Cubs (Taillon) vs Braves (Sale): 9/10/25, 6:15pm

[soccer10k]

Besides the Cubs winning, we should be rooting for the Padres-Dodgers race to go down to the last day since we'll likely be playing the loser of that. Every little bit helps in the playoffs.

[Geographyhater8888]

Cubs catchers have a combined 29 homers this season. Every time I expect Carson Kelly to face plant to the back of his baseball card like Seiya and Busch have he hits 4 homers in 9 games.

[Geographyhater8888]

World Series winning odds are down to 3.8% on Fangraphs, lowest of any team currently seeded for a playoff spot.

[Brian707]

46 minutes ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

World Series winning odds are down to 3.8% on Fangraphs, lowest of any team currently seeded for a playoff spot.

That's mainly because the Cubs are pretty much locked in to having to play in the opening round while the others do not.

That being said,  Cubs 5.5 behind the Brewers.  Still got a shot lol. Although Sunday vs Washington still sucks it was blown

[Geographyhater8888]

52 minutes ago, Brian707 said:

That's mainly because the Cubs are pretty much locked in to having to play in the opening round while the others do not.

That being said,  Cubs 5.5 behind the Brewers.  Still got a shot lol. Although Sunday vs Washington still sucks it was blown

Why would being locked into a fourth seed, at the moment, be tye reason they have lower odds at winning the WS than every other currently seeded team? Is the Tucker IL stint part of the equation?

Edited September 11, 2025 by Geographyhater8888

[Bertz]

1 minute ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

Why would being locked into a fourth seed, at the moment, be tye reason they have lower odds at winning the WS than every other currently seeded team? 

Look at what he specifically said and think about it a little more.

[Geographyhater8888]

8 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Look at what he specifically said and think about it a little more.

Since You already the answer, I’d rather you just tell me. Or him. 

[Bertz]

9 minutes ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

Since You already the answer, I’d rather you just tell me. Or him. 

I'm not going to do your trolling work for you.  This stuff is very well documented, go read.  You shouldn't be using numbers if you don't understand their inputs anyway.

[Geographyhater8888]

11 minutes ago, Bertz said:

I'm not going to do your trolling work for you.  This stuff is very well documented, go read.  You shouldn't be using numbers if you don't understand their inputs anyway.

You’ve been a great help. Thanks.

[Jason Ross]

1 hour ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

Why would being locked into a fourth seed, at the moment, be tye reason they have lower odds at winning the WS than every other currently seeded team? 

Brian's post was very clear to me, but essentially, the Cubs are essentially locked into a WC spot because they are 5.5 games behind the Brewers. This lowers their WS odds drastically in their model because they would have to play another series in the playoffs versus the 1 and 2 seed who do not. Every series you don't play is one less chance you are knocked out. 

Their full explanation can be found here.

https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds/about

[squally1313]

But it doesn’t necessarily answer the question on why the Mets have a higher WS % than us, right? Which, from my quick viewpoint, seems to come from a very low ROS winning percentage (.511 for the cubs vs .588 for the Mets), which, I assume, means whatever projection system is driving that is currently pretty down on the cubs. 
 

I wouldn’t put a lot of stock into it, there’s a bunch of different options you can use for that input and I think the default one has been previously discussed as bad, but think it is impacting the final percentages a little bit. 

[Geographyhater8888]

14 minutes ago, Jason Ross said:

Brian's post was very clear to me, but essentially, the Cubs are essentially locked into a WC spot because they are 5.5 games behind the Brewers. This lowers their WS odds drastically in their model because they would have to play another series in the playoffs versus the 1 and 2 seed who do not. Every series you don't play is one less chance you are knocked out. 

Their full explanation can be found here.

https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds/about

I understand that. Why would the Mets who are slated the play the Dodgers in LA have almost double the odds? They have a tougher path. 

Edited September 11, 2025 by Geographyhater8888

[UMFan83]

3 minutes ago, Jason Ross said:

Brian's post was very clear to me, but essentially, the Cubs are essentially locked into a WC spot because they are 5.5 games behind the Brewers. This lowers their WS odds drastically in their model because they would have to play another series in the playoffs versus the 1 and 2 seed who do not. Every series you don't play is one less chance you are knocked out. 

Their full explanation can be found here.

https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds/about

I guess I don’t understand why the Mets have a 6.8% chance vs Cubs 3.8%. They are 10 games out of first, only 2 games up on a WC spot and pretty much locked into a road WC round series if they make it. Does FG model think that much more highly of them? Or lowly of Milwaukee who they’d play if they even make the playoffs?

[Jason Ross]

36 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

I guess I don’t understand why the Mets have a 6.8% chance vs Cubs 3.8%. They are 10 games out of first, only 2 games up on a WC spot and pretty much locked into a road WC round series if they make it. Does FG model think that much more highly of them? Or lowly of Milwaukee who they’d play if they even make the playoffs?

The model simulates the outcome of the postseason 20,000 times to generate these odds. For some reason, the model likes the Mets to win slightly more often than the Cubs. There is probably one team that the Mets in the simulation matchup really well against and they routinely beat in that simulation which gives them a better chance of consistently advancing. I'm unsure who that team is, however. 

EDIT: This mode is forward looking and uses the FanGraphs Depth Charts projections for rate statistics (a 50/50 blend of ZiPS and Steamer) and playing time to estimate the neutral-opponent winning percentage of each team -- in other words, how likely a team would be to beat a .500 opponent on a neutral field. These winning percentages are then used to find the odds of each team winning each remaining game in the major league season.

- This is from the page and how the FG model handles it. This should also help explain why one team has a higher WS% over another.

[Jason Ross]

21 minutes ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

I understand that. Why would the Mets who are slated the play the Dodgers in LA have almost double the odds? They have a tougher path. 

I answered UMF before this, but the answer is the same; they run the playoff simulations 20,000 times to generate these odds. For whatever reason, the model likes the Mets a little more. The best guess I have is that there is one specific matchup that the model really favors the Mets in which they advance through fairly often. Which team that is against is unknown, as the simulations run any of the possible permeations of playoff seedings.

[Bertz]

16 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

But it doesn’t necessarily answer the question on why the Mets have a higher WS % than us, right? Which, from my quick viewpoint, seems to come from a very low ROS winning percentage (.511 for the cubs vs .588 for the Mets), which, I assume, means whatever projection system is driving that is currently pretty down on the cubs. 
 

I wouldn’t put a lot of stock into it, there’s a bunch of different options you can use for that input and I think the default one has been previously discussed as bad, but think it is impacting the final percentages a little bit. 

The majority of the variation in WS odds is basically the odds of making the playoffs chained with the odds of getting a bye, since that removes a more or less 50/50 round.  But yeah the Padres and Mets show it's not all that.

The rest is driven by that ROS Win %.  For most of the year that's a totally acceptable proxy for team quality.  However down the stretch here there's SSS wonkiness because of strength of schedule and playing time quirks (e.g Kyle Tucker only playing 45% of the time in RF).

tl;dr is that the things FG is doing to make playoff odds as accurate as possible do silly things to the WS odds.

[mul21]

1 hour ago, Bertz said:

I'm not going to do your trolling work for you.  This stuff is very well documented, go read.  You shouldn't be using numbers if you don't understand their inputs anyway.

This didn't make sense to me either for whatever that's worth.  The fact that 2 (or 4 if you include the AL) teams have better odds with worse records and an allegedly tougher path doesn't make any sense logically.

[WhyCantWeWin]

Do they factor in that the team cant score any horsefeathers runs

[Geographyhater8888]

Cubs are 22nd xFIP, lowest of any playoff team. They probably don’t project to make a deep playoff run vs power hitting lineups like the Dodgers and Phillies.etc They’re 22nd in home runs allowed despite the favorable park factor. That’s my guess. The Offense speaks for itself since the ASB too.

Edited September 11, 2025 by Geographyhater8888

[squally1313]

15 minutes ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

Cubs are 22nd xFIP, lowest of any playoff team. They probably don’t project to make a deep playoff run vs power hitting lineups like the Dodgers and Phillies.etc They’re 22nd in home runs allowed despite the favorable park factor. That’s my guess. The Offense speaks for itself since the ASB too.

Apples to apples on the 22nd in xFIP, Cubs are fourth in xwOBA, 3rd in baserunning, 2nd in defense YTD. 7th in xFIP in the second half if you want to line up with the diminished offensive production in the second half. We should at least be consistent with sample sizes. 

[Bertz]

27 minutes ago, mul21 said:

This didn't make sense to me either for whatever that's worth.  The fact that 2 (or 4 if you include the AL) teams have better odds with worse records and an allegedly tougher path doesn't make any sense logically.

Yeah I kind of got into it above responding to Squally, but more or less there are two components 

1. Playoff Path: How likely are you to make the playoffs, and if you do make the playoffs how likely are you to get a bye?  Cubs are more or less locked into that #4 seed.  So very simplistically a team that locks up the four seed has odds that are 100% of making the playoffs times 50% of surviving the WC round times 50% for the LDS, ditto the NLCS and WS.  So 1*.5*.5*.5*5 = 6.25%

2. Team quality: This is where things can get messy, and where the Mets/Cubs split is likely coming from.  Fangraphs has a live depth chart for every team, here is the Cubs:

https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=ALL&teamid=17

These depth charts take projected WAR for each player prorated towards playing time that is manually adjusted by a dude who works at FG (Jon Becker).  This projected WAR goes into a math blender along with strength of schedule to get a projected winning percentage. And that win % goes then into a different blender to adjust those playoff round %s from being 50/50 by default to like 60/40 or whatever.  A team that's 50/50 in each playoff round is 6.25% to win it all like I had above.  A team that's only 40% in each round would have 2.6% world series odds.

The Cubs' current ROS winning % is only .512 (83 win pace) while the Mets is .588 (95 win pace).  A big part of this is SOS, .504 for the Cubs and .488 for the Mets.  Another part of that is projected WAR.  This doesn't have one culprit but look at that depth chart, a lot of choices on that page are extremely reasonable for the regular season but become ludicrous for the postseason, such as Colin Rea's prominent playing time or Kyle Tucker's lack of playing time.

The FG continually fiddles with these depth charts, at this late stage those changes can have huge impacts on the World Series odds because of the chaining effect of the playoffs (the 50/50 vs. 60/40 deal).  They'll do a big pass at the end of the regular season and you'll see the numbers look a lot more reasonable (i.e. flatter across the league) from that point onward.

[Geographyhater8888]

28 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Apples to apples on the 22nd in xFIP, Cubs are fourth in xwOBA, 3rd in baserunning, 2nd in defense YTD. 7th in xFIP in the second half if you want to line up with the diminished offensive production in the second half. We should at least be consistent with sample sizes. 

The soft schedule has favored the pitching staff recently, which isn’t factored into expected stats. If i were to guess why the computer simulations don’t favor the cubs, I believe the pitching is probably a major reason. IF you believe these simulations are based off of the 146 game aggregate without any recency bias. Because it makes zero sense that the Mairiners, Mets and Padres have a higher probability to win the World Series if that was the case.

Edited September 11, 2025 by Geographyhater8888

[I owned a Suzuki]

4 minutes ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

The soft schedule has favored the pitching staff recently, which isn’t factored into expected stats. If i were to guess why the computer simulations don’t favor the cubs, I believe the pitching is probably a major reason. IF you believe these simulations are based off of the 146 game aggregate without any recency bias. Because it makes zero sense that the Mairiners, Mets and Padres have a higher probability to win the World Series. 

The Matiners, Mets and Astros playoff spots are all still kind of questionable. So I really dont get them having better odds. To me the Padres have a scarey good playoff team. I dont know how my personal belief about the Padres correlates better WS odds, but obviously they do:)

[squally1313]

13 minutes ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

The soft schedule has favored the pitching staff recently, which isn’t factored into expected stats. If i were to guess why the computer simulations don’t favor the cubs, I believe the pitching is probably a major reason. IF you believe these simulations are based off of the 146 game aggregate without any recency bias. Because it makes zero sense that the Mairiners, Mets and Padres have a higher probability to win the World Series if that was the case.

So if I'm reading you correctly:

• the pitching is bad because the full year stats say that they've been bad, and we should ignore the recent stretch when they were good because they had a SOS that was at least softer than how they started the year (not sure how to compare to other teams)
• the offense is bad because the recent stretch in which they were bad, and we should ignore the full year stats because when they were good against the good part of the schedule that doesn't count

Close?

[We Got The Whole 9]

Yall give too many fucks about these projections systems man