IST: Reds @ Cubs

[brett05]

I spoke about it last year...the Sophomore Slump. Bryant is definitely bucking that stereotype.

 

[ZAN]

You know why the "record vs. teams over .500" stat is useless? Because it's useless (yes, redundancy) and has 0 value as a metric to the status of any given team at a given time.
The Cubs are/were in a slump. So pundits and message board people who think the sky is falling will cherry pick anything they can to support their cause.

Case in point:

The Cubs lose on Thursday to the Mets. People start the dialogue that they "can't beat teams" over .500 citing their record of 14-14 vs. teams over .500 after that loss. Okay fair enough. So what happens Friday, Saturday, and Sunday? We lose 3 more to a team that's over .500. Then we beat the Reds yesterday. But along the way, the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals, bringing their record to 42-41...which is over .500. So now, we factor in the Cubs' 7-1 record against the Pirates into the equation. The Cubs now have a 22-18 record against teams over .500 despite being 1-3 since the day people started cherry picking that stat.

It's a useless stat. No one was saying anything about the Cubs not being able to beat teams .500+ when they swept the Pirates and Nationals back to back a month ago. But a month later the bullpen and rotation have begun to regress to the mean, we've had 2-3 key injuries on the offense, and we've been experimenting with a few rookies and people go ahead and find something to latch to and make shit seem worse than it is.

People just need to accept that this is baseball. The '27 Yankees had a 6 game slide at one point. The dominant Mariners lost 4 in a row at one point. Shit happens. Get used to it. We know where we are weak...and Theo is a lot smarter than we are.

We can sleep easy knowing that he probably is traveling more back channels to fix the bullpen than we have come up with as an entire forum. The rumors that we are kicking the tires on Rich Hill show that Theo sees the backsliding of Hammel starting and knows that the rotation wasn't going to pitch a full run better than the next best rotation the rest of the year.

The sky is not falling. Things will be okay. Let the All-Star break get here and we can enjoy the first day off in a long time.

 

[fatbeard]

You know why the "record vs. teams over .500" stat is useless?

The "record vs. teams over .500" stat is extremely useful to people who regularly generate bad sports thoughts.

 

[Omeletpants]

The sky is not falling. Things will be okay. Let the All-Star break get here and we can enjoy the first day off in a long time.

No one is saying the sky is falling or that the Cubs aren't a good team. But the notion presented by Cubs homers and the national media that this team rivals the great teams of all times is totally fabricated bullshit. A case could be made they are ther 3rd best team in baseball. The Cubs could win the WS or get swept in their first playoff round and neither should surprise you.

 

[ZAN]

No one is saying the sky is falling or that the Cubs aren't a good team. But the notion presented by Cubs homer and the national media that this team rivals the great teams of all times is total fabricated bullshit. The Cubs could win the WS or get swept and neither should surprise you.

Considering it's baseball, yeah. Anything can and does happen in October.

But to somewhat rip off Joe Maddon's rebuttal the other day about "beating the Reds"...being labeled the best team in baseball is better than not being the best team in baseball. At one point, the team was on an outrageous 115 game win pace. ESPN and National media are sensationalists. They hop on whatever is hot and ram it down the nation's throat. I personally don't watch ESPN though.

 

[TC in Mississippi]

You know why the "record vs. teams over .500" stat is useless? Because it's useless (yes, redundancy) and has 0 value as a metric to the status of any given team at a given time.
The Cubs are/were in a slump. So pundits and message board people who think the sky is falling will cherry pick anything they can to support their cause.

Case in point:

The Cubs lose on Thursday to the Mets. People start the dialogue that they "can't beat teams" over .500 citing their record of 14-14 vs. teams over .500 after that loss. Okay fair enough. So what happens Friday, Saturday, and Sunday? We lose 3 more to a team that's over .500. Then we beat the Reds yesterday. But along the way, the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals, bringing their record to 42-41...which is over .500. So now, we factor in the Cubs' 7-1 record against the Pirates into the equation. The Cubs now have a 22-18 record against teams over .500 despite being 1-3 since the day people started cherry picking that stat.

It's a useless stat. No one was saying anything about the Cubs not being able to beat teams .500+ when they swept the Pirates and Nationals back to back a month ago. But a month later the bullpen and rotation have begun to regress to the mean, we've had 2-3 key injuries on the offense, and we've been experimenting with a few rookies and people go ahead and find something to latch to and make shit seem worse than it is.

People just need to accept that this is baseball. The '27 Yankees had a 6 game slide at one point. The dominant Mariners lost 4 in a row at one point. Shit happens. Get used to it. We know where we are weak...and Theo is a lot smarter than we are.

We can sleep easy knowing that he probably is traveling more back channels to fix the bullpen than we have come up with as an entire forum. The rumors that we are kicking the tires on Rich Hill show that Theo sees the backsliding of Hammel starting and knows that the rotation wasn't going to pitch a full run better than the next best rotation the rest of the year.

The sky is not falling. Things will be okay. Let the All-Star break get here and we can enjoy the first day off in a long time.

You're 100% right but the thing about the record against teams over .500 is that playoff teams generally have great records against teams they should beat and somewhere in the .520-.550 range against the other teams over .500. It's how it works and always has. Once in a great while there's a crazy team that doesn't fit that pattern but that's the exception that proves the rule. I'm consistently mystified by so many people who follow baseball don't understand the ups and downs of a long season.

 

[beckdawg]

But the notion presented by Cubs homers and the national media that this team rivals the great teams of all times is totally fabricated bullshit.

Has anyone in the media said that in the past month? Fact of the matter is whether you agree or not they were playing on that sort of level to justify the talk. They fell off some like most teams do. They are in the top third of the league in time missed due to injuries and I think you can make a case that the people who've gone down for the cubs are more important than most outside of the top two starter the Angels lost. Schwarber was on a 4.5 fWAR pace last year. He's played 5 PAs. Fowler was one of the top 10 players in baseball when he went down. So on and so forth.

I guess my beef with your stance is you're justifying how they are playing today as being "what they are." And I'm not even really including Schwarber in this because he's not coming back this year. But if we're talking about this team going forward, you have Fowler coming back who has meant a hell of a lot to them in the 2nd half last year through the start of this year. For a team that has had some trouble scoring runs, having arguably the best lead off man in baseball this season back is a big deal. Additionally, the cubs bench depth right now is fairly terrible so much so that they called up Candelario, Almora and Contreras before most expected to see them. And then you have guys like Heyward and Montero who aren't hitting like they have in the past.

It'd be one thing if the team was literally having all the luck in the world and was 52-30. The cubs have had major players go down to injury more so than usual I would say as well as having several starters not hitting like they can and they still have the best record in baseball. Point here being, even without Schwarber's bat the cubs have a lot of room to grow before the playoffs and that is to say nothing of pieces they can and probably will add at the deadline.

 

[brett05]

Has anyone in the media said that in the past month? Fact of the matter is whether you agree or not they were playing on that sort of level to justify the talk. They fell off some like most teams do. They are in the top third of the league in time missed due to injuries and I think you can make a case that the people who've gone down for the cubs are more important than most outside of the top two starter the Angels lost. Schwarber was on a 4.5 fWAR pace last year. He's played 5 PAs. Fowler was one of the top 10 players in baseball when he went down. So on and so forth.

I guess my beef with your stance is you're justifying how they are playing today as being "what they are." And I'm not even really including Schwarber in this because he's not coming back this year. But if we're talking about this team going forward, you have Fowler coming back who has meant a hell of a lot to them in the 2nd half last year through the start of this year. For a team that has had some trouble scoring runs, having arguably the best lead off man in baseball this season back is a big deal. Additionally, the cubs bench depth right now is fairly terrible so much so that they called up Candelario, Almora and Contreras before most expected to see them. And then you have guys like Heyward and Montero who aren't hitting like they have in the past.

It'd be one thing if the team was literally having all the luck in the world and was 52-30. The cubs have had major players go down to injury more so than usual I would say as well as having several starters not hitting like they can and they still have the best record in baseball. Point here being, even without Schwarber's bat the cubs have a lot of room to grow before the playoffs and that is to say nothing of pieces they can and probably will add at the deadline.

I gotta disagree. They are one of the more healthy teams in the league. And the injuries have in an odd way helped the team. Got more playing time for guys like Baez and versatility for Bryant.

But the great teams do that. They get lots of "breaks." They also take advantage of them. It's baseball. It's how it works as TC says.

 

[Omeletpants]

Considering it's baseball, yeah. Anything can and does happen in October.

But to somewhat rip off Joe Maddon's rebuttal the other day about "beating the Reds"...being labeled the best team in baseball is better than not being the best team in baseball. At one point, the team was on an outrageous 115 game win pace. ESPN and National media are sensationalists. They hop on whatever is hot and ram it down the nation's throat. I personally don't watch ESPN though.

I have been a Cubs fan since the mid 60s and been in those stands when there were 4000 people. The amount of bandwagoning and know nothing, mindless cheerleading fans like Cubsmann sickens me. Lets all have a bit of perspective in our cheering for this team. This team is really good, fun to watch, and something different than the last 80 years. But they arent the 27 Yankees, 29 As or 39 Yankees and nothing the braindead ignoranti will say changes that

 

[chibears55]

You know why the "record vs. teams over .500" stat is useless? Because it's useless (yes, redundancy) and has 0 value as a metric to the status of any given team at a given time.
The Cubs are/were in a slump. So pundits and message board people who think the sky is falling will cherry pick anything they can to support their cause.

Case in point:

The Cubs lose on Thursday to the Mets. People start the dialogue that they "can't beat teams" over .500 citing their record of 14-14 vs. teams over .500 after that loss. Okay fair enough. So what happens Friday, Saturday, and Sunday? We lose 3 more to a team that's over .500. Then we beat the Reds yesterday. But along the way, the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals, bringing their record to 42-41...which is over .500. So now, we factor in the Cubs' 7-1 record against the Pirates into the equation. The Cubs now have a 22-18 record against teams over .500 despite being 1-3 since the day people started cherry picking that stat.

It's a useless stat. No one was saying anything about the Cubs not being able to beat teams .500+ when they swept the Pirates and Nationals back to back a month ago. But a month later the bullpen and rotation have begun to regress to the mean, we've had 2-3 key injuries on the offense, and we've been experimenting with a few rookies and people go ahead and find something to latch to and make shit seem worse than it is.

People just need to accept that this is baseball. The '27 Yankees had a 6 game slide at one point. The dominant Mariners lost 4 in a row at one point. Shit happens. Get used to it. We know where we are weak...and Theo is a lot smarter than we are.

We can sleep easy knowing that he probably is traveling more back channels to fix the bullpen than we have come up with as an entire forum. The rumors that we are kicking the tires on Rich Hill show that Theo sees the backsliding of Hammel starting and knows that the rotation wasn't going to pitch a full run better than the next best rotation the rest of the year.

The sky is not falling. Things will be okay. Let the All-Star break get here and we can enjoy the first day off in a long time.

Maybe I'm wrong but I think when they mark the record against above and below .500, its what the opponent record is at the time they played. Not current or what it ends up being at end of year...

With that said...

Good teams beat bad teams and stay around or above .500 against other good teams

Great teams dominate the bad teams and beat good teams


But you can just about always count on at least one bad and/or good team that will have your number no matter how good or great you are.

Sent from my LG-V495 using Tapatalk

 

[ZAN]

You're 100% right but the thing about the record against teams over .500 is that playoff teams generally have great records against teams they should beat and somewhere in the .520-.550 range against the other teams over .500. It's how it works and always has. Once in a great while there's a crazy team that doesn't fit that pattern but that's the exception that proves the rule. I'm consistently mystified by so many people who follow baseball don't understand the ups and downs of a long season.

Ebbs and flows, for sure.

The Cubs could drop from 22-18 vs. over .500 teams tonight to 15-17 if the Pirates lose to the Cardinals - simply because the Pirates would then be 42-42. It's just a poor indicator of the Cubs' abilities as a team because have 0 control on July 5th, 2016 who they've previously played and when they got hot/got cold.

We also don't factor that we're giving a lot of rookies a show-off right now. It's no shock that Candelario & Almora are playing every day. Chances are we are gauging what they can do, or helping show other GMs what these kids can do for other organizations. There's 0 chance that Joe will be trotting Candelario out there for a start or Joel Peralta in for a high-leverage inning in September if we are playing for home field advantage throughout the playoffs.

 

[ZAN]

Maybe I'm wrong but I think when they mark the record against above and below .500, its what the opponent record is at the time they played. Not current or what it ends up being at end of year...

With that said...

Good teams beat bad teams and stay around or above .500 against other good teams

Great teams dominate the bad teams and beat good teams


But you can just about always count on at least one bad and/or good team that will have your number no matter how good or great you are.

Sent from my LG-V495 using Tapatalk

That can't possibly explain how they go from 14-14 on Thursday after the Game 1 loss to NYM to 22-18 as of this AM. That's 12 games in 5 days. It's a constantly flowing statistic.

The other day, Texas' record vs. teams over .500 was like 39-19. Today it's 37-18.

 

[beckdawg]

I gotta disagree. They are one of the more healthy teams in the league. And the injuries have in an odd way helped the team. Got more playing time for guys like Baez and versatility for Bryant.

But the great teams do that. They get lots of "breaks." They also take advantage of them. It's baseball. It's how it works as TC says.

http://www.spotrac.com/mlb/disabled-list/

Los Angeles Dodgers 19 986 $36,005,551
Oakland Athletics 18 837 $9,661,847
Cincinnati Reds 14 741 $13,649,783
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim 13 726 $18,603,699
Atlanta Braves 15 709 $3,698,932
San Diego Padres 13 692 $8,293,620
Colorado Rockies 18 653 $8,337,409
Chicago Cubs 13 606 $4,346,002

That's listed by players then days on the DL. Money is a bit meaningless on the cubs because most of their hitters are cheap.

Better way to look at it is probably this
Zac Rosscup RP CHC Shoulder 94 $269,404
R.J. Alvarez RP CHC Elbow 94 $261,978
Dallas Beeler RP CHC Undisclosed 94 $261,226
Christian Villanueva 3B CHC Leg 94 $260,662
Kyle Schwarber LF CHC Knee ACL 89 $253,828
Jorge Soler LF CHC Hamstring 29 $581,044
Tommy La Stella 2B CHC Hamstring 28 $81,396
Matt Szczur CF CHC Hamstring 19 $53,105
Miguel Montero C CHC Back 17 $1,300,551
Dexter Fowler CF CHC Hamstring 17 $743,172
Clayton Richard RP CHC Finger 15 $163,935
Javier Baez 2B CHC Thumb 13 $37,011
Chris Coghlan LF CHC Ribs 3 $78,690

 

[ZAN]

Has anyone in the media said that in the past month? Fact of the matter is whether you agree or not they were playing on that sort of level to justify the talk. They fell off some like most teams do. They are in the top third of the league in time missed due to injuries and I think you can make a case that the people who've gone down for the cubs are more important than most outside of the top two starter the Angels lost. Schwarber was on a 4.5 fWAR pace last year. He's played 5 PAs. Fowler was one of the top 10 players in baseball when he went down. So on and so forth.

I guess my beef with your stance is you're justifying how they are playing today as being "what they are." And I'm not even really including Schwarber in this because he's not coming back this year. But if we're talking about this team going forward, you have Fowler coming back who has meant a hell of a lot to them in the 2nd half last year through the start of this year. For a team that has had some trouble scoring runs, having arguably the best lead off man in baseball this season back is a big deal. Additionally, the cubs bench depth right now is fairly terrible so much so that they called up Candelario, Almora and Contreras before most expected to see them. And then you have guys like Heyward and Montero who aren't hitting like they have in the past.

It'd be one thing if the team was literally having all the luck in the world and was 52-30. The cubs have had major players go down to injury more so than usual I would say as well as having several starters not hitting like they can and they still have the best record in baseball. Point here being, even without Schwarber's bat the cubs have a lot of room to grow before the playoffs and that is to say nothing of pieces they can and probably will add at the deadline.

I'd thank this 100x if I could. Every sabermetric/baseball dork stat you can find states that the Cubs are an extremely unlucky 52-30, and should be a 57 to 59 win team at this point. Pythagoren Standings, 1st order standings, 2nd order standings, you name it. They all say the Cubs have under-performed. And we all know why. Bullpen and health.

Take away 1/11th of any other team's wins in baseball, and see where that puts them in their respective standings. I'll bet not too many teams could weather it.

 

[fatbeard]

I gotta disagree. They are one of the more healthy teams in the league. And the injuries have in an odd way helped the team. Got more playing time for guys like Baez and versatility for Bryant.

But the great teams do that. They get lots of "breaks." They also take advantage of them. It's baseball. It's how it works as TC says.

In a strong field of absurd forum statements made by you, that the Cubs are one of "the more healthy teams in the league" has got to rank near the top. Do you have any objective data, at all, to justify this?

 

[beckdawg]

Zac Rosscup RP CHC Shoulder 94 $269,404
R.J. Alvarez RP CHC Elbow 94 $261,978
Dallas Beeler RP CHC Undisclosed 94 $261,226
Christian Villanueva 3B CHC Leg 94 $260,662
Kyle Schwarber LF CHC Knee ACL 89 $253,828
Jorge Soler LF CHC Hamstring 29 $581,044
Tommy La Stella 2B CHC Hamstring 28 $81,396
Matt Szczur CF CHC Hamstring 19 $53,105
Miguel Montero C CHC Back 17 $1,300,551
Dexter Fowler CF CHC Hamstring 17 $743,172
Clayton Richard RP CHC Finger 15 $163,935
Javier Baez 2B CHC Thumb 13 $37,011
Chris Coghlan LF CHC Ribs 3 $78,690

Also just to follow this up, you're talking about DL stints for your starting CF, your starting RF last year,your starting C, your main utility player in Baez, 3 bench players in Szczur, La Stella and Coghlan and out for the season for your starting LF this year. Pitching has been decently healthy but I'd argue Rosscup is worth mentioning as he's a lefty and before getting hurt Richard wasn't getting the job done. So that's 2 bullpen pieces they could have used. Alvarez i believe is a guy they are stashing as a potential bullpen arm but i wouldn't count him. Beeler is depth at starter which they haven't need so wouldn't count him either. Villanueva I would count though because he'd probably be up instead of Candelario if he were healthy.

 

[SilenceS]

The Cubs play the Reds 19 times, the Mets play the Red 2 series I believe so no is the answer

The Mets play against Atlanta. lol They also just got spanked by them. lol

 

[ZAN]

In a strong field of absurd forum statements made by you, that the Cubs are one of "the more healthy teams in the league" has got to rank near the top. Do you have any objective data, at all, to justify this?

When I read him say that a long time ago I chuckled quite a bit. Mind you, this was before we realized Montero sucked and his injuries actually meant less than they did, and before we really lost Fowler/Soler/La Stella and had the missed week of Rizzo due to his back. So I can't hold that against him for saying it at that point in time. But continuing to try to hold that hill is ludicrous.

Back when it was originally said, there was 0 chance that you can call a team healthy when it loses a top 5 OPS bat vs. RHP in all of baseball for the entire season after 5 plate appearances.

The only way you can justify calling it healthy is if you say "Hey, the Cubs have only had 1 player hurt" with complete and blatant disregard to injury severity and projected length of time to be missed -- and the player's true impact/role on the team -- and compare that to the number of players that other teams have missing (again, with blatant disregard for injury severity and player impact/role)

 

[SilenceS]

No one is saying the sky is falling or that the Cubs aren't a good team. But the notion presented by Cubs homers and the national media that this team rivals the great teams of all times is totally fabricated bullshit. A case could be made they are ther 3rd best team in baseball. The Cubs could win the WS or get swept in their first playoff round and neither should surprise you.

Your conjecture and captain obvious statements are getting classic old timer.

 

[SilenceS]