Aug 21, 2016; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Kyle Frederick Snyder (USA), red, is declared the winner over Albert Saratov (ROM) in a men
I’m declaring a winner! The 2016 Over/Under contest was stranger than ever before, but we will show you the results and put a wrap on it this morning.
It’s the Atlanta Braves‘ fault, of course.
The contest questions had answers that came out just about right, but only after a tumultuous, tortuous season that ultimately made most of us happy to finish… 68-93.
To repeat from yesterday, the goal for setting the answers up was to try and guess points at which participants would be 50% on one side and 50% on the other. That part turned out to be a tough chore, as you’ll see.
But let’s see how this went down…
Team Questions
T1: How many games will the Braves win?
The correct answer was 69 or fewer – an option selected by only 25.7% of respondents. Frankly, I’m glad that most were more optimistic. But over that last 2 week stretch, 70 seemed almost attainable!
>> Our winner did not get this one correct… one of only 2 incorrect answers out of the 15 questions.
T2: How many players on the Opening Day 25-man roster will also be on the 25-man list on August 31st
Again, a definite minority got this right: 28.7% guessed 17 or better… which was a rough question since that number was exactly 17.
T3: Total team stolen bases (was 69 in 2015).
The right answer was “79 or fewer” with 75 being the actual number. 43.4% got this right… and as I suggested yesterday, I think Replay Review played a big factor in keeping this from being right at that 79/80 point.
T4: Total Team Runs Scored in 2016.
The Braves put 76 more runs on the board in 2016 than 2015 – and of course much of that increase came in the season’s second half. 77.9% of you thought (correctly) that they’d break the 600 mark. That looked in danger early on, but the final tally was 649.
T5: How many International free agents will be signed between July 2nd and October 1st?
We knew back in the Spring that the Braves intended to go big and bust the budget Internationally. The question was just ‘how big’? I feel comfortable in declaring that the team signed 16 sixteen-year-olds this Summer (with the explanatory note from yesterday).
That 16th signee flipped the answer to this question: only 21.3% guessed that the Braves would sign this many players – but congratulations to Gordon Blakeley and his staff for digging hard and landing an impressive array of talent.
>> This was the only other question that our winner missed!
Sep 9, 2016; Atlanta, GA, USA; Atlanta Braves shortstop Dansby Swanson (2) celebrates a run with first baseman Freddie Freeman (5) off of a RBI single by third baseman Adonis Garcia (not pictured) in the fifth inning of their game against the New York Mets at Turner Field. Mandatory Credit: Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports
Hitter Questions
H1: How many games does Freddie Freeman play in 2016?
This result surprises me a bit. Most of you thought he’d make it to 135 or more games (it was 158). This over/under number was selected with the purpose of trying to make you think about whether his injured wrist from 2015 would hold up… and obviously it did. 75.7% believed it would.
H2: How many Braves’ batters will hit at least 10 homers in 2016?
The breaking point on this question was 4: 4 or more or 3 and fewer. It was exactly 4 (Freeman, Garcia, Markakis, Kemp) and 66.9% agreed with that… though probably no one had an inkling that 12 homers would have come from Matt Kemp in a Braves’ uniform.
H3: Which offensive category will the Braves do best in, relative to ranking vs. the rest of the league?
The team was best in terms of strikeouts… 9th overall, which is a good position. They struck out 1240 times for the year. The Angels were best at 991 (116 fewer than the 2nd place Giants), which just goes to show that it’s not exactly an indicator of success… but the worst teams for K’s were the Brewers (1543), Padres (1500), and Rays (1482).
This was a 3-way question, along with walks and ground-into-double-plays. Still, a majority got this right: 55.9%. Nicely done.
H4: Team batting average
.255 was the actual number with a whopping 89.7% thinking that the Braves would exceed .253. Given the .251 clip from 2015 and the abysmal start to 2016… it’s pretty remarkable that Atlanta got to that number.
H5: Total Team Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) metric
Many were probably thinking that without Andrelton Simmons’ presence, this would go down from 2015. Most were right… 64.7% figured it would be -17 or worse. It was pretty ugly: -37. Looking forward to getting that back up toward at least the 2015 level next season.
Pitching Questions
P1: Team Record in 1-Run Games
It was 21-22… not quite a Winning record, but darn close. Most of you chose the optimism route… so only 33.8% got it right.
P2: Number of Pitchers with 10 Wins or More
“None” was the right answer, unfortunately. Again, only 31.6% guessed pessimis—, uh, correctly. It would have taken 2 double-digit winners to flip this question… only Folty (9) got that close.
P3: Number of Pitchers with at least 150 innings
“2 or fewer” was correctly guessed by 67.6% of the participants… which makes me wonder if 1/3rd of y’all were paying attention to your answer on the previous question!
P4: Bullpen ERA in 2016
A 3.95 season-long bullpen ERA definitely comes in at “4.00 or lower” and 52.9% got this right… and this was the closest we came to that goal of a 50-50% split on the answers. We’ll take it!
P5: Total Number of Pitchers used in 2016. Was 37 in 2015.
It was 35 in 2016… so the “33 or more” answer was correct. 44.9% agreed and got that tally mark added to their own personal ‘win total’ for this contest.
The Tie-Breakers
TB1: Date on which Erick Aybar is traded
Largely because of his early play, Aybar stuck around until August 16th – a full 2 weeks+ after the non-waiver trade deadline. One person in our survey nailed this, but the answers were literally all over the board.
I had expected a lot of answers toward the last 2 couple of weeks in July – and that was the case. A few dozen people thought that Aybar would not be traded at all, and that skewed the average error to 52 days. The Median is probably a better indicator here, and that was 33 days… or roughly July 14th.
TB2: How many of these players will be traded before end of season: JJohnson, KJohnson, Grilli, Bourn, Markakis, Beckham, Pierzynski, Norris, Chacin?
This ended up being “5 or more” with the average guess being 3.7 of these players being traded (and I would guess that the ‘0.7″ part refers to Pierzynski). 24.3% nailed this one.
TB3: Highest Finish in Rookie of Year Voting for any Braves’ player
As noted yesterday, the balloting has not been counted, but I believe it is safe to declare that no Braves’ rookie will finish in the Top 5 for ROY, so those answering “Lower than 5th place” get the nod here.
The average answer was between 4th and 5th place, which accounts for a bunch of the correct answers on this one: 47.1%, to be precise.
Oct 22, 2016; Chicago, IL, USA; Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts raises the National League Championship Trophy after game six of the 2016 NLCS playoff baseball series at Wrigley Field. At right is President of Baseball operations Theo Epstein. Cubs win 5-0 to advance to the World Series. Mandatory Credit: Jerry Lai-USA TODAY Sports
Awards Ceremony
More from Tomahawk Take
(cue up the Olympic theme music)
Not only did our winner get 13 of the 15 questions right, s/he also nailed 2 of the 3 tie-breakers (which were unnecessary) while missing the Aybar trade date by just 18 days – well under the median result. It was a dominant effort.
At this time, I only know our winner by the email moniker “ysylee“. We will be sending ysylee a signed Julio Teheran card… plus maybe another goodie or so… in recognition of this feat. But I’m not done here…
How Good Was 13 of 15?
Consider that most of the Over/Under calls were darn close to a coin flip. The worse one might have been the Defensive Runs Saved question… and one question had a 3-way answer to it.
If you consider the odds of getting the 13 correct that this entry achieved – based on the percentages of correct answers received by all contestants – then there was a 0.027% chance of getting all of those right.
That’s actually much longer odds than flipping a coin 15 times and getting 13 Heads: 0.3%.
When you add in the tie-breakers, then likelihood of this result is essentially off the chart – a very impressive answer set indeed.
A few of the Others…
We sincerely appreciate all those who entered back at the end of Spring Training… it was a record turnout! Hopefully we’ll throw this together again next Spring.
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