How do you know they weren't? The Cardinals won 10 more games than them, and the Cubs won 7. Is that enough for you to say that for certain?[/quoteone game away from sweeping the Cubs before both series started the Cubs and Jays were playing the best ball this random crap is because it's a parachute for bad predictions

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I'm going to bounce from the spot for awhile but I will be back at some point to argue with you about this hoops stuff again. Playoffs have been great this season. See ya up the road.

I'm out.

Bernstein already doing the 'they will be great in the future' and will compete every year for years to come and will win one? Oh, so that's a given?

Tell that to Texas. And Detroit. And Tampa. And Washington.

Not to mention that a certain team in STL also competes for it every year. And the Pirates have something to say about that as well.

That's why I hated the party like it's 1999 bullshit after the Cards series win. Face it, Cubs most likely don't get past them if they are healthy.

Cubs have a nice core built up. Unfortunately, that core struggles defensively. Unfortunately, that core doesn't include pitching. Without pitching, this team won't compete every year. That pitching will have to come at a price and that includes more big free agent signings that often don't work out and/or trading away some key elements of the core.

Seriously, where does this pitching come from? Are we expecting Jake Arrieta - who was just a guy - to continue on the historic tear?

The Mets are about to sweep the Cubs because their pitching is better. Yes, the Cubs aren't hitting, but that has as much to do with the Mets pitching as it does anything else. Pitching wins Pennants. The Cubs don't have pitching.

Funny thing:


Siragusa v. Spassky. Yost about to sweep his way into his second straight WS. Maddon about to be swept.

In this instance, Ned Yost's coaching career trumps Joe Maddon's.

The record, watching both teams etc leads me to that conclusion.

Also the fact that the Cardinals played in a significantly better division.

That may be true in Bernstein's case but I dont think the advanced metrics industry as a whole got together and agreed on randomness to save face on predictions.

If there was a way to properly predict 11-19 games with the numbers someone would do it.

The Pecota is a metric how did they do on predictions

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I'm going to bounce from the spot for awhile but I will be back at some point to argue with you about this hoops stuff again. Playoffs have been great this season. See ya up the road.

I'm out.

Vegas made them the favorite after the NDLS

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I'm going to bounce from the spot for awhile but I will be back at some point to argue with you about this hoops stuff again. Playoffs have been great this season. See ya up the road.

I'm out.

Also tell that to the great Indians teams of the 90s

Overall they do pretty well predicting individual players which is the point I believe

But why would they say the season is predictable but the post season isnt? Why not say its all random if the point is to protect predictions?

Yes, not sure what that has to do with what were discussing here though


Isnt Vegas usually skewed on the Cubs in general?

I hate people that don't listen to this show and then post like they do, stating things that are not said on the show.

They just talked today about Ross starting and attributed it to advanced metrics that Joe must have had access to.

They have not predicted a Cubs WS win.

They have stated that pitching is more prone to breakdown than hitting. But they are conceding (and have from the start) that there is no perfect way to build a team.

And the Cards winning the division, playing a weighted schedule against the Pirates, the second best team in the NL? Yeah, I'd say the Cards were better than the Mets over 162 games.

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

He's talking about the Theo approach of building with offense vs. pitching. He's still positing that is the best approach.

Hmmm. Mets are getting much better pitching and about to sweep the Cubs.

Giants won the last two with...great pitching.

Funny.

agreed, if I want to pat myself on the back for not listening I at least want an accurate representation here of what I'm missing.

"Randomness" isn't really the right word. It's really that baseball is a game of time and repetition. I can watch BRick go against Michael Jordan for a minute and know who is better. Seven games isn't enough to separate Daniel Murphy from Babe Ruth.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

well, the Giants won with one GREAT pitcher and a good bullpen. But their offense wasn't awful.

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

So a 10 game difference between two teams playing different schedules is more accurate than the Mets being up 3-0 on the team that destroyed the Cardinals fairly easily?

In a league with trades and prospects getting called up I think it is a little bit unfair to say the best team is the one that dominated in April and May and slowly fell off.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Agreed. This is going to sound so Bernstein, so my apologies in advance, but it's a game that employs the law of large numbers. The metrics are a reflection of this. Over the course of 162 games, most anomolies will work themselves out.

Baseball has a system which sort of turns this principle on its head in the playoffs, as it reduces the game to a very small sample size. That's why metrics are naturally going to mean much less in a 5 or 7 game series.

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15-6
17-11
18-7
15-11
19-8
14-13

Wouldn't call it falling off, at least till September.

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

And I think a corollary to this is that defensive mistakes can overwhelm whatever metric advantages you may have and absolutely kill you. Having an incrementally better OBP or SLG can't overcome the short-term consequences of giving a team four or five outs in an inning.

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'Only other team to come back down 0-3 was Theo's '04 Red Sox'

Yeah, who also had Pedro, Curt Schilling, Derek Lowe and Bronson Arroyo if I remember correctly.

Agreed. I would say that any mistake is magnified. Hanging an 0-2 breaking ball over the middle of the plate in the regular season might cost your team a game out of 162. In the playoffs, it could cost you a game and 1/3 of a series (in a 5 game series).

I think we have to acknowledge that it could work both ways, though. If you have a poor defensive player, their play may not be exposed in a small sample size. But over the course of 162 games, an outfield with Schwarber an Soler is going to cost you at least a couple games. It's just not as magnified if it does happen.

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when you're struggling to score runs and not doing a terrible job of preventing them, you do what they did. Frankly, both guys were worth having in the lineup last night offensively.

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

I think the Indians are the greatest example and comparable to the Cubs. They might have had the greatest offensive lineup of all time. They bought pitching. So they are comparable to the Cubs. I think they won 5 or 6 straight divisions. Never won a World Series. So they had their spins at the wheel and always missed.

I didn't say they weren't. My reference to them was simply an example.

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That is still an 8 game difference between the first 3 months and the second 3 months.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I really don't understand your point. Are you just trying to make yourself feel better that the Cubs are losing to the Mets by attempting to claim that the Mets are the best team in baseball - and have been all year?

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I'm not making myself feel better. I just don't like the idea that playoff performance doesn't matter.

The Mets are showing a lot in this series, just like the Cubs did when they dominated the Cardinals.

To act like the Cardinals are the true deserving champions seems dumb to me.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I don't think anyone is saying that the Cardinals are the "deserving champions". Just like any other sport, the "best team" in the regular season doesn't always win the championship for a variety of reasons. Doesn't make winning any championship less impressive and certainly not meaningless.

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Are you sure they aren't saying that the Cardinals wouldn't be the more deserving champions than whoever wins?

COF and rpb seem to have come close to saying that but I'll let them tell me that the World Series winner is the deserving champion and the regular season wins leader is not.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Didn't RPB only say that the Mets weren't the best team in the regular season? I don't think he said the Cardinals are the deserving champions unless I missed it.

Acknowledging that the best team in the regular season is not necessarily the best team in the playoffs isn't really taking anything away from the World Series winner. Baseball has constructed their sport that way, so the eventual champion is the champion. But it's naive to think that if they played 15 game series instead of 5 and 7, there wouldn't be a very different list of World Series winners throughout history. That's not even specific to baseball. That's likely true in any sport.

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