I Don't Care What The Cubs Do Anymore (Mostly/Sorta)

[rotoherb]

Since May 19th, Brewers' run differential: +39, Cubs run differential: +26. As it just so happens, May 19th is exactly halfway between the start of the season and today, 44 games both before and after that date. The Cubs dominated those first 44 games with a +76 run differential while the Brewers floundered to a -28. 88 games is still a small sample size when it comes to run differential. That 19-5 loss to the Cubs back at the end of April is causing a 28 run swing between the two teams. I don't think it's unreasonable that the Brewers could play even with the Cubs for the remainder of the season. Considering that both teams play each other six times out of the last 12 games of the season, just being within one or two games of the Cubs at that point will give them a legitimate shot at winning the division. Of course, if the Brewers are within a game or two of the Cubs at the end of the season then it's quite likely that the loser of those two teams will be the wild card anyway.

[pebadger]

Bumped for futher discussion. Happily bumped.

[HurricaneBraun]

Do we still care?

 

YES WE DO

 

GO D-BACKS

[rluzinski]

Obviously, I've changed my tune to some degree since I started this thread. It's important to note, however, that by any objective measure, the Cubs are still the clear favorites for the division. they were projected to be better going into the season and they have been better so far. before today's games, BP still has them as the clear favorites to win the division:

 

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/ps_oddspec.php

 

That said, WOW. Things have certainly changed. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif Fun times, for certain. I'd also like to point out that very early in this thread I said:

Recognize that it's a long shot to hit the hand but the pot odds justifies staying in the hand? That's an analogy I might be able to get behind.

There MAY have been some chinks in my rough exterior.

[BrewCityUnit]

Again, how are the Cubs the favorites? Look at the remaining schedule for both teams.

[rotoherb]

Cubs the favorites? sure I can go along with that. "Clear" favorites? I'm not sure about that. It's hard to label a team a clear favorite when the Brewers have outplayed them by +58 run differential to +33 since the middle of May and hopefully that gets wider tonight. I don't think I can stress enough how completely average Fukudome has been since April. There's as much reason to believe that this isn't the real Fukudome and not the April version. The Cubs offense has been really mediocre since the middle of May, but that huge April that they had is hiding a lot of that.

[Postseason2006]

I'll take my chances with Milwaukee's schedule and how they are playing right now. Go Zona!

[jjfanec]

The run differential stat is important but how does that stat look since June? The Cubs have given up 180 runs while the Brewers have given up 179. The Cubs have scored 199 runs while the Brews have scored 232. The Cubs differential is +19 while the Brewers is +53. That is a lead of +34 over the past two months. So, while the Cubs have been better over the course of the season according to run differential the Brewers have been much better as of late. Right now the stats would say the Brewers are the better team, at least over the past two months.

[uwisfan]

the Cubs last month is brutal compared to the Crew's. If these teams are close heading into September, the Brewers should be able to pull away.

 

Also, the Cubs are dangerously close to a complete meltdown right now. Their bats have been suspciously quiet, and their pen is wearing down or even collapsing.

[Fear The Chorizo]

After all that's happened, the Crew appears to still be a game behind the Cubs - It sure looks like the wheels are starting to fall off for them, but they do have a ton of talent on their roster and are about to get Soriano back.

 

Still a long, long ways to go - but it's obvious that things look much more encouraging than they did 35 games ago. What I'm most happy about is that for the first time since this thread was started is that the Brewers are sitting with the Wild Card lead a clear game ahead of St. Louis.

[Bring Back the Stein]

Listening to the sense of doom in the Cubs' announcers voice, down 9-2, is like hearing a heavenly choir. Yes, I care what they do. I want to drink their tears.

[rluzinski]

Again, how are the Cubs the favorites? Look at the remaining schedule for both teams.

 

This is what it was on July 15th:

 

http://forum.brewerfan.net/search.php?keywords=391781/t/2nd-Half-Schedule-Strength-.html

 

I'm sorry but way too much is made of schedule differences. When you do the math, it usually works out to a very small difference. I don't think think most people realize that.

 

I'm not sure about that. It's hard to label a team a clear favorite when the Brewers have outplayed them by +58 run differential to +33 since the middle of May and hopefully that gets wider tonight.

 

The point is to be the best team overall. Not the best team from whatever point makes the Brewers look the best. That's just manipulating numbers to get a desired result.

 

Fans are just infatuated with "what have you done for me lately". That's just not a way to estimate the collective talent of a team. We aren't even at the point of the season where 2008 stats are even as important as the previous two years, in terms of projecting future performance. I'm sure everyone thinks that it's silly but it's a fact. Of course, it's the same people who said the Brewers were obviously done when they were 4 games under, because they obviously didn't have what it takes. Momentum!!!

 

Ask any objective observer that knows that they are talking about and they would say that the Cubs are probably still the better team. Instead of using a subjective term like 'clear", I'll just say that the Cubs might still be 5:3 favorites to win the division over the Brewers. Of course, they were probably 10:1 favorites 2 months ago, so there's obviously a lot of volitivity(sp) in these odds. It's just a best guess. Nothing more.

 

These numbers could look silly different in 8 days, good or bad.

[HurricaneBraun]

1 GAME BACK

[jhart05]

Is it okay to stop rooting for the cubs against certain teams now?? http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

 

 

GO CREW!!!

[Fear The Chorizo]

Russ, I agree that the odds could make a huge swing over the next 8-9 games...the Cubs had better get their ship righted quickly, because after tomorrow they have 4 games against a suddenly hot Marlins' pitching staff (and a roster that hits lots of homers) at Wrigley, then four against the good guys at Miller Park.

 

Worst case scenario for the Brewers is that they're 2-3 games behind the Cubs heading into that four game set - the way the teams are playing right now, I'd be shocked if the actual scenario isn't a tied division lead or the Brewers leading by a game.

[gregmag]

I'm sorry I don't know where to find this, but does Russ or somebody else have the numbers on . . . I'm not sure what the proper name is for the stat, but run input differential? I know BP does this, looks at the raw inputs for scoring as a sort of second-order pythagorean analysis. The Brewers obviously have changed the dynamics of the race, and I'm curious whether the Brewers' early, extreme deficit in run differential relative to the Cubs might have had something to do with the Brewers' getting less, or the Cubs' getting more, runs than either team "should" have expected from their raw performances.

 

Here's another off-the-cuff hypothesis: maybe teams with a greater percentage of their value tied up in young talent tend toward greater swings away from projections. Young players follow developmental arcs that are somewhat predictable, but certainly less so than the arcs of older players. The same thing seems to be true, for different reasons, of recently injured players -- because they have limited useful samples from which to project. Ben Sheets has been hurt a lot the past few years; Manny Parra has been hurt and young. A reasonable assessment of talent before this season would have put those guys substantially behind somebody like Zambrano in terms of projected value -- and maybe they'll yet fall off -- but in retrospect they're exactly the kind of players who might provide less-than-sound grounds for confident projections. OTOH, the Brewers' young hitters seem not to have deviated much from what we reasonably might have expected; none is really busting out (Hardy seems closest), and Weeks is underperforming somewhat.

 

Again, these are just off-the-cuff thoughts. I believe in statistical analysis, but I also believe that departures from expectations happen for reasons, and that attributing departures to dumb luck -- while it's a more important factor than many people realize -- sometimes provides too ready an alternative to exploring other possible reasons.

 

What fun this is, on so many levels . . .

 

Greg.

[rluzinski]

Teams are hot into they aren't . They are cold until they aren't . Vegas doesn't care about hot streaks and neither do I.

[rotoherb]

The point is to be the best team overall. Not the best team from whatever point makes the Brewers look the best. That's just manipulating numbers to get a desired result.

And my point wasn't to manipulate numbers, it was to show that for an extended period of time the Brewers have actually been better than the Cubs. Not for a few days or a few weeks or a month, but for two-thirds of the season. As time goes on, what the Cubs did in April becomes less and less meaningful. It's not about "Momentum!!!!", and I'm not infatuated with "what have you done for me lately". It's about the current strength of a team. This is why ELO ratings systems were developed and are used for games like chess, backgammon and soccer. I don't know why you need to use mocking phrases like "Momentum!!!" and I'm pretty sure that I never said the Brewers were out of it at any point this season.

[logan82]

gregmag1 wrote:

Ben Sheets has been hurt a lot the past few years; Manny Parra has been hurt and young. A reasonable assessment of talent before this season would have put those guys substantially behind somebody like Zambrano in terms of projected value -- and maybe they'll yet fall off -- but in retrospect they're exactly the kind of players who might provide less-than-sound grounds for confident projections.

I am not sure what gets used for the preseason predections, but I seem to remember seeing Sheets only predicted to have around 25 starts. I think. If that was the case I think that would have some impact on the prediction.

[jhart05]

It's going to be all even up very soon.

 

Anything can happen after that.

[Sheets4theHOF]

I'm not much of a stat head. I know the basics, but for me the majority of enjoyment comes from watching the games and not numbers. For others breaking down the numbers is a big part of their enjoyment. That's awesome as well. It's one of the reason this is a great game.

 

Last year i remember reading all the arguments about how unlikely mathematically it was that the brewers wouldn't win the division--sounded good to me. I wanted the brewers to win. I remember the year the white sox won the world series and that during the regular season math guys in this forum talked about how lucky they were.

 

I guess my point is that for individual players and predicting their success or lack thereof; math is great. Predicting something so complex and with so many variables as a team's regular season record with math is pretty tough to do--as is predicting a division winner with over 60% of the season left--look at the mets last year.

 

I'm not knocking rluz. He'll forget more about math and statistics then i'll ever know. I'm sure this is a case in which he's glad to be wrong.

[dlk9s]

Crap. I'm going to be in Costa Rica for a week and didn't even think about the fact that we'd be playing the Cubs while I'm there. And possibly without internet access.

[rluzinski]

Sorry for the snarkiess. Some thoughts:

 

BP's ELO projections don't really make much sense. In fact, I've seen them completely dismissed by the sabermetric community. Provided you account for personal changes and injuries, there's no good justification for using a system like that. Weighting Hardy's recent perforamance greater than his April and May output is probably not going to imrpove your projection for him. Looking at the whole year is the way to go. If you want to find something to weight less, do it for his 0 and 07 numbers.

 

There's no question that the Brewers were underperforming earlier in the season, especially their offense. At one point in May, I showed that something like 7 of the 8 position players were hitting below their projection. It's no surprise that they steped it up. Conversly, while everyone knew that the Cubs were a good team, it was obvious to all that they weren't going to continue playing like a 110 win team. They were playing over their heads.

 

Despite the respective starts of the two teams, they were never THAT far away in relative talent. That doesn't mean that we just throw out he first month and a half of the season for both teams, though. Again, after accounting for injuries and personel changes, we need to look at the entire year equally. We also need to consider performances from prior years as well.

 

All things equal, I'll obviously take the team performing better today but all things aren't equal right now. The Cubs are still the better team on paper. That guarantees them nothing in July but does help their odds.

 

Finally, projections aren't predictions, unless you find a projection that says that A will beat team B 100% of the time, and you will never find that. I blame the sports talking heads, since they are obsessed with predictions. They can't say, 'The Cubs are 5:3 favorites over the Brewers.' They have to say, 'The Cubs are going to win it!' We all know that's not how sports work, especially in baseball. If it was, no one would even watch.

 

When the Brewers were 4 games under .500 two months ago, it goes without saying that the odds were low of them having the best record in the Nl for the next 2 months. Well, the improbable has happened. That uncertainty is what makes baseball fun, no? But that doesn't prove the projections wrong. Projections don't claim that improbable thing will never happn. Quite the opposite.

 

Projections can change quickly, and I never pretended otherwise in this thread. Very early I said something like, '... unless the Brewers can get within 2 or 3 games...' Well, guess what?

[FVBrewerFan]

All things equal, I'll obviously take the team performing better today but all things aren't equal right now. The Cubs are still the better team on paper. That guarantees them nothing in July but does help their odds.

 

When the Brewers were 4 games under .500 two months ago, it goes without saying that the odds were low of them having the best record in the Nl for the next 2 months. Well, the improbable has happened. That uncertainty is what makes baseball fun, no? But that doesn't prove the projections wrong. Projections don't claim that improbable thing will never happn. Quite the opposite.

Projections can change quickly, and I never pretended otherwise in this thread. Very early I said something like, '... unless the Brewers can get within 2 or 3 games...' Well, guess what?

I don't believe the Cubs are the better team on paper. If you look at the entire season stats that would be true. But neither team is the same team they were in April and May. So many things have changed. Who is the better team on paper for the next 60 games? I would give the Brewers the edge, factoring in Sabathia and many other variables.

 

Secondly, I don't think the problem with projections is limited to discounting the improbable. I don't think projecting the Brewers winning the division back in May was improbable. As likely as the Cubs? No, of course not. They were 6, 7 games behind them. The problem is people incorrectly use current stats to project future results. And there are far too many variables in sports to make such conclusions. Injuries and trades are two huge factors alone. But the Cubs/Brewers projection back in May missed another huge factor. Not only did the Cubs have a home heavy schedule, the strength of schedule was below avergae- and more importantly they missed their share of facing #1 and #2 pitchers. All of that has evened out now, and "we are where we are."

[FVBrewerFan]

I guess my point is that for individual players and predicting their success or lack thereof; math is great. Predicting something so complex and with so many variables as a team's regular season record with math is pretty tough to do--as is predicting a division winner with over 60% of the season left--look at the mets last year.

Or look at the Rockies last year. For that matter, every year there are 2 or 3 division winners that "shouldn't" have won the division based on early projections.