Let’s Project the Royals’ BaseRuns Gap

This morning, Jeff Sullivan posted the results of his team projection polls, and not surprisingly, you guys don’t buy into the 77-win forecast that our Playoff Odds are currently giving the Royals. The aggregate projection from the readers in Jeff’s poll put the Royals at 83 wins, and 71 percent of the people who voted believed that our forecast was at least four wins too low. Which is perfectly understandable, given that they just won the World Series and all, and it is no easy task trying to justify why a team that has won the AL pennant two years in a row might now be the worst team in the league.

So I want to follow up on Jeff’s poll, because while he collected the expected win total, he didn’t gather any information about how they’re going to get there. And the how is one of the most interesting parts of the Royals. Last year, they won 95 games, but their BaseRuns expected record was only 84-78, which is one of the primary reasons the projections are down on their 2016 chances. Forecasting systems only project context-neutral performance, and assume that the timing of events — which is what drives the difference from BaseRuns expected record — will be equal for all teams.

Since you guys believe the Royals are significantly better than ZIPS and Steamer believe, I’m curious how much of that is due to the belief that the projections are simply incorrectly forecasting individual performance, or whether you believe the Royals roster has inherent traits that will allow it to beat context-neutral expectations. Because looking at the difference between the forecasts and the FANS projections — created by the collective balloting of readers here on FanGraphs — doesn’t necessarily support the idea of the projections badly missing on the individual performances.

On the offensive side of things, there are at least five ballots for 11 KC hitters; the regular starting nine, plus Christian Colon and Paulo Orlando. If we just take a weighted average of the projected FANS wOBA for that group, it comes to .323; our depth charts project a .313 wOBA for that same group with that same distribution of playing time, so there’s a difference, but it’s basically the same story if we run that for every club; the fans projections are always optimistic, running 15-20% on the high side for a vast majority of players.

Eyeballing the numbers — we’ll have actual standings projections based on the FANS forecasts later this month — it doesn’t appear that the gap in expected individual performance is much larger than we find with other teams. There’s a huge difference on Lorenzo Cain (+5.9 WAR for the FANS, +3.6 for our depth charts), but most of the rest of the players are close enough to their depth chart forecast that it’s basically equal once you normalize the FANS projections to take out the consistent optimism bias.

On the pitching side of things, there’s more disagreement, with almost every member of the starting rotation projected for at least +1 WAR more than their depth charts forecast.

The FANS projections think the Royals rotation is just fine; our depth charts think its the second-worst in baseball. So that’s a real fundamental disagreement, and likely the source of some of the disagreement. But the FANS forecasts are overly optimistic for everyone, and once we adjust for that bias, it doesn’t explain the entirety of the difference.

So I figured we’ll just follow up with a poll. Knowing that the Royals beat their BaseRuns record by 11 games last year — and eight games in 2014, plus six games in 2013, for a three year running total of +25 wins relative to their context-neutral performances — what do you expect them to do relative to their BaseRuns expected record in 2016? How much of the difference in opinion against the forecasts is due to the belief that the Royals have indeed solved sequencing to some degree, and have a sustained ability to distribute their performances in a manner that leads to more wins?

We’ll look at the results of this poll next week, and depending on the results, may have some follow-up questions about you voted the way you did. The Royals certainly are one of the most fascinating teams in baseball, and if they’ve figured out how to sustainably sequence their events in a way that can be repeated by other teams, this has the potential to cause some big shifts in the sport. But maybe you guys don’t actually believe that the Royals have figured out sequencing, and you think that the individual projections are just too low. I’m curious to see whether you guys think it’s simply the forecasting systems missing on a very good group of players, or if there’s a context-specific skill that you believe the Royals have that the forecasts simply aren’t trying to project.