Pittsburgh Pirates Prediction Machine – at the Finish Line

Welcome back to the Pittsburgh Pirates Prediction Machine where we forecast specific Pirate performances for the upcoming week.  At the end of the week, we always look back and judge the accuracy of our prognostications.

Last week we made four predictions and only two were correct.  After two weeks in a row where the Prediction Machine was a perfect 4 for 4, we have come back down to Earth.

Last week (Sept 19-25), the Pirates went on the road to Milwaukee where they won two out of three against the Brewers, then returned home to lose a disappointing series to the Washington Nationals.  The last game against the Nationals was especially tough to take.  They went up two after a Jung Ho Kang hitting a home run, then not twenty minutes later, found themselves down five.  This game was a microcosm of the Pirates season as a whole – they just lost too many game where they were in prime position to win.  This week was a reminder of why forecasting baseball is so difficult.

Last Week’s Predictions:

We thought the Pirates would win the Washington Series:  Given that Stephen Strassburg was out indefinitely and Max Scherzer’s turn on the bump wouldn’t come until after the Pirates series, we were confident of a series win.  And the Pirates did win the series, unless of course you count the last two innings of Sunday’s game – what a disaster.  The Nationals clinched the NL East and the Pirates clinched the title of “most frustrating baseball team”.  This prediction was dead wrong.

We expected the Pirates offense to knock Gio Gonzalez around:  Even though we didn’t get the series outcome right, we did correctly predict that the Pirates would beat up Gio Gonzalez.  We thought they would score three early runs on the Nationals lefty and they did just that.  Unfortunately, the Nationals also scored three early runs and it took a dramatic extra inning hit from Sean Rodrigues to win the game.

We foresaw a Sean Rodriguez cool down:  Speaking of Rodriguez – he has been on knocking the cover off the ball lately.  Heading into the week, he was brandishing an eight game hitting streak; however, we know that Rodriguez has hot streaks and cold streaks.  Given that, we expected him to go without a hit in at least two of this starts for the week.  He went 0-for-4 on Sept. 22^nd and 0-for-3 on the 24^th, making our prediction correct.  Even though he had some big knocks, he ended up with only a .200 batting average for the week.

We predicted another week of above average run production:  We thought the offense would continue to produce and that the Pirates would score more than their season average of 4.5 runs per game for the week.  They did have a couple of good offensive games, but those were intermixed with two games where they only managed a single run.  Overall, the Pirates averaged 4.2 runs per game for the week making this prediction almost right, but still wrong.

Overall, we went 2 for 4 with our predictions for the week.  We were oh-so-close to another perfect week, but it was not meant to be.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Cutch has been looking more like his old self in the last month and we expect this to continue.  He will hit for at least a .300 average in his last week of work.[/perfectpullquote]

Predictions for the week of September 26^th:

The upcoming week (Sept 26-Oct 2) is the last week of the regular season.  The Pirates play four against the Chicago Cubs at PNC Park, then head to St. Louis for their last three games against the Cardinals.  It is a melancholy week for Pirates fans, as it is becoming evident that the Bucs will not be in the post season for the fourth straight year.  So for the final week, we have four predictions about how the season will end.

Andrew McCutchen will finish strong:  Whatever was bothering McCutchen and keeping his mind from baseball seems to have finally shrunk back into the darkness from whence it came.  Cutch has been looking more like his old self in the last month and we expect this to continue.  He will hit for at least a .300 average in his last week of work.

Jameson Taillon versus Jake Arrieta pitcher’s duel:  We believe that this will be a game for the ages, with both pitchers dealing some of their best stuff.  We expect that both teams will have 1 run or less through 5 innings.  If you like strikeouts, this is the game to watch.

The Cardinals will clinch a wild card berth against the Pirates.  The epic San Francisco Giants collapse will open the door for the lucky Redbirds.  The Pirates may not get the chance to play the role of spoiler.

The final record for the Pirates will be…  Within one game of 80-82.  That means anywhere from 79-83 to 81-81 for the season.  The Cubs and Cardinals are just too good to predict anything higher than that.

That’s our 4 predictions for last week of Pittsburgh Pirates baseball.  Be sure to check back next week where we will recap the Prediction Machine results from the entire season.