We're halfway through the 2015 Major League Baseball season, which means wins have been banked, the St. Louis Cardinals are dusting off the playoff-ticket printing press and the Philadelphia Phillies have confirmed tee times for the first week in October.
But most importantly for our purposes, spring training projections can be evaluated because history tells us at least 70 percent of October's participants have been identified. MLB's 10-team postseason is only four years old, but from 2012 to 2014, a minimum of seven of the 10 teams slotted for the playoffs at the All-Star break each year have made it to the postseason. Overall, 22 of the 30 teams that made the playoffs would have also made the playoffs if the season ended at that year's All-Star break.
Of course, attempting to identify the other teams is the fun part of handicapping. So let's dig into the first half of the 2015 season, compare results with expectations and possibly find some over- and undervalued teams for the next three months.
Note: Records are reflective of all games played through Sunday.
All statistics are through each team's 81st game.
Season-to-date pricing adds the implied win probability from the money line of each team's first 81 games and converts it to 162 games. For instance, a team that was minus-150 (60 percent win probability) in each of its first 81 games would be valued as a 97.2 (60 percent x 162) win team.
Arizona Diamondbacks
Vegas projection: 72 wins
My projection: 69 wins
Current record/pace: 42-45 (78-win pace)
Season-to-date pricing: 77.4 wins
What has gone right: Building around MVP candidate Paul Goldschmidt, Arizona has surrounded its slugger with a lineup full of under-30 talent which gives Diamondbacks fans reason for optimism in the not-too-distant future. Often the key to exceeding expectations is to simply not have anyone who, well, stinks. If a team's worst players are simply below-average major leaguers but above-replacement-level talent (i.e. a 1.0 WAR player), it's amazing how many wins they can accumulate, especially if they have one true star. That's the blueprint Arizona seems to have in place right now.
The current go-to lineup surrounding Goldschmidt has only one player, Chris Owings, playing below average (2.0 WAR). Further, if A.J. Pollock, who has always been good, is taking the next step to becoming a 5.0/6.0 WAR player, the Diamondbacks have a lineup good enough to make the playoffs.
Even more encouraging is how the Diamondbacks are scoring runs. You might think that with Goldschmidt's bombs often visible on Baseball Tonight that Arizona plays long ball in the desert air. That's not the case. Arizona is currently 15th in home runs but fifth in OBP. This is clearly an offense to be aware of the rest of the year.
With youth can come a lot of inconsistency and headaches, but one thing it also brings is athleticism. While the craftiness of a savvy veteran can translate into success on the mound or at the plate, age is never kind to fielders. So it's not surprising that the remake of the all-under-30 Diamondbacks has had a positive effect in the field as well. For the first time since I've tracked adjusted defensive efficiency via play-by-play results, Arizona is an above-average team.
What has gone wrong: The offense may be playoff ready but there still needs to be an overhaul of the pitching staff. Arizona has the fifth-worst ERA in baseball and while some of that can be explained by the environment (13 percent HR/FB ratio, for instance) most of it falls on the skill sets of the pitchers.
If you play in an environment that turns a large amount of fly balls into home runs, it would be helpful to stock your staff with groundball pitchers. Instead, Arizona's starters have below-average ground ball tendencies. (Given that Brandon Webb won a Cy Young Award, and had two other runner-up finishes with Arizona, you would think this would be obvious to the front office.) Of course it would also help if pitchers could avoid having the ball hit at all, but the rotation is 23rd in strikeout rate. All of which is to say when you sign a guy like Jeremy Hellickson you are hanging a "bet against" sign on the team every time he takes the mound, and for my money at least, oddsmakers can't make their opponent too expensive on those occasions.
Second-half outlook: Until the Diamondbacks get a better rotation or until they have an underrated starter with a promising peripheral skill set -- I'm looking at you, Rubby de la Rosa -- I can't find a reason to back them. At least not while oddsmakers have them pegged as the 77-win team they appear to be. Still, congratulations are in order for the franchise; they've taken big steps to true contention on one side of the ledger. They need to spend the next nine months figuring out a way to upgrade the pitching staff.