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.
Pittsburgh Pirates
Vegas projection: 85.5 wins
My projection: 86 wins
Current record/pace: 53-35 (98-win pace)
Season-to-date pricing: 90.4 wins
What's gone right: Those looking for regression have been proved wrong; the Pirates are every bit as good as the team that has averaged 91 wins the past two seasons. In fact, based on run differentials, there's a very strong case to be made that this is the strongest Pittsburgh squad of the three.
All that youth and consistency has translated into a defense ranked in the top 10 for the third straight year. The defense has been the reason the team's runs allowed has consistently stayed below projected ERAs of the pitching staff the past three years, and this year it's paid off to the greatest magnitude because the 2015 staff has accumulated the highest strikeout rate and the lowest walk rate of the three units.
It certainly looks unsustainable when you see three different starters (Gerrit Cole, A.J. Burnett, and Francisco Liriano) with ERAs under 3.00, but the truth is the combination of their skill sets with the defense actually makes that level of performance sustainable. To be fair, under 3.00 may be sustainable, but no one should expect Burnett to maintain an under-2.00 ERA.
What's gone wrong: The Pirates aren't getting enough offensive production from their corner positions and that's a problem if the pitching or defense slips and they're put in a position of needing to win anything other than low-scoring games. The Pirates are 27th in runs scored and more alarmingly 26th in ISO, essentially a measure of extra-base hits. That is way too low for a team with a number of highly touted players near their peak age. Pittsburgh has gotten a total of 24 home runs from three traditional sources of power -- first base, right field and third base -- which is well below the MLB average of 37. The Pirates are more or less a two-man show on offense, and if they really want to establish themselves as a credible playoff threat they need to get production from someone other than Andrew McCutchen and Starling Marte.
Second-half outlook: A glimpse at the Cardinals capsule shows I'm on record with saying St. Louis won't win the division. So why the Cubs over the Pirates? Undoubtedly Pittsburgh has the talent to win the division, and, in fact, I do think the Pirates will end up in front of the Cardinals. The call, though, comes down to price and value.
Despite trailing the Cardinals all year, and spending the first quarter of the season under .500, over the first 81 games of the season, the Pirates were exactly as expensive to back on a daily basis as St. Louis (see "season-to-date pricing" above). The Pirates may run down the Cardinals and they are highly likely to make the playoffs, but the value is in backing the Cubs the rest of the way.