER - February 9, 2012
Tholing
The Tholing Thirteen? At least the fans of the thirteen must thole. I admit it isn’t terribly catchy, but you have to work with what you have when it comes to the th- sound.
Third definition:
From the Old English ‘suffer.’
Memnon - February 8, 2012
I suspect the Mets would have first claim to
Tholing, since Josh is their catcher, and they’re certain to suffer for years to come.
xmet - February 8, 2012
The Mets are part of the thirteen.
They can just be the headliners.
Memnon - February 8, 2012
Three more wins and they
would earn that honor by being tied for top of the bottom.
xmet - February 8, 2012
Alliteration is over rated.
InSpokane - February 8, 2012
And alliteration acolytes are arrogant.
katal - February 9, 2012
Can't we just sugar coat these projections a little?
I know its not what we do around here but I’m a little short on optimism and hope for this team. I at least want to be competitive more than 1 out of every 5 games.
Edgar for Pres - February 8, 2012
The ceiling is about 90 wins if everyone is healthy, the veterans have career years and the rookies break out at once.
Chris_FB - February 8, 2012
I'm sorry, you don't think the team will even be competitive more than 20% of games?
Mariner John - February 9, 2012
I think he's saying our pitching sucks behind Felix.
MT Olson - February 9, 2012
There are less hyperbolic ways to express that and even then I don't think that's accurate.
Mariner John - February 9, 2012
Competitive 1 out of 5 would mean the M's get 32 wins
CAIRO states the M’s will win more than double that number. Optimism!
HititHere - February 9, 2012
Competitve 1 out of 5 would mean 16 wins.
We don’t win every competitive game. Competitive games are close. We should assume we win half of them.
Llewdor - February 9, 2012
Ain't that backwards
Adjusting for the “AL bonus” the M’s are 4 games worse than the Padres. Or am I wackbirds?
bookbook - February 8, 2012
Wackbirds.
The AL is tougher, by about 2 wins worth. So an AL team with 2 fewer wins than an NL team is roughly equal.
Matthew - February 8, 2012
Bacronym
I believe that is the word you are looking for.
FaceRuiner - February 8, 2012 via mobile
Not for the list of 13, obviously.
FaceRuiner - February 8, 2012 via mobile
Do the projections take into account injured players being healthy again?
The Twins projection seems lower than I expected. I guess they did lose Cuddyer though.
Mothy - February 8, 2012 via Android app
Interesting that there's a projection system called CAIRO and one called CHONE
All we need now is WILLIE and RELAFORD.
Aly Edge - February 8, 2012
I was just thinking about Willie.
I was playing with the EloRater on Baseball-Reference, and decided to scroll down to the bottom of the batter rankings (you see where this is going, don’t you?) and there he was, the second lowest ranked active player.
Paul AB - February 9, 2012
The Thitty Thirteen
Cause when you’re that bad you don’t deserve the S.
IslanderDuck - February 9, 2012
Has the word hit in it; doesn't apply to the Mariners.
yuniform - February 9, 2012 via Android app
Haha, my god the Astros suck
SmoakyCokey - February 9, 2012
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