Grading Experts

So with the end of the post-season near, let's grade the ESPN experts on how well they predicted the outcome of the 2010 MLB season. Scoring is as such, one point for each correct pick, 0.5 pt if incorrect, but the team still made the playoffs.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/preview10/news/story?page=10expertpicks

Jorge Arangure Jr. 3
Matthew Berry 3
Steve Berthiaume 3
Aaron Boone 4
Jim Caple 5.5+
Tristan H. Cockcroft 3.5
Jerry Crasnick 2.5
Richard Durrett 2.5
Gordon Edes 4
Pedro Gomez 4
Christopher Harris 2.5
Orel Hershiser 2.5
Tony Jackson 2.5
Eric Karabell 1.5
Tim Kurkjian 2.5
Keith Law 4.5
AJ Mass 2
Joe McDonald 3
Joe Morgan 2.5
Amy K. Nelson 2.5
Rob Neyer 4.5
Buster Olney 3.5
Peter Pascarelli 4
James Quintong 3.5
Karl Ravech 4
J.P. Ricciardi 3
Brendan Roberts 2.5
Mark Saxon 2.5
Jon Sciambi 2.5
Dan Shulman 4
Mark Simon 3.5
Chris Singleton 2.5
Jayson Stark 4
Rick Sutcliffe 2
Jon Weisman 4
Gene Wojciechowski 2

God, that was boring. Out of a possible 10 points, only one person did better than 50%. When one considers the actual probabilities of choosing correctly based on pure chance, it would lead to a score of 1.5 or so. When you consider that 0.5 was guaranteed if one chose either the yankees to make the playoffs in the AL, and then another point pretty much guaranteed because everyone (except four, including the guy who did the best) chose the phillies to win the east, then many of these "experts" were pretty useless. I guess if they scored a four or higher, I might listen to them in the future, and probably coincidentally, 2 of the 3 guys (Keith Law and Rob Neyer) that I think provide good insight into baseball on ESPN scored higher than that, and the other (Buster Olney) was just under at 3.5. Then again, hindsight is 20/20, and so is my vision now that I got my new glasses.