Me vs. reality, 2013
by Chris JaffeJanuary 09, 2013
Well, in a way I can claim I was right in my annual Cooperstown prediction piece.
Oh, not in the ways that mattered, no. I predicted Craig Biggio would get elected today. The results just came out, and Biggio fell short, well short. He scored just 68 percent of the vote, well below the 76 percent I pegged him at.
But hey, I began my prediction piece by flatly stating I had no clue what would happen. So I clearly have no clue.
Anyhow, let’s look how I did overall. I gave projected guesses for 19 Cooperstown candidates, and here’s how that stacks up versus reality.
Candidate BBWAA Me Dif Craig Biggio 68 76 8 Jack Morris 68 69 1 Jeff Bagwell 60 52 -8 Mike Piazza 58 61 3 Tim Raines 52 48 -4 Lee Smith 48 47 -1 Curt Schilling 39 39 0 Roger Clemens 38 45 7 Barry Bonds 36 45 9 Edgar Martinez 36 33 -3 Alan Trammell 34 38 4 Larry Walker 22 17 -5 Fred McGriff 21 16 -5 Dale Murphy 19 14 -5 Mark McGwire 17 16 -1 Don Mattingly 13 14 1 Sammy Sosa 12 13 1 Rafael Palmeiro 9 10 1 Bernie Williams 3 6 3
The thing is, even though I got the big question wrong, and even though I was the furthest off with the guys near the top of the ballot (the most important candidates), I was pretty close on a lot.
I nailed just one guy—Curt Schilling—and I was off by only one point on six others and within five points on 15 of the 19 I guessed on.
But I sure sucked on those Astros and had trouble with Bonds and Clemens, as well.
I guessed there would be 6.66 names/ballot, and there were 6.60. So that was close, but I took too many votes away from guys down ballot and gave too many to the non-Bagwells up ballot.
Better luck next year, I guess.
History instructor by day, statnerd by night, Chris Jaffe leads one of the most exciting double lives imaginable; with the exception of every other double life possible to imagine. Despite his lack of comic-book-hero-worthiness, Chris enjoys farting around with this stuff. His new book, Evaluating Baseball's Managers is available for order. Chris welcomes responses to his articles via e-mail. Oh, and now he's on twitter.
You have a great track record so you have earned a pass. Even though this was a tough year I think you still deserve a lot credit because it’s tough to predict what insane people will do.