imb

exactly! I just can't figure out how that happened given our run differential and the fact that they traded for jonathan schoop! it's really not fair if you think about it, they should have awarded us the division based on what we presumed our team would be based on our midseason run differential. The Brewers absolutely earned this, there is nothing unfair about it. This really has little to do with us and everything to do with the Brewers. We ended up about where we should’ve. A ~85 win team got really hot, congrats on being right and happy about that happening. lol even in defeat you just can't help yourself

i was so deseprate pre-theo that i would have accepted a 2016 WS win and then every single player dying publicly

my point all along has been that it is probably not safe to write the brewers off at every turn because they are a good team. they made a bunch of middling mid-season moves that accomplished nothing and guess what happened anyway? They went on a ridiculously improbable run to win the division that their underlying talent wouldn’t have predicted? exactly! I just can't figure out how that happened given our run differential and the fact that they traded for jonathan schoop! it's really not fair if you think about it, they should have awarded us the division based on what we presumed our team would be based on our midseason run differential.

being extremely right does take a bit of the edge off

how do some teams draft pitchers at the end of the first round and get dudes who have three plus pitches and throw 99 and we get alex horsefeathering lange lmao We turned ours in to Quintana awww horsefeathers that's right

you should write front page articles Jonathan Villar was worth 1.3 WAR for the Orioles. Jonathan Schoop was worth -0.4 WAR for the Brewers. Is this you proving me wrong? Would you like me to start digging up posts from you during the 2016 NLCS? my point all along has been that it is probably not safe to write the brewers off at every turn because they are a good team. they made a bunch of middling mid-season moves that accomplished nothing and guess what happened anyway?

Was wondering about that. Thanks for making me feel better. in my cherry-picked extremely meaningful stat that I need to make me feel secure tonight, i see on BR that Lester has a .605 career ERA against the Rockies. I can't see any way this dominance doesn't continue.

horsefeathers now they're going to lose the efficiency olympics too? That's kinda what people judge at the deadline. It is pretty obvious they were going to be buyers and improve their team like nearly every contender did. I think they did the worst job at it this year. you should write front page articles

how do some teams draft pitchers at the end of the first round and get dudes who have three plus pitches and throw 99 and we get alex horsefeathering lange lmao

We are gonna beat the Rockies so give it a week

Just thought I would open this thread up to a random midseason page and it did not disappoint.

Missiles left and right Yeah he was full-out Cubs Q. The only reason the PC was low was because he was giving up ropes early in the count that we’re going right to guys

lol if you want to mistake "calmly" dismissing the brewers viability as a division opponent for 5 months as analysis, be my guest. I think we can line our posts up on the topic and let history judge that one. Again, no one, not even me of all people, was "freaking out in horsefeathering june." I was trying to explain to people like you that despite allllll the built-in benefits we go into the season with, the margin between what we were at that point in the season and what the brewers were at that point is the season was not wide enough for all the dismissive bragging. It's a lovely story but you keep leaving out the part where you blinked, apologized to Duke and jinxed the season. Imagine how obnoxious my crowing would be had I not made that post.

dylan is a serious journalist, he was on cnn People know me

Especially when every post season pitching acquisition is injured or terrible. Pretty sure Theo would kill for a postseason pitching acquisition right now i actually weirdly had a dream last night that Jesus Aguilar hit a missile in the first inning against us today to dead center that was fielded by a player in a Reds uniform. the announcers brushed it off by saying they didn't have time to get him a cubs uniform since theo had only traded for him earlier in the game.

our offense is so hot and cold that this seems like a pretty good outcome? Lefty on short rest in his first-ever big game against a team that just got their cold game out of their system and is loaded with experience.

I'd really like to see one of your posts that was this rational and used actual logic instead of just lashing out in anger. We can all agree on that. And, yes, the Cubs having more talent and the best record in the NL meant they should have won the division. They didn't. We all know sometimes it doesn't happen. But usually it does. That's why we weren't freaking out in horsefeathering June. lol if you want to mistake "calmly" dismissing the brewers viability as a division opponent for 5 months as analysis, be my guest. I think we can line our posts up on the topic and let history judge that one. Again, no one, not even me of all people, was "freaking out in horsefeathering june." I was trying to explain to people like you that despite allllll the built-in benefits we go into the season with, the margin between what we were at that point in the season and what the brewers were at that point is the season was not wide enough for all the dismissive bragging.

Schwarber did not shorten the lineup..hell his OPS of .826 was just under Rizzos. Russell collapsing, Bryants injury, and Willy falling off a map is what hurt the offense. I highly suspect Willy has been playing with a ton of injuries. Whenever anyone points to Schwarber's numbers, I go looking for numbers that show that he's really actually awful and I can't. They are solid numbers, but from just watching the games it feels like Schwarber is a giant black hole in the lineup. Maybe its because he has done historically bad in high leverage situations, but I can't remember the last time I thought 'oh good Schwarber is up', unless its a big situation where we need him to dong and I know he has the ability to do so although he never does. he had like a 33 percent K rate in the second half. With the way teams shift on him he has to strike out waaaay less than that or just hit a lot of bombs to be much of an offensive factor. Otherwise you see lines like his second half line — good ISOP, good ISOD, but overall dragged down because he's striking out or hitting ground outs to short RF 70 percent of the time.

now that i'm calming down my hopes are rising again. Just win tomorrow, steal the Brewers defensive cheat codes, and then take it game by game in the NLDS maybe im just being a hopeless idiot here but i feel pretty good about matching up with them in an actual series?

see what happens when i force a little optimism

Probability that can be mathematically measured != takes filtered through fan biases Hey, I'm the guy who was mad at Joe for how we used Chapman at the end of the 2016 WS when everyone was talking about results over process. It wasn't biased to say that the Cubs were likely going to win the division up until the very end based on all of the information that we had on hand. That it took Milwaukee winning 8 straight to close the season to win it is even more evidence of that. If that makes my take stupid, so be it. i think this is the overall point i've been trying to get at since early this summer here are some things i said were true then and guess what they held true 1 - the cubs, viewed with a wide-ass lens, were the best team before the season started and even with the difficulties they faced with injuries, performance, looked to be the best team 2- the brewers were also good 3 - the cubs had some problems that made them vulnerable 4 - sometimes weird horsefeathers happens and the team who is best in July or whatever doesn't finish on top and the response to those posts was LOOK AT THE RUN DIFFERENTIAL, LOL THEY'RE GONNA PLAY SCHOOP AT SECOND, WE HAVE THE BEST RECORD, NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT. having other good teams in your division makes it really really stupid to jerk yourself off too soon. even the pollyanna dorks on here *knew* that the injuries and weird offense we were dealing with made us vulnerable but they ignored it because there was always something in the standings or hidden in some metric that made it impossible that we wouldn't win the division. And now it's October and we are potentially 1 game from the season ending and us looking at our coaching staff and roster and going oh lord we fucked up. And we're also one game away from being essentially right where we should be and everything is fine. Because that's how baseball works.

like it's ok to not blame the cubs as a whole for what happened (built a big division lead then played above .500 ball in september) while also criticizing the offense for being so feast-or-famine (at best) AND also giving credit to milwaukee for playing their balls off.

They hit 223 HRs last year and 161 this year with a roster of mostly the same players after hiring a hitting coach that has a philosophy of going the other way and sacrificing power for contact (I could be just making that up or explaining it wrong) im all for firing chili into the sun just because his record isn't that great even pre-cubs and we already had a roster full of guys that played to whatever his imagined strengths were in the first place so he seemed pointless, but it's just as likely the power outage is entirely due to bryant getting beaned in the head/his shoulder injury and whatever happened to willson contreras. everyone else seemed about as predicted?

i tried to warn you idiots but noooo "lol schoop what is stearns thinking lol the brewers are trash lol look at the run differential" anyway all we have to do is beat colorado* (please be colorado) tomorrow and everything is essentially fine. sucks watching the brewers win on your field in a game you didn't even really need to play but whatever, just win one game and our {entering david mode} win probability for the playoffs or whatever is not meaningfully different than it would have been had we won today. Plus lester is going You do realize that the Brewers won the division by 1 game and closed the season with 8 in a row, right? You were whining about amazing they were long before they pulled off an extremely improbable end to the season. Kudos to Milwaukee for pulling it off, but the hubris was always based on probability. It sucks for us that this is how the division was lost but your warnings in mid-July were still dumb. yeah my warning of "hey guys sometimes teams with worse run differentials win divisions because things like health and performance can change drastically over the course of 162 games rendering early season totals as moot" was totally dumb, while on the other hand extremely smart posts like "yeah our sure our offense has only scored 0 or 1 run in like a quarter of the games this year but we have the best record in the NL so everything is fine" were good

yelich carried a .500 wOBA for a month and the cubs played well in september. milwaukee went balls out. why is it a bad thing that i'm willing to give more credit to milwaukee than blame to the cubs? Because the Cubs are a bunch of gutless choking dogs and no rational explanation matters. /abuck lol the cubs just got 2-hit by jouhlys chacin on their home field in a clinching game big dog