Yesterday I averaged the 2012 win totals from PECOTA, Marcel, CAIRO, and Clay Davenport. Then some smart aleck commenter with the handle "gonfalon" but whose real name is probably something stupid like "Chad" or "Mike" asked:

I wonder what the aggregate projected 2011 standings were, and how they compared with the actual finish?

Which seemed like a stupid waste of time great question to me. So follow me after the jump to see how it all turned out...

Team, projected 2011 wins, actual 2011 wins, difference

AL East
Boston 95, 90 -5
New York 92, 97 +5
Tampa Bay 87, 91 +4
Baltimore 79, 69 -10
Toronto 74, 81 +7

AL Central
Minnesota 84, 63 -21
Detroit 83, 95 +12
Chicago 83, 79 -4
Cleveland 73, 80 +7
Kansas City 68, 71 +3

AL West
Texas 88, 96 +8
Oakland 85, 74 -11
Los Angeles 77, 86 +9
Seattle 72, 67 -5

NL East
Philadelphia 90, 102 +12
Atlanta 87, 89 +2
Florida 82, 72 -10
New York 80, 77 -3
Washington 73, 80 +7

NL Central
Cincinnati 85, 79 -6
St. Louis 84, 90 +6
Milwaukee 84, 96 +12
Chicago 79, 71 -8
Pittsburgh 71, 72 +1
Houston 66, 56 -10

NL West
San Francisco 88, 86 -2
Los Angeles 84, 82 -2
Colorado 84, 73 -11
San Diego 80, 71 -9
Arizona 73, 94 +21

I should mention here that the excellent Replacement Level Yankees Weblog did the heavy lifting turning player projections into team wins.

Now, I'm not one to tell you what to do (unlike some people), but perhaps you might like to speculate as to why the projection systems were so wrong about the Twins and D'backs.

(Just kidding, gonfalon. You're cool with me.)

................

Update! Thanks to Allen Barra for mentioning this post at The Village Voice.

I forgot to note that I used Bill James projections instead of Clay Davenport's when I did the averages this time around, just because I couldn't find last year's Davenport Translations. Again, it was Replacement Level Yankees Weblog that ran multiple (thousands, I'm sure) season simulations using the various player projection systems (including their own CAIRO) to come up with team projections.

Every year I figure the average win totals from several projection systems for a game called Predictatron, which was invented by our own Jim Baker (a public version ran at Baseball Prospectus in 2007). I find the projections useful, though last year wasn't a good one for the data. Allen Barra is also a Predictatroner--indeed, he won the contest in 2009, a result I still regard with equal parts bewilderment and hot, seething rage.