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March 4, 2009

Champions of the World

The WBC Odds Report

by Clay Davenport

Three years have passed since Japan and Korea stole the thunder of the first World Baseball Classic; Korea went undefeated until they were beaten by Japan in the semi-finals, while Japan escaped three losses to beat Cuba in the final. This year's tourney features the same 16 teams that played in 2006, again grouped into four pools of four teams each. Unlike in 2006, though, teams will not play a round-robin tournament, but will instead play in a double-elimination format, with the top two teams from each group advancing. That will create two more four-team groups, who will again play a double-elimination tournament with the top two teams advancing from each group. The final four will then play single-elimination games to decide the winner.

The overwhelming majority of players in the WBC either do now, or have, played in the US major or minor leagues, for whom we have extensive, reliable data that describe their contributions pretty effectively. We also have good data for the leagues in Cuba, Japan, and Korea, so the players from those countries and leagues aren't entirely mysterious to us. That still leaves four teams—China, Taiwan, South Africa, and the Netherlands—with a significant number of players who have not played in a "top" league. Not surprisingly, they rate as the four weakest teams in the tournament, and were a combined 2-10 in the 2006 tourney.

Because of the quality of the data, we can use the performance of players in the majors, minors, Cuba, Japan, and Korea to build a solid composite rating for each team. Even the teams with few players from known leagues have at least some players, and we can reasonably assume that they are among the best players from their countries. We can use those composite ratings to play the WBC a million times, following the scheduled format of games, and see who wins.

The strongest team in the tournament, by these ratings, belongs to the United States. Other teams have top players that equal those on the US roster, but none can match the depth of the US at every position; all of the backups, combined, would be the fourth- or fifth-best team in the tourney. If they have a disadvantage, it's that their four-team pool is the strongest overall; the fourth-best team in their group, Italy, would rank third in any other pool. That holds the Americans' chances of getting out of the first round to 85.8 percent, only the fifth-best figure in the tournament, but those figures zoom to 65.9 percent to get out of the second round, with a 29.4 percent chance to win it all. That does assume that their top two starters, Jake Peavy and Roy Oswalt, are healthy and pitch like their usual selves.

The Dominican Republic team has a 91.9 percent chance of advancing from the first round, 59.7 percent in the second, and 18.8 percent of finishing up as WBC champions. This is the product of an equally stacked roster, starting with Hanley Ramirez and David Ortiz, but grading down to a relatively weak Willy Taveras in center field. Their pitching should be strong, but it's just solid across the board, as opposed to overpowering; Edinson Volquez is the only man on the roster who stands out as potentially dominant.