How many W's in 2016?

[Loosey]

Recordwise I am going to say "around .500".  However, I think the team will be better but it may not show up in the win/loss column this year due the other teams in the division improving their teams even more than the Twins have.  Last place in the AL Central this year may be sniffing 80 wins.

[Steve Lein]

I think they definitely overachieved last year. Lots of reasons for optimism that the improvement will continue, but it won't manifest as overachievement like it did last year. Meaning they'll end up a very similar team.

 

So my over/under is currently at 82 wins.

[TheLeviathan]

 

Not really sure it's fair to call it a "lucky month."  Most teams have a hot stretch.  Houston started the season 25-13 and played sub .500 ball (61-63) the rest of the way.  Twins had a nearly good 38 game stretch in May/June and played about the same (60-64) the rest of the season.  Cutting the season into arbitrary endpoints (in this case, months) doesn't really tell us much.

 

Houston should be worried about a win regression for the same reason.  

 

We piled up a lot of wins in May that if you simulated that month out a 100 times would should what a lucky streak it was.  They don't have to apologize for it, they won those games, but if we're going to prognosticate on the future we need to take those sorts of things into account.

 

It wasn't just a win streak, it was a month of wins that were highly unlikely to yield the results they did.

[gunnarthor]

 

Houston should be worried about a win regression for the same reason.  

 

We piled up a lot of wins in May that if you simulated that month out a 100 times would should what a lucky streak it was.  They don't have to apologize for it, they won those games, but if we're going to prognosticate on the future we need to take those sorts of things into account.

 

It wasn't just a win streak, it was a month of wins that were highly unlikely to yield the results they did.

Yeah, I get that.  And you can look at pyth w/l or base runs or whatever model you want.  But if you're going to exclude the Twins best period (whatever it is), you should probably exclude the worst as well.

 

 

[Don't Feed the Greed Guy]

 

Not really sure it's fair to call it a "lucky month."  Most teams have a hot stretch.  Houston started the season 25-13 and played sub .500 ball (61-63) the rest of the way.  Twins had a nearly good 38 game stretch in May/June and played about the same (60-64) the rest of the season.  Cutting the season into arbitrary endpoints (in this case, months) doesn't really tell us much.

I like the comparison to Houston.  The record in April and May will help determine whether Buxton, Park, and other questionable members of the Opening Day roster are being productive, and if Berrios, Kepler and other promising lads are fighting and clawing their way out of Rochester and into Minnesota. 

 

If that happens, the team could "buy now" on an ace before the trading deadline. However, the Royals have to regress, and Cleveland and Chicago can't wake up either. If the Twins are division leaders, or close, by the end of May, that will make all the difference. Not wild card contenders, but division leaders.

 

In summary, a strong start in April and May will provide strategic direction to the front office in June and July, resulting in a win-now roster in August in September. Twins finish 91-71, but fall 2 games behind Kansas City during the last week of the regular season, and are eliminated in the one-game playoff by the Toronto Blue Jays.

[TheLeviathan]

 

Yeah, I get that.  And you can look at pyth w/l or base runs or whatever model you want.  But if you're going to exclude the Twins best period (whatever it is), you should probably exclude the worst as well.

 

I'm not excluding it, I'm just adjusting that month's success down 4 games or so to reflect a ridiculous run of luck.

[Mike Sixel]

 

Yeah, I get that.  And you can look at pyth w/l or base runs or whatever model you want.  But if you're going to exclude the Twins best period (whatever it is), you should probably exclude the worst as well.

 

Well, since that lucky month is pretty much the delta from pythag wins....that's what I did. But I get your point.

[Blake]

The Twins are .500 at the break. The front office trades some players that have been doing well for some good pieces but the team regresses after the break.

 

The Twins end the season with an 80 82 record.

 

The Twins win it all in 2017 because of the astute trades at the deadline the previous year.

[Brock Beauchamp]

I'm assuming another acceptable pen arm is picked up before the season and Park posts a .750-ish OPS. I think 83 wins is a decent prediction.

[Dozier's Glorious Hair]

 

Hmmmm, I'm still thinking 81-83 wins at this point. I don't see the lucky month of May repeating itself. 

 

If they had a "lucky month" of May, then they must've had an unlucky month from mid-July to mid-August when they went 9-21. Take away those two month-long streaks, and you're left with a .514 win pct. (54-51 record), nearly identical to what they finished 2015 with.

 

They didn't overachieve at all in 2015. They were what they were - a slightly better than .500 team. If we accept that they'll be a better team than they were last season (it appears most of us do), then it should show in their record.

 

I say 85-90 wins in 2016.

[ashbury]

If they had a "lucky month" of May, then they must've had an unlucky month from mid-July to mid-August when they went 9-21.

I don't think anybody is calling May "lucky" solely because they won. Despite ho-hum statistics for getting on base and hitting with power, they were scoring runs at about a league-high pace. To a lesser extent, despite so-so numbers on the other side of the ball, the team was preventing other runners from scoring. On top of that, with the actual runs for and against that they racked up, they were winning more frequently than their pythag computation would suggest. Going from memory on all this, but it was a perfect storm of timely hitting and stranding of runners and then winning close ones (remember how perfect Perk was?), and you can't take it away from them (it was FUN!), but for forecasting purposes it was easy to guess the winning would not continue unless the underlying numbers got better, and people were saying so.

 

I don't remember looking too deeply at the bad streak July-August, but my recollection is they earned it the old fashioned way, by not hitting and not getting the other guys out.

 

Season-long, they finished 12th in the league for slugging average and dead last for on-base percentage, a combination that should be deadly, yet they scored the 8th most runs. Similarly, the pitching staff was 9th best in on-base pct, 11th in slugging, and yet held up for 9th in preventing runs. Even with all this, they scored fewer runs than they gave up, which won't usually lead to a winning record, yet it did. The May numbers contributed greatly to this overall disparity.

 

And that's why I'm worried about a 78 win season. The underlying hitting numbers could improve and likewise for pitching/defense and yet not show up in the standings, and there's room even for the wins to decline a little.

 

Unsustainable would have been a better word than lucky.

[Willihammer]

It was especially easy to forecast Thompson, Graham and Boyer regressing. Boyer managed to keep his lucky streak through the end of the year but the other two finished with 5.00 ERAs. It's a good thing nobody has necro'd some of those May/June bullpen debates, I recall a few fans suggesting it would be absurd to replace relievers who were so effective despite not striking anyone out.

[Mike Sixel]

 

It was especially easy to forecast Thompson, Graham and Boyer regressing. Boyer managed to keep his lucky streak through the end of the year but the other two finished with 5.00 ERAs. It's a good thing nobody has necro'd some of those May/June bullpen debates, I recall a few fans suggesting it would be absurd to replace relievers who were so effective despite not striking anyone out.

 

Once again proving that "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" is one of the most damaging phrases every invented in business.

[TheLeviathan]

 

If they had a "lucky month" of May, then they must've had an unlucky month from mid-July to mid-August when they went 9-21. Take away those two month-long streaks, and you're left with a .514 win pct. (54-51 record), nearly identical to what they finished 2015 with.

 

Ashbury pretty much covered it all, but know that it is possible they have another unsustainable/lucky month next year.  No one is asking them to apologize for it, but the performance on the field resulted in a flukey amount of wins.

 

It's unlikely to happen again so it's reasonable to assume those wins aren't reliable to plan on carrying forward.  After that it's all about how far out on the limb you want to go with the young guys and that is an incredibly erratic thing to predict.

[James Richter]

The group they've assembled so far should be able to win 80-85. I wouldn't be surprised to see all 5 AL Central teams finish with between 77-87 wins, so that would put them in the midst of a fun race.

[Twodogs]

77 wins

[h2oface]

88.

[NoCryingInBaseball]

85 wins.