Mains: Why PECOTA hates your favorite team
From SABR member Rob Mains at Baseball Prospectus on February 11, 2020:
The provenance of the quote “I don’t care what people say about me as long as they spell my name right” is murky. George M. Cohan is said to have said something like it. So is P.T. Barnum. Maybe it was Will Rogers, or Mae West, or W.C. Fields, or Mark Twain, or Oscar Wilde. We don’t know.
Point is, they were spelling Baseball Prospectus’ name, and PECOTA’s, right last year at this time. We projected the Cubs for last place in the National League Central. The Cubs, well, they noticed. Our projection became fodder for outraged columnists, sports talk radio, Cubs players, Theo Epstein, and even the printed schedule for the team’s first day of full-squad workouts in spring training.
Read the full article here: https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/57021/why-pecota-hates-your-favorite-team-2020-edition/
Originally published: February 13, 2020. Last Updated: February 13, 2020.