Coming Soon: Baseball Predictions

Baseball season has started, but you may have noticed that I haven't published any baseball predictions here on my blog yet. That is because predicting the outcome of baseball games is much trickier than basketball and football, the other sports I've been predicting for years. There are a couple of reasons for this.

The biggest difference between baseball and the other sports is the pitching rotation. In predicting football or basketball games, the lineup on the court or field does not vary much from game to game, excepting cases involving trades or injuries. In baseball, the pitcher, probably the most important player on the field, rotates from day to day. It would be somewhat like a football team using 5 different quarterback and switching them each week. Because of that, I can't just duplicate my regular formula and apply it to baseball. What I've done is separate out each team's defensive ratings by starting pitcher and score each separately. When predicting football or basketball, it usually takes about 4 games before there is enough data to make reasonable assumptions about future games, and the same stands true for baseball, but with this reworked formula, that means that each pitcher will have to start 4 games before the formula becomes regularly accurate. I'm currently testing the formula daily and watching for signs that enough matchups have taken place to make it accurate enough to publish. That could happen next week, or it may still be two weeks away, but it is forthcoming.

The other obstacle in predicting baseball is the lower scoring outputs. In football, each scoring play is worth between 2 and 8 points, but in basketball and baseball you can only score between 1 and 4 points on a single play. In basketball it is much more common to score almost 50% of the time the ball is in play, but that is not the case in baseball, where 10 points is considered extremely high scoring. This means that the difference between two teams is much less, and one extra score can have a much larger impact than it would in the other sports.

With that being said, I still believe that my formula will produce a good winning percentage once enough data has been gathered. Keep watching, and I promise that baseball predictions and rankings will be coming soon.

NBA Player of the Day

Zach Randolph - MEM - 27 pts, 15 reb, 4 ast, 4 stl, 10-18 FG, 7-10 FT

Randolph's game was larger than the man himself last night, and he capped it off with two free throw in the final 5 seconds to clinch the victory and the final available playoff spot in the entire league as the Grizzlies held off a late surge from Sacramento. The Grizzlies made the playoffs for the first time in 5 years, and hope to win a playoff game for the first time in franchise history later this month.

Predictions - 9 Apr

NBA

Hawks at Wizards - Hawks by 5

Clippers at Rockets - Rockets by 8

Cavaliers at Bucks - Bucks by 11

Jazz at Spurs - Spurs by 11

Timberwolves at Nuggets - Nuggets by 13

Prediction Results - 8 Apr

NBA: 10-2 (.833) 708-297 overall (.704)

Upsets: 1-0 (1.000) 171-116 overall (.596)