How important is the first series of 2008?

[rluzinski]

Sometimes in baseball teams can get on a roll against splits, ie. home/away, night/day, divisional foes, etc.

 

It's easy to make that kind of observation after the fact but beyond what these splits suggest about a team's overall skill, they have no predictive value that I am aware of. What I mean is, pick the teams that overproduced the most in the first half in a season in whatever split you want (road, night, etc...) and they generally won't continue to do so in the second half.

 

Like every other Brewer fan, I want the Brewers to start off the season by embarrassing the Cubs on their own field. I will emotionally overreact to whatever happens, good or bad. But if we are talking objectively about the actual importance of the series to the team, relative to a 162 game schedule, it's most likely not going to matter much. One team will probably be one game ahead of the other, with 159 games to go.

[Gopher74]

Not because they are the Cubs, but because they are defending division champs and the team to beat and quite frankly the talk in Chicago is that there is no competition in the division. The sooner the Brewers can squash that notion, the better.

I'm not sure where you heard this, but this is definitely not the "talk" that I've heard out of chicago, or what any of my friends who are Cubs fans believe to be the case.

In fact, I'm not sure where this comes from. They may think they're going to win, just like we do up here, but they damn sure don't think they're not going to have competition for it.

 

[Tbadder]

rluzinski wrote:

It's easy to make that kind of observation after the fact but beyond what these splits suggest about a team's overall skill, they have no predictive value that I am aware of. What I mean is, pick the teams that overproduced the most in the first half in a season in whatever split you want (road, night, etc...) and they generally won't continue to do so in the second half.

Just a question. I assume almost every team plays somewhat better at home than away. But hasn't it been true the last couple of years that the Crew has been especially bad on the road? You know, so bad that it's almost unusal? I get what you're saying about splits and it makes sense, but are there exceptions and are the Brewer road woes one of them? Thanks in advance for any help on this.

[rluzinski]

I simply don't believe that it's the Brewers' collective "attitude" that has caused them to struggle on the road in recent years. It just doesn't make much sense to me. How does an entire team have one, homogenous attitude, anyway? Are they taught it in the minors? How would you teach/learn such a trait, anyway? Or did simply putting on a Brewer uniform last year cause Suppan to have an ERA over a run higher on the road than at home?

 

Of course, I can't prove my theory, just as no one else can prove the opposite. Agree to disagree I guess. I just think people are too quick to attribute qualities to an entire sports team, despite it actually being made of many, very different people.

[Time for a Miller]

As with any opening series or game played by a team I love and follow, I will probably overreact to everything. I'll over analyze every pitch and at-bat. However, I think taking one game in the series is fine as long as we make up for it later by taking 2 of 3 in a road series later. The recipe for success seems to be winning series at home and splitting on the road. As far as the road struggles I think it might be a slight product of having a young team un-use to the travel and lifestyle of being on a big league club. They don't understand the rythm and how they like to approach it. They have to worry about little tiny things just like when you travel to a new area. It is likely that the large road splits of the last few years were just an abberation, but it is odd.

[GenoSeligPrieb]

As a Chicagoan, I've got to back JBriggs. He's right.

 

As he, or JoPal can attest, there's more trepidation when Dusty's Reds are mentioned! The Brewers aren't dismissed, but when you tune into WSCR, ComCast SportsNet or WMVP, whenever the Brewers float into the discussion, the overriding notion is that 'yeah, but they lost big chunks of their bullpen, we KNOW Kendall's not the answer, and Gagne is iffy."

 

Not saying I agree, just what I hear around town.

 

"I'm not sure where you heard this, but this is definitely not the "talk" that I've heard out of chicago, or what any of my friends who are Cubs fans believe to be the case."

 

Definitely not? So...you're NOT from Chicago, Gopher74, and not privy to the local buzz every day, but you're ready to jump on JBriggs for relating what he's hearing around here? Brilliant! Maybe you can tell me whether they fixed that traffic light at Armitage and Halsted...

[Fatter than Joey]

As a Chicagoan, I've got to back JBriggs. He's right.

 

I would have to assume that JB is right as well. I know here on BF.net we have been guilty of hand-wavingly dismissing the Cubs with arguments like "They are the Cubs, they'll screw it up."

 

I can imagine the majority of Cub fans saying things like "They'll just collapse in the second half."