Burning River 2015 League Predictions Revisited

Prior to the 2015 season, the Burning River Baseball staff, in particular myself, Joseph Coblitz, Mike Melaragno, Jen Coblitz, Kevin Gall, John Hutchison and our outside view, Cody Slaybaugh from ESPN 970, made predictions for both the Indians season and some outcomes around the league. Those for the Indians can be seen here, but we had to wait a little longer until we saw who actually won some league awards. Now that we know the score, we’ll own up to our predictions below.

AL Central Standings

The first group of predictions to look at are the final AL Central standings. No one had any idea what was coming as the Royals ran away with the division and eventually the World Series title. Five of six chose the Indians for first and the Tigers for second with the only one differing being John who had them flipped. Only half chose the Royals for even third and five of six had the Twins at last. While this may have been some discounting the Royals as they changed much in the off-season between 2014 and 2015, there was no way to know that Minnesota would vault into second.

Play-Off Teams & Results

Due to extremely poor results in predicting entire divisions in the past, we looked at just who we thought would go to the post-season. Here again appears our Central division mistakes, but they weren’t limited to homerism. None of the teams picked to win the AL West went to the play-offs at all and only Jen’s pick of the Blue Jays went of the AL East picks. Mike also picked Toronto as a Wild Card, but otherwise, the AL was a completely different animal compared to our preseason picks. Of course, if the Blue Jays had David Price and Troy Tulowitzki all year, more of us may have taken them as a contender.

While we didn’t pick each NL division, we did make picks for the NL pennant and we were just as far off. Only Kevin’s pick of the Pirates made the postseason at all while the other’s picks of LA and Washington were mid-level teams that were among the closest to not make the post-season. At least it wasn’t as bad as choosing the Mariners and Angels across the board.

Of World Series picks, John had the best with the Dodgers and Cody was not much worse with Baltimore. Mike chose the M’s again here and the rest of us went the homer route with the Tribe. To be fair, I pick the Indians every year they have even the remotest of chances so I won’t be wrong when they do win it. I’m assuming the others were thinking similarly.

AL MVP & Cy Young

We only picked the two biggest awards in the AL this year, again because it’s so random picking the lesser awards. Even if we had, we likely would have just been disappointed after everyone picked Francisco Lindor for Rookie of the Year and he lost out to Carlos Correa. Even picking just two, the predictions were all over the place and rarely near accurate.

Josh Donaldson and Dallas Keuchel could have been predicted as obvious choices shortly after the All-Star break, but no one could have known pre season. To judge more fairly, we’ll look at how each prediction actually fared. Starting with the MVP, Jose Abreu and Michael Brantley each got two votes by our staff, but neither received multiple votes in the actual BBWAA selection. Abrea finished 21st with one 8th place vote and Brantley tied for 28th with one tenth place vote. Jen’s pick of Bautista was a pretty good one as 20 of 30 voters included him on their ballots as he finished 8th overall. The best pick was mine (a rarity) as the obvious choice of Trout finished 2nd to Donaldson with 304 vote points, 79 better than the third place Lorenzo Cain.

For the pitchers, there were no picks of a Corey Kluber back-to-back, instead three voters, Mike, Jen and John, went with the 2014 runner-up, Felix Hernandez. Hernandez did finish ahead of Kluber, but only in 7th place with just four BBWAA members including him on their ballots. Cody’s pick of Justin Verlander was the outlier here, garnering no votes for his 2.2 WAR, 3.38 ERA season. My own choice, Chris Sale, came in fourth with just 17 of 30 voters including him despite finishing second in the AL in WAR, first in K/9 and first in FIP. Kevin’s choice of David Price was second in FIP and for that and his 18 wins he finished second in the voting.

There is no argument against Keuchel for winning the award, although the margin he won by (22 first place votes, 8 second) was surprising. Chris Archer (5.3 WAR, fifth place finish) and Indians Corey Kluber (5.5 WAR, 9th place finish) and Carlos Carrasco (4.8 WAR, 13th place finish) were among those who received less attention than they deserved. Carrasco in particular was snubbed as he finished 7th in WAR and third in K/9, yet only received one fourth place vote (thanks to Jim Ingraham of the News-Herald). He will certainly get more national attention next year and it wouldn’t be surprising to see him among the predictions by the BurningRiverBaseball staff next year.