Pecota has the Orioles with only a 3% chance to make the playoffs

[backwardsk]

5 hours ago, Griffey said:

Street & Smith's baseball yearbook used to be the Bible in my house all summer long.

I would buy Street & Smith for college basketball previews, but for baseball, my go to was Baseball Digest.  In February they would list each team’s 40 man rosters.  Valuable source in the pre-internet days.

[oriole]

2 hours ago, Frobby said:

In a system where 40% of the teams make the playoffs, 3% is pretty gloomy.  

Gloomy, for sure! But not unreasonable IMO. I have a lot of hope they can keep the ball rolling and at least win the same amount of games as last year. They didn’t make it in the playoffs though with 83 wins. They’ll have to be better and unfortunately not a lot was done about that. Incremental additions can end up with a large sum though, so maybe it’s enough. 

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

5 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

I had a bunch, I even bought some used.

I was a big fan of the Bill James Baseball Abstract as kid. Bill James was ahead of his time taking an analytical based approach to backing up his analysis and opinions.

I still have a few of his books including this one:

 

 

[UMDTerrapins]

6 hours ago, Griffey said:

Street & Smith's baseball yearbook used to be the Bible in my house all summer long.

 

I was always partial to the Bill Mazeroski baseball preview. Until the Sporting News Fantasy Baseball preview came along. 

[UMDTerrapins]

One of these days I’m going to crack open an old box of Baseball America magazines I’ve been dragging around for 30 years. I’m guessing there will some great blurbs about Orioles prospects. 

[InsideCoroner]

I loved all of these guides. I just had a horror flashback of buying a Rotisserie League Baseball book as a teenager and explaining the concept to friends. We formed an 8-man NL league, since everyone else there was a Phillies fan. There were no fantasy guides to speak of then, but worst of all, I volunteered to handle the stats since the league was my bright idea. Without stat services it all had to be compiled manually from box scores and the weekly results typed by hand. Four months in, I couldn’t wait for the season to be over.

[Ohfan67]

14 hours ago, Frobby said:

By the way, I do think the estimate that the O’s have only a 3% chance of making the playoffs is absolutely absurd.  

Totally agree.  You and I had a discussion months ago about the Orioles probability of making the World Series. I think we independently guesstimated that the Os had about a 3% or even better chance of making the World Series. 

[btdart20]

Pecota has upped our playoff odds to 4.4%.  At that rate, we'll be a lock by the end of ST!

[Frobby]

16 minutes ago, btdart20 said:

Pecota has upped our playoff odds to 4.4%.  At that rate, we'll be a lock by the end of ST!

I guess our pitchers looked really good reporting to camp this morning.  
 

[byrdz]

The rebuilt Astros pretty much repeated another mid-80’s season before really taking off. They actually lost a couple more games going from 86 (2015) to 84 (2016). Im hoping the Orioles can do the same but maybe too many question marks in the rotation for Pecota to make that leap. 

[yark14]

Pecota can go to hell.

[LookinUp]

16 hours ago, SteveA said:

There's stuff we just don't know like what baseballs TPTB will decide to use this year, for all major league teams, as well as which ones they will use for the Yankees.   So trying to make a prediction of any time is just basically closing your eyes and throwing a dart.

Yeah, last year there was supposedly a dead ball. Will that be the case this year?

The shift and pitch clock will change things, but I'd expect the different ball (if it is) would have a bigger effect.

And if that happens, our 4/5 starters don't look as good as they did last year.

[emmett16]

18 hours ago, Frobby said:

Honestly it might bother batters more than pitchers.  

I think they will shake the cobwebs out in ST and in April we might see some 'interesting' things but by May it should be business as usual.  

[Three Run Homer]

13 hours ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

I was a big fan of the Bill James Baseball Abstract as kid. Bill James was ahead of his time taking an analytical based approach to backing up his analysis and opinions.

I still have a few of his books including this one:

 

 

I've given away lots of old books over the years.  I have never given away any of my Baseball Abstracts!  

[JR Oriole]

They won 83 games, missed the playoffs after losing 18 of 30, then spent the off-season doing basically nothing to get better.  So I am not sure why their odds to make the playoffs would be any higher than 3 or 4%.  Seems reasonable to me.  But it is only a projection, which is basically as meaningless and overrated as the NFL draft.