David

Yep. If we take basically the same roster as 2015 into this year, then we are exemplary of the plexiglass principle: Big jump in wins, thanks, in large part, to luck and variance. It's not like we were the Astros last year, that got an unexpected early superstar arrival in Carlos Correa (I mean, you could include Russell in this category, but he was thought of as more likely to make an impact in 2015, before the season started. And Russell didn't have quite the same impact, anyway). We also weren't the Royals, who exceeded expectations because of a unique roster construction. We won 97 games because: 1. #weargood and 2. We had incredible luck in one-run and extra-innings games. We had a lot of walk-off victories. It was just a lucky year. We didn't even really have many guys over-perform expectations too much. Some of the young guys were better than you would have imagined. But, there was a lot of luck there, and we were likely to be plexiglassed this year. That is: Until we added Jason [expletive] Heyward, John Lackey, Ben Zobrist, Adam Warren, et al. Generally, the plexiglass principle is probably going to be right more often than not. But, generally, teams aren't loaded with great, young position players all over the place, depth out the ass, no major departing players, and tons of money to spend. General rules don't apply to us. We are of a different color. This issue was an overlaying theme when Theo spoke at the Convention. He essentially said that we weren't really a true-talent level 97-win team last year, but now he thinks we are. He's spot on. It doesn't really matter that we made that big jump last year, thanks to some variance, because this year we don't need it. We might not win as many games as last year, but we are certainly better. Completely disagree. The 2014 roster was drastically different from the 2016 roster (and 2015). It is not a good reference point for anything and it has little to no bearing on anything. The biggest reason for the jump in wins wasn't luck and variance (and as tree pointed out, if you take sequencing into account, there wasn't THAT much good luck, anyway). It was a drastically different roster than 2014. You can bring this stuff up when a fairly similar roster overachieves one year after being bad or something like that, but that's not at all what the 2015 Cubs were. The fact that we then considerably added to the 2016 team just makes it dumber.

Candy with an RBI 2 to score Heyward...advances Schwarber to 3rd

[tweet] [/tweet] Holy crap

he picked off vogelbach earlier!

sounds like the cubs are forcing the issue in Lester's simulated game and making him make pickoff throws as much as possible

Why is that more made up than any other sport? Because it's newer? newer and douchier and stupider I'm OK with this. MMA and all that stuff seems to be all of that.

Anyway, I don't have strong feelings about either sport nor do I have much interest. The point was basically I thought Rousey was this unbeatable behemoth in a female sport. Then she lost and I actually went from being completely uninterested to being mildly interested in the next event. As far as I know, Serena is an unbeatable behemoth (by tennis standards), so I'd probably be more interested in watching a match if I thought she were actually being challenged. The comparisons beyond that don't really matter. Analogies aren't about the similarities in the things themselves but in the relationships between the things. So, again, not a great analogy, but my point was, yes, I agree, if Serena had a legit challenger I'd probably become more interested as an outsider who presently has zero interest, just like happened when I heard about Rousey getting her ass kicked and losing on extremely long odds.

Yeah, and he basically handwaved that part away in the article...that's without even getting into the plexiglas part, the very foundation of the whole thing, being stupid.

I honestly can't even wrap my head around whatever it is you're trying to say here. If the foundation of the argument rests on the win gap between 2015 and 2014, it is already extremely specious. That is literally the foundation of Sheehan citing the plexiglas principle. Did you read the article? If so send it to me please. The argument was that teams that improve by 20+ games often do so because they get both great improvements from their roster and benefit from good fortune. Some of the specific reasons he mentioned are: outlier seasons, injury luck (and specifically mentioned how durable the Cubs rotation was last year), Pythagorean variance (the Cubs were +7 there), and bullpen variance (which he said applies to the Cubs..not so sure but he said something about Grimm, strop and rondon having outlier years). There were some others too. No, I heard Bernstein read it, just like you did. The very fact that it's based on that 20+ game improvement is why it's incredibly stupid. That is what I, and others, are saying.

Ultimate BoxingWrestlingKicky Championship Why is that more made up than any other sport? Because it's newer?

I honestly can't even wrap my head around whatever it is you're trying to say here. If the foundation of the argument rests on the win gap between 2015 and 2014, it is already extremely specious. That is literally the foundation of Sheehan citing the plexiglas principle.

What's a made up sport though?

Might be. Not a perfect comparison, but like with Rousey, I knew of her and knew she was unbeatable. But I had never seen one of her fights. And I had no idea she was fighting the night that she lost until the whole world went insane about her losing. Now I'm actually fairly interested in the rematch. Oh come on, that's not only not a perfect comparison but a terrible one. Rousey is a made up star in a made up sport. She exists solely as a product of marketing. I honestly don't even know enough about it to even begin to have those opinions on it. /Davidwood

It's basically stupid for the same reason the oft-seen arguments that teams that are bad one year somehow have to add to that year's win total in order to be good, regardless of what moves are made and how different the actual team is. It was a commonly cited argument for why 2015 was a "bridge year" or whatever because the team in 2014 lost 90 games. "Really? They're going to make a 20 win jump?" Most people weren't willing to go past .500 in predicting last year's team, and they considered that an optimistic view. Now, there were good reasons to project it as a .500 team (not the least of which was not expecting the rookies to be that impactful and that good right away), but the 2014 record wasn't really one of them. Not when they made the offseason changes they made and had the promotions coming that they had. When you project a given season, everyone starts 0-0 and what matters is the roster at that time. You don't have to dig uphill. Maybe it's better illustrated in reverse...in a different sport but a point in time that most of us are familiar with...nobody was gonna give the 1999 Bulls any boost in expectations based on the dynasty that preceded it. IIRC, I think this is one of TT's pet peeve topics.

The part where the entire argument falls flat is where it's being based on the improvement from 2014-2015. The 2014 team couldn't be more vastly differently constructed than this one. The 2016 team basically has the handful of good players (sans Samardzija & 2014 Castro) from 2014, and then instead of a bunch of horrific players making up the rest of the roster, it has a bunch of really good ones. You almost can't pick two more different teams on purpose. Yes, teams that win 97 games will have a hard time repeating that. It almost always takes positive variance in many ways to win 97 games in baseball. That's not the plexiglas principle. That's the case for any team that wins a ton of games.

Might be. Not a perfect comparison, but like with Rousey, I knew of her and knew she was unbeatable. But I had never seen one of her fights. And I had no idea she was fighting the night that she lost until the whole world went insane about her losing. Now I'm actually fairly interested in the rematch.

Meh, Bernstein basically read the entire article on the Score yesterday. I don't think the plexiglas principle is a terrible argument, when you look at it historically its been very accurate. It doesn't mean the Cubs are guaranteed to take a step back just that we can't necessarily count on being as healthy as we were last year (particularly with our starters), can't count on leading baseball in walk off wins, can't count on our young players not having sophomore slumps (which tbh is a dumber principle than plexiglas), can't count on the back end of the bullpen being as good and (relatively) consistent, etc. A lot can go wrong in a season, and the fact that Sheehan, who is a strong believer of the plexiglass principle, is still picking the Cubs to win the division and 90 games tells you a lot about how good and deep the Cubs are. That's basically what I said. Except applying the plexiglas principle is dumb. This isn't a team that had a few guys overperform and suddenly have a good year. This is a team that drastically overhauled its roster, with only a handful of (the good ones) players from the 2014 opening day roster being part of the team that ran roughshod on the NL in the second half last year. The 2014 team is as close to irrelevant re: the 2016 (or 2015, for that matter) team as can be. That roster has no bearing whatsoever on what the 2016 team will do. Of course teams that have huge jumps in win totals often don't repeat it (even though the sample size doesn't really prove anything about anythign)...teams that have huge jumps in win totals have huge win totals typically. And having huge win totals is hard. Repeating them is hard. Neither of those things have anything to do with the 2014 team. Projection models are much more reliable than this questionable "principle," especially in this application. If a team has a reason it's success in a given year is unsustainable or not repeatable, it will be reflected in the projections. He then said something along the lines of, "so don't believe the hype, the Cubs aren't that much better than the Cardinals and Pirates." Except it's not hype. Statistically based projections have the Cubs at a pretty crazily high totals in the mid 90s, and the Pirates and Cardinals somewhere in the mid 80s. Where is the hype biasing these? And why aren't the projections reflecting the plexiglas principle? If it's not obvious, I'm not saying there aren't scenarios where the Cubs take steps back (or win the amount of games he says they will - which is pretty likely). I'm saying it has absolutely nothing to do with the 2014 team that gave 350 PA to Nate Schierholtz, or 300+ PA to Alcantara, or 200+ PA to Darwin Barney, or 300+ PA to Junior Lake, or 300 PA to Emilio Bonifacio, or 250+ PA to Mike Olt, or 31 starts to Travis Wood, 27 to Edwin Jackson, etc.

[tweet]https://twitter.com/jonahkeri/status/709774960969932800[/tweet]

That's not to say anything of all of the Cardinal fans who simultaneously said Heyward sucked and they didn't want him anyway while acting like him coming here was the biggest heel turn ever.

it was a lighthearted interview where he was being asked about cubs fans coming after him on twitter if anyone is mad about it, then he's basically right

no and yes the closest thing to news was that the players toured it when they were in town for the convention

I'm loving that the "I'm gonna be the contrarian down on the Cubs guy" article is coming from a guy who is still picking them to win the division and win 89-92 games...especially, when it's based on this terrible plexiglas principle argument about teams that improve greatly from year to year taking a step back, ignoring the vast differences between the 2014 and 2015 rosters. [tweet] [/tweet]

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