Catman61

Fine, they are not a "lock" :roll: Anyone want to take me up on that $100 bet?

todays Baseball Prospectus playoff odds have the Cardinals division odds at better than 81%, the Reds at about 11% and the Astros at about 7% Isn't that the point, they aren't a lock. 81% is a nice number, but it's not 99%. Hmmm, 81% or 11%, better than 4 out of 5 or essentially 1 out of 10 Oh and the TOTAL playoff odds for the Cards is over 85% including the WC odds of 4% Perhaps you would like to make a straight up $100 bet with me? No? Why not?

The Reds are a combined .500 vs the Cubs & Pirates (5-7 vs Cubs, 6-4 vs Pirates). CAN the Reds win the division? Until they are mathmatically eliminated yes but really the Cards would have to LOSE the division for the Reds to finish ahead of them. Lock? Is there really any such thing? Put it another way, what kind of odds would it take for you to bet against the Cardinals winning the division? 2-1? 3-1 5-1? 10-1? Under LaRussa, the Cardinals have never had a losing record in Sep when they had a winning record at the end of Aug. The worst record they had in those years was 13-13 in 2003. Supposing the Cards lose tonight, a .500 record (15-15) to the end of the season puts the Reds in a position to have to win 19 of 28 (.679) to win the division. What makes you think that the Cardinals will end up with fewer than 85 wins (ie .500 to finish the season) and the Reds will finish with at least 1 more win than the Cardinals? It may not be a "LOCK" but it is pretty darn close so no it isn't overstating it. Alan Schwarz did a study looking at the relation between the standings at Jul 31 and the final standings. Of the teams 4 games back at Jul 31, just 2 or 5% finished in 1st and that was with 2 months remaining not just 1. It is a POSSIBILITY but the PROBABLITIES are not good todays Baseball Prospectus playoff odds have the Cardinals division odds at better than 81%, the Reds at about 11% and the Astros at about 7%

major oopsie, I didn't realize how BIG it was til I submitted it then looked at it. I was like @$#% thats too #$%& big! :oops:

who says the cards are a lock for the playoffs? You think the REDS are going to pass them up to win the division? :lol: Possibly, though admittedly it doesn't look good at the moment. :( The Reds are 3 out on the win side and 6 out on the loss side, best case scenario they are 4 games out after today with 28 games to play. Through 27 games in Aug the Cardinals are 12-15 (.444) if the Cards just stay at that .444 win percent over their final 31 games the Reds have to go 18-10 (.643) to pass them. If the Cardinals play basically .500 the final month, the Reds have to win at a .714 clip (20-8 ) to pass them. Now factor in that using current W-L record the Cardinals play 28 of their final 31 games vs teams under .500 and that of the Reds final 28 games, 12 are vs teams still in the WC hunt. Thats a pretty tough row to hoe.

who says the cards are a lock for the playoffs? You think the REDS are going to pass them up to win the division? :lol: Possibly, though admittedly it doesn't look good at the moment. :( No I dont think the Reds will catch the Cards. But if the Phillies win the WC the Mets cant play them, and if the Dodgers have the better record the Cards have to play the Mets first. Which has zero to do with the question I was answering re "who says the Cards are a lock for the playoffs."

who says the cards are a lock for the playoffs? You think the REDS are going to pass them up to win the division? :lol:

Not very, 81st to date in 2006 and 124th in 2005. Both years well under 10,000 PAP for comparison Zambrano had 161,427 PAP in 2005 and has 111,132 to date in 2006

Joe Sheehan writes in Baseball Prospectus

from ESPN - Elias says fuzzy logic but an interesting take http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=2564713

And this would "piss you off" for what reason? Fewer seats but more seats with higher prices. In Busch II, 60% of the seats were in the upper deck or terrace level, in Busch III 60% of the seats are on the FIELD level. Lowest price on field level is $35+, highest price in old terrace level was IIRC about $22. In addition, from 2001-2004 the Cardinals averaged about 37,284/game so not that many games you will run out of capacity AND this stadium is set up much better to handle SRO so they can handle more than the official 46,881 capacity. Sorry, I'm not buying that. For starters, the PSL program had more requests than the amount of tickets set aaside. Season ticket holders in 2005 had 1st crack at PSL as well as season tickets, probably a good chance the out towners kept their season tickets. Further the "locals" who supposedly snatched up those tickets, just what do you think they were going to do with those tickets if they hadn't been season ticket holders before??? Can we say eBay, StubHub etc? So unless you have some stats to support those "thousands less" I am skeptical. Not to mention with gas prices and concerns about the economy some out of towners may have cut back some rather than being blocked out. Then they are stupid. You are talking about a franchise that drawn 3+M 7of the last 8 seasons (the one season under 3.0M was 2.91M less than 90,000 short of 3.0M) and hasn't drawn under 2M in a 162 game season since 1981. Besides which, just how would any of that affect these green persimmon sucking worrywarts?

Considering the source of this story (NY Daily News) has a unenviable record of not only inaccurate but VERY inaccurate reporting concerning MLB, you'll have to pardon me if I think this "report" isn't worthy of much more than lining the bottom of the birdcage.

Carpenter and Z both have 6 starts with Game Scores over 50 that they got no decisions and each have a tough loss (game score over 50 & tagged with the loss) Z has 1 more win, 1 less loss Carpenter has a lower ERA and WHIP, they are pretty close and the Cy Young predictor reflects as much Webb - 114.6 Carpenter - 101.1 Zambrano - 100.4 http://proxy.espn.go.com/mlb/features/cy

One small problem, its VERY unlikely the Reds could meet the Mets in the NLCS. If the Reds win the WC, they will play the team with the best record, at this time that is the Mets. The next most probable team to finish with the best record and play the WC would be St Louis BUT rules won't allow the WC to face a team from its own division in the LDS in that case the NL West champ would have to have a better record than the Mets to not have a Mets/Reds LDS. The only scenarios that would allow the possibility of a Reds/Mets LCS is the NL West champ finishing with the best record or the Reds winning the Central, an NL East team winning the WC AND the NL West champ having a better record than the Reds

I'm not a Cubs historian, which is why I put the question mark. I am aware of the basics as a fan of baseball history, but wasn't aware they went to the playoffs in '89. Sorry, as a Cub fan I we need to include all years. I jumped the gun by overlooking the question mark. If the Cubs would have defeated the Giants in 1989 to make it to the World Series, there would have been no live televised earthquake. Because the world as we know it would have ended? :wink:

Karma? While I won't be so foolish as to make a claim inferring that ALL Cub fans have done this, there is no doubt that the name Rick Ankiel has been used in a similar manner at times. There have even been a few mocking Daryl Kile. Bottomline, there always some fans in every fan base that true fans would rather not claim as their own and to blame or label an entire fan base based on the few is wrong.

Don't really want to get into who is better, but I do think they are more comparable offensively than it might look at 1st glance. Grudz has a career OPS+ of 89 and Walker's is 99. What I noticed is that Walker had had 2 years one might consider as outliers, the 115 in 2005 and 119 back in 1998 all the rest are grouped from 86 to 105 If you leave out Walker's 2005 for a moment and compare his 2002-2004 to Grudz 2003-2005 they are pretty close TW 99-95-105 MG 105-96-92 There is no argument that Walker is the better hitter, he has the better avg, OBP and SLG. I just don't think the disparity is quite as big as it may appear.

I generally try to but I'm not sure you can classify what Cubbie Rich wrote as being an "opinion" At the very least there is a clear attempt at deception with a few facts generously used to portray a grossly different picture. I don't even particularly care much for Bernie, that is an opinion. IMO CubbieRich's post and several previous post exceeded the line of mere opinion.

Perhaps you can show us where Miklaz wrote this as the subject of one of his columns? That is what you are implying is it not since you didn't state otherwise and specifically mentioned columnist and journalist. Shall we assume that you never speak of anything other than your job 24/7? However, I can't say I am surprised at this most recent transparent mischaracterization in light of your displays of your character over the last few months.

St Louis pen lowest WHIP in NL lowest BAA in NL lowest OPSA in NL 3rd best ERA in NL not bad for "aren't real good. Not real bad - kind of average" btw the WHIP, BAA and OPS are all lower than last year's pen and the ERA is just .05 higher.

Have you seen Yadier Molina run? :wink:

Is that so? His W-L was 3-5 in April/May 2005, his ERA was 3.71 (a 3.71 ERA would have been good enough to be in the top 20 starters in the NL in 2005) Through the end of May 2005 Pettitte allowed 26 ER in 63 IP Through the end of May 2006 Pettitte has allowed 45 ER in 71-2/3 IP If a 3.71 "wasn't very good", what exactly do you call a 5.65? BTW 1st half generally refers to pre ASB, Pettitte had a 6-7 record at the ASB break with an ERA of 3.09

Well, it is June 1st but strangely I can find no boxscore or pitching line for Clemens first start made by June 1st. Where exactly is that at Jimy? BTW in case you haven't noticed Pettitte is off to a pretty poor start ERA 5.65 WHIP 1.60 BAA .317 Until Clemens does actually return, the Astros are starting 2 rookies and a 3rd pitcher with less than 200 career IP. And 3 of the 5 current starters have ERAs over 5.00 One of the keys for the 2005 Astros was Clemens/Pettitte/Oswalt having a combined 2.30 ERA the final 4 months of the season. That seems very unlikely to transpire this year.

Kind of, team head to head games have an effect as well. In the explanation, they give an example from 1996 when numerically by games behind and remaining games the Giants SEEMED to still have a chance BUT the 2 teams ahead had remaining head to head games that guaranteed that one or the other would at worst a record 1 game better than the Giants thus they were actually eliminated. explanation here http://128.32.125.151/~baseball/detail_calc.html what do numbers mean http://128.32.125.151/~baseball/detail_numbers.html I hope that helps clear it up some.

Last year was the 1st time (excluding the 95 strike year) that the NL WC winner had fewer than 90 wins,