January is nearing its finish, which suggests it’s prediction time..
Everyone shall be getting within the act. Preseason magazines (the few that stay), sports activities web sites, columnists, bloggers. We’ll quickly be swamped with forecasts for Main League Baseball’s 2024 season.
And, sure, I’ll be contributing to the flood, as all the time. The subsequent six weeks will function division-by-division rundowns. Every Tuesday will evaluation the most effective (and worst) performances inside a specified division in 2023, and the next Friday will supply my 2024 forecast for a similar golf equipment.
Right here’s the schedule:
January 30, February 2: American League East
February 6, 9: American League Central
February 13, 16: American League West
February 20, 23: Nationwide League East
February 27, March 1: Nationwide League Central
March 5, 8: Nationwide League West
A brand new installment will arrive in your electronic mail upon posting
I’ll be utilizing the identical prediction system that I’ve employed since 2021. It’s based mostly on a pc program that matches every staff’s report through the previous three seasons (on this case, 2021-2023) towards the corresponding marks for each membership that performed through the period of free company, which started in 1976.
The concept is to seek out parallels from the previous that may supply hints concerning the future.
You would possibly surprise if such a system can account for the large offseason adjustments often wrought by free company, such because the Los Angeles Dodgers’ spending orgy this winter.
Nicely, my program has been tailor-made with such an eventuality in thoughts. The gathering of comparability golf equipment is confined to the years since free company was instituted, a span when such upheavals have turn out to be frequent.
And don’t neglect that costly acquisitions usually have surprisingly little influence on the underside line. You have seen what’s occurred to the Yankees currently, haven’t you?
Counting on historical past will not be an ideal system — I’ve made my share of forecasting errors the previous three years — nevertheless it works surprisingly effectively a lot of the time.
Let’s mud off the crystal ball subsequent week.
