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2007 Diamond Mind Replay

Posted: March 11 07, 1:39 pm
by jim
I've been busy this weekend, the projection disk came out for 2007 from Diamond Mind and I ran 50 seasons that I will share. I'll give some background on the runs in case you are interested in the details, otherwise just go to the bottom to see the results.

Each March, Diamond Mind Baseball (http://www.diamond-mind.com) comes out with an early season projection to be followed up by a late season projection in late March. The only differences between the two are the latter reflects roster changes, player roles, injuries etc.. that have been revealed in March.

If you aren't familiar with the game, it's a text based simulation game basically like Strat-o-Matic if you are familiar with that. Player records contain virtually every offensive category you can think of, as well as being rated for defensive range, error rating, arm rating, baserunning, bunting and on and on. There is also a Computer Manager feature which you use if you don't want to have human interaction when replaying a game. The CM has a multitude of options, from how often to steal to how often So Taguchi will get starts in CF with a left handed pitcher on the mound.

Each player record comes with the "As played" stats associated with him. For a projection disk, the "As played" is simply a projection of how much that player will play. An option called "Limit Bench Playing Time" forces the CM to keep playing time to within some range of the as played. This comes into play with a guy like Mulder, who according to the DMB projections will get 16 starts. This option was turned on during my replay.

I replayed using the disk out of the box with one exception. The default is to use random injuries, however I changed this option to use the injury rating associated with a player. If you are going to project injuries, may as well use them. I certainly had the desire to tweak here and there, but I'm certain most of the teams could be tweaked and I felt it fairer to just leave it as it was.

At the end of the month, Diamond Mind will come out with a similiar run of 100 seasons. They detail things a little more, going into why things turned out the way they do. In addition, they are using the later projection disks.

Anyway, on with the results. I ran the season 50 times, recording wins, division championships, and wild card births in a spreadsheet. In case of a tie for a division title, I looked at the head to head record and gave the title to the team with the better record. For wild card, I just split it - .5 for one team and .5 for the other. In one case, there was a tie for a division title and the teams split the season series. That's as far as I'm going to dig, I don't even know off the top of my head how to break that tie. The key really is wins, if you play it enough the teams with the most wins will have the most playoff appearances. I just tracked it because I thought it was neat.

Notes on the Cardinals.
1. Kinney is on the roster and healthy.
2. Mulder is slated for around 16 starts.
3. Narveson is the 5th starter when Mulder is not around, not Looper.

For each team, I'll list the average number of wins over the 50 runs, and then in parens the number of division championships/wild card births.

Code: Select all

AL East
NYA   96.20  37/7
TOR   90.48  10/13
BOS   85.30  3/8
BAL   75.76  0/1
TB    69.20  0/0

AL Central
DET   90.26  19/5
CLE   89.90  18/9
MIN   88.4   12/6.5
CHA   76.10  1/0
KC    64.32  0/0

AL West
LAA   85.00  22/0
OAK   83.96  20/0
SEA   78.62  5/0.5
TEX   78.20  3/0    

NL East
PHI   85.84  17/7.5
ATL   85.08  18/6
NYN   82.08  13/4
WAS   74.74  1/2.5
FLA   73.06  1/1

NL Central
STL   84.16  19/3
CHN   83.38  17/5
MIL   79.48  8/3.5
HOU   79.06  3/3
CIN   76.24  3/0
PIT   72.12  0/0

NL West
SD    87.80  31.5/3
LAN   83.16  11/8
ARI   78.06  2/0.5
SF    76.90  3/2
COL   76.86  2.5/1


Posted: March 11 07, 4:19 pm
by greenback44
Weird to see the Mets projected for third. Cool to see the Blue Jays that far ahead of the Red Sox (if memory serves, Tippett does some work for the Red Sox). As for this...
STL 84.16 19/3
CHN 83.38 17/5
Wow, pull out Kinney and it's a wash. With AP and CC, there must be a couple of guys really dragging the team. Any guesses on who they are?

I did something similar a year ago. Kept playing until the Cardinals made it to the World Series and I took over for the computer. The Cardinals won that World Series in five games, but the loss was to Dan Haren instead of Cheater Rogers and Larry Bigbie was the WS MVP. Hope you had fun.

Posted: March 11 07, 4:20 pm
by planet planet
Curiously, why did you have Narveson as the fifth starter, jim? Three things stick out to me, SD winning over LA by over 4 avg. wins. Was Kouzmanoff projected at 3rd all season? I still don't see them having the offense. Also, Seattle finishing over Texas by a hair. Lastly, the NL East is strange looking. No matter what you think of the Mets starters, the team tied with most wins in baseball last year finishing third with an offense that projects to get even better? And Washington finishing over FLA?

Posted: March 11 07, 7:10 pm
by jim
planet pujolsian wrote:Curiously, why did you have Narveson as the fifth starter, jim? Three things stick out to me, SD winning over LA by over 4 avg. wins. Was Kouzmanoff projected at 3rd all season? I still don't see them having the offense. Also, Seattle finishing over Texas by a hair. Lastly, the NL East is strange looking. No matter what you think of the Mets starters, the team tied with most wins in baseball last year finishing third with an offense that projects to get even better? And Washington finishing over FLA?
Narveson was how the disk came. Tom Tippet apparently didn't buy the Looper as 5th starter stuff.

Kouzmanoff is projected to be the fulltime 3B. He is projected at 313/368/550 with 562 AB's. The system issues out injuries, so it's no guarantee that he gets that many, but on the very last season I ran he got 613 AB's.

So far the two things that stuck out to me are mentioned. One, the Blue Jays. I would have thought the Red Sox would have seriously challenged the Yanks, but Diamond Mind says they have little chance. Instead, they like the Blue Jays.

Second, the NL East was a total surprise. Not so much with Philly, but I would have guessed Philly and NY neck and neck, with Atlanta 3rd.

The other mild surprise was the White Sox. I figured they would be 4th in that division, but they don't even compete. If it's accurate, it's going to be a blast watching Ozzie blow a gasket.

BTW - here is Kinney's projection:

43IP/3.77 ERA. So yeah, it's not good to lose a guy like that.

Posted: March 11 07, 9:24 pm
by GatewaySnayke
Boston finishing with 85 wins?

Hmm...

I'm confused as to where they came up with that.

Posted: March 11 07, 9:38 pm
by vh2k6
GatewaySnayke wrote:Boston finishing with 85 wins?

Hmm...

I'm confused as to where they came up with that.
without seeing individual projections, I'd guess it's because Schilling is old, Papelbon had either some durability or adjustment issues, Matsuzaka had adjustment issues, and Beckett didn't improve a ton over last year. Their season is riding on the success of their starting staff moreso than any other team in the league imo. Their top 4 pitchers can all conceivably be very good or bad.

Posted: March 12 07, 7:48 am
by jim
Projections for the Red Sox pitching:
Schilling 199IP/4.66
Papelbon 209.2IP/3.61 (and a normal injury rating)
Matsuzaka 208.0IP/3.85
Beckett 197.1IP/4.56
Wakefield 175IP/4.83

Compared to Toronto:
Halladay 206.2/3.14
Chacin 174.1/5.16
Burnett 211.2/4.12
Ohka 147.2/5.12
Thompson 172.2/5.32

They used Pineiro as the closer, with a 5.19 ERA in 69.1 IP. That can't help.

Posted: March 12 07, 8:01 am
by skmsw
jim wrote:Projections for the Red Sox pitching:
Schilling 199IP/4.66
Papelbon 209.2IP/3.61 (and a normal injury rating)
Matsuzaka 208.0IP/3.85
Beckett 197.1IP/4.56
Wakefield 175IP/4.83

Compared to Toronto:
Halladay 206.2/3.14
Chacin 174.1/5.16
Burnett 211.2/4.12
Ohka 147.2/5.12
Thompson 172.2/5.32

They used Pineiro as the closer, with a 5.19 ERA in 69.1 IP. That can't help.
Strange. The Sox have an offense that ought to score well over 900 ruins, AND are projected to compare favorably to four out of 5 starters -- and the fift is Curt Schilling. Your simulation seems off.

Posted: March 12 07, 8:12 am
by jim
I didn't really look at the results other than wins, so I don't know what is going on. Here are the starting 8 projections

Toronto:
Johnson 293/362/440 525AB
Hill 287/348/393 588AB
Overbay 304/374/494 553AB
Thomas 262/381/560 416AB
Glaus 254/357/520 540AB
Wells 291/348/514 629AB
Rios 286/337/461 555AB
Zaun 265/359/410 449AB
Clayton 261/308/347 522AB

Boston:
Lugo 293/357/425 645AB
Youk 280/385/434 564AB
Ortiz 294/406/625 517AB
Ramirez 309/416/612 502AB
Drew 294/406/496 490AB
Lowell 272/330/452 526AB
Varitek 263/350/444 441AB
Crisp 293/343/441 519AB
Pedroia 284/357/421 503AB

Just eyeballing that, it looks like Boston should be ok there too. I'm not really sure what is going on, I guess I'll look forward to Tippet's run in late March where he dives into this in a little more detail. Be interesting to see if his come out like mine.

edit - the bullpen projections clearly favor the Blue Jays. By quite a bit.

Posted: March 12 07, 8:18 am
by UK
I don't see Boston having Tavarez as their closer from April till Sept.