Here´s To a Good Series
by dylanj on Jun 28, 2007 12:15 PM CDT
44 comments
Just stopping in to say hello
First off, congrats on your season so far pre season most of my fellow sabr inclined cubs fans figured the only question is when your teams young talent would mature and be ready to take the divison most of us only hoping it would be in 08.
Second, this is by far the best SB nation blog in terms of SABR usage and a more scientific examination of your team i myself am not a BCB reader but am aware of Beyond the Boxscore which is how i found this site.
We were discussing over in cubland the other day wheter a true Cubs Brewers rivarly exists. I do not live near Chicago or Milwaukee so I dont know wheter the entier Wrigley North hoo haa actually bothers Brewers fans or if its just bullshit. To me, the rivarly exists only in the sense that your the class of the central and therefore our hopes of winning rest on your team suffering some terrific collapse. Unlike the Cards if both our teams were awful (which has been the precedent) i feel this series wouldnt get as much attention. For me its hard to really dislike a team that is building a foundation the right way, with young talented contract controlled prospects and a sprinkling of FA added on. Frankly many of us would have prefered to dynamite our core last year and rebuild in a similar fashion but we all know what happened instead. For cubs fans we are painfully aware that in the next 2-3 years your team will improve and stay cost efficent while ours will age and the contracts become near untradable.
So as we head into a series that for my team is season defining and for yours is important yet lets face it you could get swept and still have a near 5 game lead I just wanted to stop in a say hello and hopefully both our teams have a nice reminder of the season.
Fridays matchup of Gallardo and Hill should be really awesome as both dominated the PCL and both are some of the most exicting young pitchers in the NL or really all of baseball.
anyways, cheers and nice blog.
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Well That Was Nice!
NOW I consider it a rivalry!
wow
heres hoping for a good series as well
Sucessfull Series
If you would tell me right now that the Brewers would go into Wigley and take 1, I would take that in a heartbeat. It is not that I am afraid of the Cubs, they are playing better ball now--if you throw out that 6 run inning--but if the Cubs win two, they only make up one in the standings and are just @ .500.
That being said, hopefully the Crew goes down there and beats up on the Cubs and send them into the downward spiral all their fans are waiting for.
I have to say
Anyway, I wish you luck in your personal endeavors, and hope your team actually learns to take a walk. Cheers!
by hyattff2003 on Jun 28, 2007 2:37 PM CDT reply actions
lou
I consider it
That didn't read right
Jumped to the Cubs blog
Gallardo vs. current Cubs
At Iowa:
Fontentot was 0-5, 1BB, 1SO this year
Pagan was 0-6, 2SO
Hill was 0-3, 1SO
LIES
Good times!
questions
Braun- While certainly a top prospect with a bright future he has been aided thus far by a unsustainable BAPIP and will very likely regress when his good luck tempers that being said, as a team the brewers have a slighly below average BAPIP therfore the decrease in production from braun should be coutered by others reverting to the mean.
Schedule- You have played an easy (your det and min. series were impressive) and home based schedule so far, and your home record is simply amazing. more games on the road where you struggle a bit more should help the cubs long odds.
There is always the looming Ben Sheets injury to worry about but this year with the arrival of Gallardo you have the deepest rotation in the central so if he does get injured it wont be as big of a deal as years past.
Mean Reversion- I dont mean this in a demaning way but looking at the stats and in general the Brewers have overperformed. I will be very shocked to see a second half where you play much over .500. But cheer up! You dont need to play a game over .500 to win this divison. One thing you have to keep in mind is just because your team got very lucky in april doesnt mean you will get unlucky later.
Mean Reversion
As for the vets on the team, I would say they are proforming pretty much up to what is expected, maybe a little lower.
Answers
- BABIP is not as big a deal for hitters. While it can show bad luck for a pitcher, good hitters will have higher BABIP.
- Braun has a solid 21.3% line drive rate, decent 39.4% GB rate, and has a good 16.4% HR/F rate. Basically he hits a lot of line drives and ground balls, and the a good portion of the flies he hits go out. Its a small ample size, but one look at his swing lets you know hitting is not going to be a problem.
I'm not one of the people concerned about Sheet's health. He was injury free for 4 straight years, before he some fluky injuries (ear infection, back problem). But his arm is sound and I'm not relaly concerned with his health. I wouldn't put him in the Wood/Prior category.
Coincidentally the Brewers are probably sending their 3 best pitchers this series. I know most people aren't fans of Dave Bush, but he is pitching better everybody but Sheets and Gallardo.
By mean reversion, I assume you are talking about Pythagorean statistics, which we have been over ad nauseum.
Our general consensus (for the Brewer side) is that the Brewers fit the criteria of teams that out perform Pythagoras. They have balanced hitting and a good back end of the bullpen (leveraged wins). In addition the team that now has Braun and Gallardo is better than the one that Graffanino/Counsell and Elmer Dessens.
So I'm not concerned about why the Brewers have outperformed, or even why the Cubs have underperformed.
This should be a good weekend.
one
yost has been the very best manager in the bigs at limiting negative VORP this year which is VERY important to a winning team
Yes, there is a mean to revert to, all your prospects have logged hundreds or thousands of AB in the minors, your AAA team is in the PCL the class of the minor league system we can have a very good idea of where a player can perform by judging those very stats.
It is VERY possible that the pre season idea of the brewers was wrong, that you were a better team than though, however it is equally as possible that you played out of your minds the first half and will revert now either way it gives us something to look forward to watching
agreed on your pitching the cubs wont have Z and will face your 3 best (i would have loved to see a marquis vs suppan matchup of league average multi millionaires) if the cubs take 2 of 3 i will be thrilled
more thoughts
As a team, the Brewers seem to be a few wins better than they should be. David Gassko wrote an interesting piece at http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/pondering-pythagoras
and we think that what he wrote applies to the Brewers out-performing Pythagoras.
The Brewers individaully are a mixed bag. Hart, Hardy, and maybe Fielder have outperformed my expectations. Weeks and Hall have underperformed.
Suppan, Capuano and Bush have been worse than I thought as pitchers go. Villanueva has been good.
I'm interested to hear why the Cubs have underperformed. Based on Gassko's article, an unbalanced lineup and poor late inning relief could be culprits. Does that sound right?
Negative VORP
The only area where he's had room to maneuver is the bullpen, and he's made some very questionable decisions there.
by Jeff Sackmann on Jun 29, 2007 12:55 AM CDT up reply actions
Mine eyes! Mine eyes!
Please tell me that sentence ended with something pithy like "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" or "playing an underperforming veteran and sitting a more talented younger player."
Yost
by Infield Fly Rule on Jun 29, 2007 7:55 AM CDT up reply actions
regarding
we did a piece jeff a few months back which showed a correlation between managers and the limit of negative vorp, it wasnt iron clad but there was a historic link of good managers such as cox, lou ect and the limit of negative vorp. Dusty on the other hand was obvioulsy horrible and always has been Torre was the only really sucsessful manager who always had a team with high negative VORP
I dont know anything outside of that concerning Yost as a manager and limiting negative VORP isnt all there is to the job but it does help
It would be intresting to see how yost did with his other teams to see if this year is just luck or if Yost has a precedent.
Great series
Leaving Early
I'll be there on Saturday
By the way, cubsfan: even if all of your points above are correct, let's imagine the Brewers play .500 the rest of the way to finish at 88-74. For the Cubs to get there, they'd have to go 50-35 the rest of the way--a tall order for a team that isn't even at .500 yet, even one that may have been underachieving.
Congrats on playing well for six games. But let's wait a bit before suggesting your Cubbies are any threat to our boys, especially when we're even hotter than you are.
Go Brewers. Cubs are gonna get YOGAed tonight.
by Bill on Jun 29, 2007 8:38 AM CDT reply actions
reply
agreed which is why i wrote the same thing earlier .500 ball from here out wins you this divison no question, I dont believe i wrote we were a threat to you although if any other team can win this divison i would think its the cubs unless that formidable StL rotation gives you night terrors : )
don't you think
no
there has been a huge culture clash between Hendry-Dusty players and Lou´s kind of guys
For the most part its the hendry dusty guys that have fucked this team over so far Eyre, Izturis, Jacque, Barrett, Wade Miller all of these guys would have played all year long under Dusty but Lou has put their asses along with their contracts in other towns or on the bench
Look for Hendry to be fired once new ownership takes over and then things will really get better
over-performing.
1b d. lee, .421/.511 -- .425
2b fontenot, .434/.704 -- .441
ss theriot, .316/.326 -- .286
3b ramirez, .349/.539 -- .299
rf floyd, .379/.424 -- .345
cf pie, .280/.364 -- .272
lf soriano, .353/.551 -- .342
c k. hill, .273/.333 -- .219
rotation, ERA/FIP -- BABIP
hill - 3.13/4.51 --.238
marshall 2.44/4.17 --.254
lilly 4.03/3.94 --.274
zambrano 4.20/4.83 --.279
marquis 3.46/4.67 --.253
-----------
to me it looks only like lilly and aram are legit and you can expect regression from everyone else who isn't already sucking. that positive run differential can only go down.
Look for Hendry to be fired once new ownership takes over and then things will really get better
Next year is your year then? :)
not sure
of course mike fontenot isnt going to hit .400, but Pie and his .227 line is overperforming? in reality he is one of the starters most suffering from bad luck with his bapip along with theriot.
Lee is a really intresting case, he lacks his power this year yet has maintained a really really high bapip for the entire season due to alot of line drive doubles nobody is really sure if this new approach is because his wrist wont allow him to take the ball deep or what.
Our rotation is due for a negative mean reversion for sure, Marquis is already in the middle of that, Hill is always going to have a weird Bapip because he is a big time flyball pitcher but Zambrano is going to be Zambrano and Lilly should be a little better IF he continues to hold his new walk rate which is half of what it usually is.
Ive read a few of your posts and you seem to lack a full grasp of some of these concepts like the adjusted W3 ratings and when you claimed the cubs would only add 5 winw. Soriano, a full season of Lee add that almost by themselves to say nothing of having the likes of Cedeno, Neifi, Womack ect out of our lineup.
Oh, snap!
Oh no you didn't!
i
1060 has been running a win expectancy based on that very formula for the brewers and cubs and thus far has been able to predict every hot and cold streak for BOTH our teams before they happened for a month (but this is still VERY early and has almost no shot at being this accurate forever)
first order or third order?
two exercises:
- pick a team, any team, plot expected first order win percentage and actual win percentage on the y-axis and game number on the x-axis. notice anything interesting?
- run the correlations between expected winning percentage and actual winning percentage at any point in any season and at the end of the season. How accurate is "one of the more accurate ways to predict"? How much more accurate is it than using record to predict record?
wow.
Ive read a few of your posts and you seem to lack a full grasp of some of these concepts like the adjusted W3 ratings and when you claimed the cubs would only add 5 winw.
ouch, that wasn't very nice. What's "adjusted w3 ratings"?? i've never heard of that. i predicted the cubs would win 71 games pre-season. how does that relate to "adjusted w3 ratings"?
Our rotation is due for a negative mean reversion for sure
Yep, and good point about Hill. So while he'll maintain a low BABIP do you think it's stay below .240? Also, can you think of any other luck stats that might show a mean reversal? I'll give you a hint it's four characters and can be rearanged to form: B%LO
Lee is a really intresting case, he lacks his power this year yet has maintained a really really high bapip for the entire season due to alot of line drive doubles nobody is really sure if this new approach is because his wrist wont allow him to take the ball deep or what.
Weird? right? that his power hasn't match that anomaly of a season in 2005 yet is right around his career numbers, a little lower, for all his other years. especially in this power-comes-on-late era of baseball where 31 years old rarely regress with regards to power.
All his numbers are right in line. LD/GB/FB, BB%, K%. He's hit more doubles and fewer HRs, that should even out the only thing wacky is his .425 BABIP. Unsustainable.
of course mike fontenot isnt going to hit .400
Right.
but Pie and his .227 line is overperforming? in reality he is one of the starters most suffering from bad luck with his bapip along with theriot.
No, those guys fall in the sucking category. re-read above if that confuses you. That bad luck is pretty miniscule. The difference between those BABIP and the expected .290 to .310 range is not all that much, a few hits, maybe raise the batting average .15 - .25 points...
not sure where u got this from
hm. where could i have gotten baseball statistics? are they wrong?
pie
I think by now we can all be certain that 2005 was an outlier for Lee power wise, it was his career year and a fun one to watch but just as i dont believe he will ever be a 40 HR man again i dont think he will finish the season under 20. I expect his power to rise as his BA drops somewhere near the .300 mark. But his bapip this year is very very weird/intresting.
As for Hill, its really early but two things
He is most comparable to Zito who was able to maitain a low bapip for most of his productive (non Giant) years. Hill is 27 and is probally the best he is ever going to be so its quite possible he keeps it lower than average and doesnt suffer a dramatic reversion, only the Padres have really hit him this year but No i dont expect Hill to stay under .240, I think a 3.50 ERA with a ton of K´s and also a ton of HR allowed is where he ends up.
i really didnt mean to seem a dick, the only things i cant agree with you on are the cubs only improving by 5 wins and the rs ra not being a good tool for prediction.
pie
No he doesn't, but he is "sucking." Besides how long will the cubs give him to turn it around? another week?
I expect his power to rise as his BA drops somewhere near the .300 mark. But his bapip this year is very very weird/intresting.
definitely, and during that regression his runs created will go down.
Hill is 27 and is probally the best he is ever going to be so its quite possible he keeps it lower than average and doesnt suffer a dramatic reversion
but some reversion and during that time, he will allow more runs than he has so far.
----
so let's recap, simple +/- system to show who we think we'll maintain their run scoring, run preventing rates, and who won't.
1b d. lee -
2b fontenot -
ss theriot +
3b ramirez
rf floyd -
cf pie +
lf soriano -
c k. hill +
hill -
marshall -
lilly
zambrano
marquis -
You don't think that the Cubs RUNS/GAME will go down, and their RUNS ALLOWED/GAME will go up? I do.
numbers
here are the cubs current numbers:
rs/g 4.60
ra/g 4.19
prediction, down and up respectively.
if
but rs ra has proved through a few years to be more accurate than petcoa or any method we currenlty have, perfect no but its what we have.
what happened was the cubs had a HUGE difference to start the year and everyone thought they would maintain it. I and most other fans knew it would regress because pre season the general idea was the cubs were a 83 win team. I still think that and with Fielder and others coming into star status quicker than i hoped the central is the brewers to lose even if the cubs have a highly improbable sweep this weekend.
71 wins
but rs ra has proved through a few years to be more accurate
I have yet to see this proved. rs/ra proves, at the end of the year to be an accurate way to estimate wins and losses. At the end of the year.
But where is this proof you speak of, that rs/ra is more accurate than "petcoa" (did you mean pecota? that predicts/projects individual performances...) at predicting the future.
Seriously though, all this Pythagorean boringness aside, don't you think, based on the numbers i showed you, that the Cubs are over-performing and can expect to score and prevent fewer runs?
I predict
Cub on Cub
Now that you mention it
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NL Central Standings
| W | L | PCT | GB | STRK | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cincinnati
|
57 | 46 | .553 | 0 | Won 2 |
|
St. Louis
|
56 | 46 | .549 | 0.5 | Lost 1 |
|
Milwaukee
|
48 | 55 | .466 | 9 | Lost 2 |
|
Chicago
|
46 | 56 | .450 | 10.5 | Lost 2 |
|
Houston
|
42 | 59 | .415 | 14 | Won 2 |
|
Pittsburgh
|
36 | 65 | .356 | 20 | Lost 1 |
(updated 7.30.2010 at 4:51 AM CDT)
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