Cubs 16, Reds 0, Arrieta 2 (no-hitters)

In Commentary And Analysis by berselius134 Comments

OSS: Jake. Arrieta.

god_damn_right_breaking_bad

Those of us lucky enough to see this may have seen the most soul-crushing victory in modern MLB history. As mentioned by Len or JD during the game, the biggest margin of victory in a no-hitter was a 18-0 win in the 19th century between two teams that no longer exist. Huge props to Len for mentioning the no-hitter as much as possible during the broadcast, otherwise I probably would have shut it off when the Cubs went up 6-0. I'd like to hope that this puts a sock in the people who get on him for mentioning no-hitters at every opportunity. Bonus points for never once referring to it as a no-no. 

Jake didn't even have his best stuff tonight, at least early on. He missed his spots on numerous occasions and admitted in the way too long postgame interview (what the hell, guys?) that he had a very sloppy bullpen session before the start, just like his last no-hitter. You have to love when your pitcher isn't sharp but throws a no-hitter anyway (dying laughing). For all the relatively recent debate about whether Kershaw or Syndergaard is the best pitcher in MLB right now, Arrieta has posted a sub-1.0 ERA over his last 24 starts with two no-hitters to show for it. 

Bonus kudos go to Kris Bryant, who homered twice including a grand slam to CF, Dexter Fowler, who reached base on all but one of his PAs (albeit two of those were fielder's choice plays), Rizzo and Zobrist, who each homered, Heyward, who reached base four times, and Addison Russell, who took an 0-fer but hit something like 15 line drives right at guys in this game. Arrieta even had a good day at the plate. And of course, to David Ross who probably had one of the best games of his career even aside from finally catching his first no-hitter. Ross picked off a runner, homered, scored due to a hustle-induced Keystone Kops defensive routine by the Reds, and even had an infield single in the first. It's a good thing they saved his legs for the season by getting him a Rascal during spring training.

The poor Reds, this was only the first game of the series. At least they managed not to empty their bullpen before throwing two AAAA guys who just slotted into the rotation an aren't stretched out yet in the next two starts. 

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  1. Millertime

    Wow, a Papa Slam and Domino-no in the same game. I guess you could call letting up 16 runs a Rocky Roccoco outing.

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  2. cerulean

    Millertime: Domino-no

    If this isn’t a thing, it’s so awful that it should be.

    EDIT: And reality does not disappoint. This goes to show how much I pay attention to marketing.

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  3. Suburban kid

    A “Little Caesar” is when @superSZCZ4 gets an inside the park home run.

    Pizza Hut is sponsoring the Cubs’ new MILF Cam.

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  4. cerulean

    An ordered list of Cubs with a wRC+ above 100 (most with extremely small samples sizes):

    1. Jon Lester (317)
    2. Dexter Fowler (226)
    3. Matt Szczur (183)
    4. Munenori Kawasaki (179)
    5. David Ross (his age)
    6. Jake Arrieta (137)
    7. Kris Bryant (125)
    8. Jason Hammel (123)
    9. Anthony Rizzo (114)
    10. Ben Zobrist (104)
    11. Miguel Montero (101)

    Only Dexter Bryzzobrist has more than 50 PAs.

    Pecota now projects the Cubs to win 97.

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  5. Suburban kid

    dmick89,

    Holy shit. When I checked the ol’ slide rule for the number of season wins that translates to, I had to double and triple-check that I did the arithmetic right.

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  6. cerulean

    Jake Arrieta and statcast are really making me question the value of FIP and xFIP, especially as the basis of value created.

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  7. dmick89

    cerulean,

    Why statcast? That’s not even used for pitchers, is it? That’s what pitch f/x is for. It would be nice if there was a neat little stat that could be created and used for value from pitch f/x data, but that’s nearly impossible. Arrieta’s FIP is what it is so far mainly because of the home runs he allowed in that one game. I think using any statistic with small samples is potentially dangerous. Yesterday when berselius posted his season preview, it was really the first time I even noticed any of the stats. I saw Kyle Hendricks as the FIP leader and knew that by the end of the season, that would not be the case.

    Also, isn’t Arrieta’s strikeout rate down this year? Seems like it is anyway, but it’s only been four starts.

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  8. josh

    Best single season win/loss: 1906 Chicago Cubs NL 116 36 .763 Lost 1906 World Series

    2016 cubs can top that. They have like 30 extra games.

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  9. cerulean

    If you were running a team and had the opportunity today to lock up any player in the league for 7 years at $30M per, who would it be?

    A shortlist:
    Kershaw
    Arrieta
    Syndegaard
    Scherzer
    Fernandez
    Harvey
    Greinke

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  10. cerulean

    dmick89,

    Exit velocity against on balls put in play. That explains the low BABIP and HR:FB. Pitching to contact suppresses Ks (while also suppressing walks, so maybe this is a wash).

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  11. cerulean

    josh:
    Best single season win/loss: 1906Chicago CubsNL11636.763Lost 1906 World Series

    2016 cubs can top that. They have like 30 extra games.

    And they lost to a team that was only 35 games over called the White Sox. That raises another interesting question:

    Would anyone take 117 wins and a World Series appearance this year knowing that they would face the White Sox and lose 4–2?

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  12. JonKneeV

    dmick89:
    Actually, considering age, Syndergaard would be my top choice.

    I’m scared his arm is going to blow. I know he’s a freak, but humans aren’t supposed to throw 100+ mph. Especially over the course of 100+ pitches. Who knows? Maybe he’s Nolan Ryan.

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  13. cerulean

    dmick89:
    Actually, considering age, Syndergaard would be my top choice.

    But he has yet to prove that he is durable. Kershaw I think is the safest bet. Syndegaard is the most volatile (which also makes him the most exciting). But Arrieta is basically a telekenetic freak. He controls the game with his force of will. It’s pretty astounding.

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  14. dmick89

    cerulean,

    I’m not sure we have enough information, but it certainly makes sense that lower exit velocities will lead to a lower BABIP. I’m not sure on HR/FB. It’s early in the season, but Jake’s HR/FB is 10%. Everybody said Carlos Marmol induced weak contact and all this other stuff that kept his BABIP low and HR/FB rate low. I never bought it and sure enough, it went back up. Marmol is only one example of fans thinking they found an outlier. I expect the same will happen with Arrieta.

    One thing we really need to remember is that we’re really talking about 25 or so starts and those don’t include his playoff starts, which were more ordinary. It’s not even a full season of data.

    I think Arrieta is a great pitcher and I honestly have no idea what his true talent level is anymore. Every time I’ve thought I’ve found it, he proves it wrong.

    I’d also bet that if we figured out some cool way to use the statcast data to create a metric for value that it would closely resemble the leaderboard using FIP. It would probably have at least 15 of the same players in the top 20.

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  15. dmick89

    JonKneeV,

    That could be, but we could just as easily say that the mileage on Kershaw and Arrieta’s arms make them a higher risk than someone Syndergaard’s age. Among players who soon qualify or have already qualified as free agents, I’d definitely go with Kershaw over Arrieta, but it’s a lot closer than I thought it was 9-10 months ago.

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  16. Author
    berselius

    mlb should pass a rule that requires teams that lose by 15 runs or more to automatically forfeit the next game (dying laughing)

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  17. Author
    berselius

    dmick89:

    I’d also bet that if we figured out some cool way to use the statcast data to create a metric for value that it would closely resemble the leaderboard using FIP. It would probably have at least 15 of the same players in the top 20.

    My main concern is that we’d just end up with SIERA 2.0

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  18. dmick89

    berselius: My main concern is that we’d just end up with SIERA 2.0

    I think we probably would. The beauty of FIP is that it’s so simple and for most players with a large enough sample, it’s going to be representative of how well they pitched. I have no doubt that if Jake continues to pitch well, and there’s no indication he won’t, that by the end of the year his FIP will be near what it’s been the last two years.

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  19. cerulean

    dmick89,

    It has always bugged me that FIP discounts pitchers like Greg Maddux who actually pitch. Granted, the outliers when it comes to fWAR vs rWAR are outliers in other respects that will show up in approximately the same rank relative to other pitchers, but like so many reactions to convention, it has gone too far the other direction. I feel like FIP and xFIP measure a particular kind of dominance to the exclusion of effectiveness, and maybe it’s the monkey in me, but I have come to regard it as the SLG to ERA’s AVG—it is informative in a different way but is still missing a crucial measure of value.

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  20. dmick89

    Yeah, FIP did a pretty good job with Maddux. I’m sure there are some pitchers who it doesn’t do the best job with, but I think FIP does a really good job overall.

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  21. cerulean

    Rizzo the Rat,

    Millertime,

    Fair points—it’s what I get for trusting my monkey mind. In the long run, these things tend to average out. I still think we are missing something crucial, and I hope that the spin rates, exit velocities, and defensive positioning/route efficiency will help tease that apart.

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  22. Author
    berselius

    cerulean,

    My main criticism of FIP is what SIERA tried (and more or less failed) to fix, namely that it undervalues ground ball pitchers. Maybe to a lesser extent weak contact guys too, who get more pop flies. But for the most part I’m cool with it. Between SIERA and plenty of non-baseball sciencey stuff like weather and stuff that I do it’s easy to get lost in comprehensive models when simple stuff generally does as good of a job.

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  23. Millertime

    berselius,

    I figure FIP works the majority of the time, and if there are differences, it’s not hard to investigate those differences to see why a pitcher might over or under produce their FIP.

    I’ve heard some people say that ERA overvalues GB pitchers, because a GB pitcher is more likely to have an error behind them and have more of their runs be unearned runs.

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  24. cerulean

    Rice Cube:
    For your reading pleasure:

    http://sportsworld.nbcsports.com/curt-schilling-fired/

    I wouldn’t want to enter a bathroom with such a strange cat as himself in it.

    Actually, I don’t care.

    Here’s an idea: all bathrooms are unisex, but there is a tidy bathroom and an untidy bathroom. All urinals are in the untidy bathroom because they are horrible designs, meant to spray urine back at the pisser and all over the walls and floor. (The troughs, turns out, don’t have this problem, but they are bad designs for privacy reasons.) The tidy bathrooms would have air purifiers and those valets to give you hot towels and make sure sinks and toilets are clean and the toilet paper is two-ply with perferations and the lids would close if you weren’t sitting on them. Problem solved.

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  25. Rizzo the Rat

    FIP isn’t really meant to be a comprehensive measurement of pitching ability. So I don’t think its failure to account for the ability of some pitchers to limit hard contract is a weakness per se; it’s just not what it’s designed to measure. It’s like how OBP doesn’t account for power hitting.

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  26. GW

    Rizzo the Rat,

    The reason it works is that skills in those particular aspects have a tight spread in the target population and are noisy. xFIP works better than fip as a projection for the same reason (it removes home runs).

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  27. cerulean

    Rizzo the Rat:
    FIP isn’t really meant to be a comprehensive measurement of pitching ability. So I don’t think its failure to account for the ability of some pitchers to limit hard contract is a weakness per se; it’s just not what it’s designed to measure. It’s like how OBP doesn’t account for power hitting.

    Agreed. And that’s kind of the point. It’s missing vital information for the sake of simplicity and compression, such that it is systematically misvaluing performance in a different way than ERA misvalues it. That is valuable, but it hasn’t captured the value enough.

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  28. Author
    berselius

    To-day’s base ball squadron

    Fowler
    Heyward
    Bryant (LF)
    Rizzo
    Zobrist
    Baez (3B)
    Russell
    Ross
    Lester

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  29. uncle dave

    EnricoPallazzo: holy shit, seriously? i have never heard of this. that seems kind of crazy.

    It’s not that uncommon. Where I went to school there were both mixed and single-sex dorm floors, and bathrooms. The shenanigans were pretty much the same no matter which floor you were on.

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  30. Rizzo the Rat

    I used to live on a mixed-sex dorm floor, but the restrooms/showers were segregated and the girls’ room was locked.

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  31. cerulean

    A curiosity on Maddux: FIP understated his dominance relative to ERA in his best (middle) years and overstated it in his worst (very early and later) years such that they evened out. And after thinking about it, it makes sense. ERA is more volatile than FIP, so it follows that FIP makes better pitching look not as great and worse pitching look not as terrible, which makes me wonder whether its prediction value in aggregate stems mostly from the fact that it is already regressed to the mean. If I remember correctly, cutting out outliers will always make a regression line fit better.

    GW:
    http://www.fangraphs.com/community/revisiting-the-stuff-metric/

    This was an interesting attempt.

    I dig it, though the presentation is not great—having the numbers look like ERA or FIP but inverted such that higher is better is not a great design. I would lose the decimal to make it more like ERA+.

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  32. uncle dave

    Mucker,

    Er, I’ll just say that 19-year-olds found a way to do what 19-year-olds do on every floor of that building, and sometimes in the showers. It’s not so much that the mixed arrangement encouraged anything, but more that the segregation did nothing to stop it.

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  33. cerulean

    Rice Cube:
    EnricoPallazzo,

    I went to Berkeley so it was like “whatever” for us.

    It’s like nude beaches. OMG quickly turns to whatever. Yep, we live in sacks of flesh. Yep, we all have microbes that digest most of our food that we have to evacuate. I think all else being equal, transparency is healthier—this is what it is to be human.

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  34. cerulean

    GW,

    I don’t have a problem with it when they are meant to convey the same kind of information like wOBA or are normalized to 100 as in the case of relative stats like OPS+—but the almost but not quite kind of metric that comes out of that equation is quite awful.

    Speaking of that stuff metric, as I look deeper, I see it as an indicator of potential, but much of the “stuff” doesn’t seem to show up in the execution. And that is what I am really interested in. Arrieta’s “stuff” was the best last season, but Chris Bassitt and Nathan Eovaldi? These guys might be really good like it was thought Arrieta might be really good in 2013, but they haven’t shown it yet. Arrieta crossed the chasm from potential to actual performance. Will they?

    Maybe this metric will point to breakout candidates. Maybe this metric will allow us to identify areas that it or other metrics do not capture and find ways to measure it. But it’s still not what I am looking for—a better basis for the actual (first-order) value contributed by the player. Then maybe we can try to get a better handle on what the knock-on effects are (bullpen use, managerial decisions, coaching impact, number of threats in a lineup, etc). Maybe one day.

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  35. Suburban kid

    cerulean,

    Same with the childish attitudes about breast feeding. Why can’t grown people not be immature and think the world is about them? It’s not just that it’s the most natural and healthy thing that can possibly happen, it’s also that so what if you see an engorged nipple with toddler slobber all over it. Look away if it grosses you out you fucking babyman.

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  36. Rizzo the Rat

    cerulean,

    If that truly has been Dexter’s problem on defense all these years, it’s amazing no one told him until this year. Do teams really say to their outfielders, “Hey, just play wherever you feel comfortable. Who are we to tell you otherwise?”

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  37. GW

    cerulean: Arrieta’s “stuff” was the best last season, but Chris Bassitt and Nathan Eovaldi? These guys might be really good like it was thought Arrieta might be really good in 2013, but they haven’t shown it yet. Arrieta crossed the chasm from potential to actual performance. Will they?
    Maybe this metric will point to breakout candidates.

    Yep, that’s the idea. A model-based, metric that is independent of results.

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  38. cerulean

    Rizzo the Rat,

    I guess he was instructed to play that way? It seems kind of crazy, but I can imagine that it could have seemed like it was better when batting average was all that mattered and fewer player walked so playing up helped keep more off the bases. I can also imagine certain parks where playing the carom would seem to be more advantageous—like in a vast place like Coors field. But in this environment with the data to back it up, it is just not an advantage, if it ever was.

    Maybe Dexter will be a plus center fielder with his glove alone. (dying laughing)

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  39. dmick89

    I think the defensive metrics have been wrong about Fowler. Rather, I think he’s a better defender than they’ve credited him for being. That’s based on my useless eye test.

    Rizzo!!!

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  40. GW

    cerulean:
    GW,

    I’d say that not taking advantage of marketing would be a DominoNo®™

    I didn’t have an issue when they were trying to sell books. I had an issue when they didn’t take out the scaling factor before putting it on fangraphs. It takes a simple concept and completely obscures it to something meaningless. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard/read over the years some variant of “Uh… yeah, it’s like on-base, but better. Not exactly sure how.”

    Baseball fans will adapt to any scale as long as they have access to sortable leaderboards. Just ask OPS.

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  41. cerulean

    GW: Baseball fans will adapt to any scale as long as they have access to sortable leaderboards. Just ask OPS.

    OPS is fundamentally different than wOBA. It can be calculated with simple arithmetic—it’s not weighted and isn’t adjusted depending on esoteric factors. Scaling it would be stupid unless it was a league/park adjusted metric like OPS+.

    But wOBA is obfuscated from the beginning. Scaling it or not really doesn’t matter, so adjusting it so that it approximates OBP is for all intents and purposes fine. Maybe it should be scaled to OPS or just keep an arbitrary weight constant and shift the others relative to it and have a different baseline altogether. The fact that it is convoluted lends itself to this kind of manipulation. But I do think that it should mean something tangible or simply be scaled to 100 like OPS+ and ERA+ (I don’t prefer ERA- or FIP-).

    All things being equal, I think the stats that are more familiar are more likely to be adopted, hence wOBA is like OBP, but better, and people thought they understood it enough for it to be meaningful. But now that you have brought it up, it’s kind of a turd in a black box.

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  42. cerulean

    cerulean: it’s kind of a turd in a black box

    wOBA is also quite easy to convert to Weighted Runs Above Average (wRAA), or the non-park adjusted version of Batting Runs. In other words, you can convert wOBA to a cumulative run value above average quickly. Simply take the player’s wOBA and subtract out the league average wOBA, then divide by the wOBA scale and multiple that by the number of plate appearances.

    Simply.

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  43. cerulean

    I have to say, I am really impressed by Duvall’s defense. Wasn’t also Heyward that he robbed in the Cubs’ home opener?

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  44. GW

    cerulean: t can be calculated with simple arithmetic—it’s not weighted and isn’t adjusted depending on esoteric factors.

    It’s pretty damn difficult to calculate if you start from scratch. My point is that people adapted to the 0.500-1.100 range without batting an eye.

    cerulean: But wOBA is obfuscated from the beginning. Scaling it or not really doesn’t matter, so adjusting it so that it approximates OBP is for all intents and purposes fine. Maybe it should be scaled to OPS or just keep an arbitrary weight constant and shift the others relative to it and have a different baseline altogether. The fact that it is convoluted lends itself to this kind of manipulation. But I do think that it should mean something tangible or simply be scaled to 100 like OPS+ and ERA+ (I don’t prefer ERA- or FIP-).

    If you leave wOBA alone, it’s perfectly fine. Runs per plate appearance. The next step is explaining that a HR is typically worth more than one run because of men on base, etc.. Scale it, and it means nothing.

    OPS means nothing from the get-go. It’s only because of the implicit linear weights in the calculation that it tracks well with runs.

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  45. cerulean

    GW: It’s pretty damn difficult to calculate if you start from scratch.

    I disagree with the sentiment behind this notion simply because both OBP and SLG are pretty much givens. I with you on the rest.

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  46. dmick89

    cerulean,

    They’re only givens because other people calculate it. It’s a much sloppier overall formula than wOBA. I have highlighted that many times.

    WOBA is pretty much a given at this point and so is FIP.

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  47. cerulean

    dmick89:
    OPS = (H + BB + HBP) / (AB + BB + HBP + SF) + (1b + 2b*2 + 3b*3 + HR*4) / AB

    Things I hate: Reach on Error is not included in OBP. SF counts against OBP but SH does not. But even so, that clusterfuck of a calculation is one integer divided by another integer plus some other integer divided by another. There are no floating point coefficients to deal with. Much easier.

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  48. Smokestack Lightning

    cerulean: But scoring at such a rate will only make them unluckier. Do you really wish bad luck upon the Cubs?

    I don’t have to. This team can’t even do once in a generation right.

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  49. dmick89

    Sac flies count because the batter was trying to get a hit. He failed. Sac bunts are when the batter is intentionally making an out. Those are often called from the bench so I’m ok with including one and not the other.

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  50. cerulean

    dmick89,

    I disagree with that assessment. A sacrifice fly is by no means failure. I don’t think intentionality should have any bearing on it.

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  51. cerulean

    uncle dave:
    I was told there would be no math.

    You were lied to by the pseudoauthority to placate you. Math is everywhere. It creeps in the shadows, it blinds you with light—you cannot escape it—it has you in its grasp. And one day, it will make a new formula out of your everlasting soul.

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  52. cerulean

    I love that this team is dominating both on offense and defense. Most RS, least RA, every other team fits in the middle. The Cubs are bookending the league.

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  53. cerulean

    If I have done the math right, the Cubs have outscored the Reds 46–7 for an average score of 9.2–1.4 and a differential near 8 runs per game. Wow.

    The Reds RDSC (Run Diff Sans Cubs) is 0.

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  54. dmick89

    cerulean,

    In one, the batter is clearly trying to reach base while the other he’s not trying to. I agree, if we’re measuring overall offensive output we have to include these and they are. If we are only interested in measuring the rate at which the player reached base, we ought to include SF as a failed attempt to reach base.

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