soccer10k

Which is the ideal situation. Before I heard about the 3 way tiebreaker thing, I was hoping the Giants would win since I thought that would mean we wouldn't clinch because another team lost.

Arizona can tie us on record but we have the tiebreaker due to H2H. SF has the tiebreaker over us.

Eugenio Suarez hitting .170 with a .633 OPS with Seattle.

Someone correct me if I’m wrong but I believe the Cubs clinch a playoff spot today if they win, Arizona beats SF and St Louis beats Cincy. A Cubs win would mean at worst they would go 87-75. Ari, SF and Cincy all have 75 losses but we have the tiebreaker over Ari. SF has the tiebreaker and Cincy would if we ended up tied since that would mean they sweep our upcoming series.

TIL Nico has been worth 6 bWAR this year, which is wild to me. And he was at 5.5 bWAR in 2023. Last 4 years he's been at least 3.7 bWAR and at least 3.9 fWAR. I guess I didn't realize how much defensive value he provides. I knew he was a good defender but when you combine that with him being an above average hitter and playing either SS or 2B, it adds up. But like if you just gave a bunch of random baseball fans the Cubs roster and asked them to guess which player was leading the Cubs in bWAR (he's third in fWAR), I'm guessing nobody would pick Nico first and most fans would probably list 4-6 guys before naming Nico.

If someone wants to keep them out of the top-25, that’s fine too. I’m not arguing they should or shouldn’t be in the top-25. I was just comparing them to USC, who beat a team in their first year at the FBS, a Sun Belt team and a Big 10 team that went 1-11 last year.

Looks weird but I’m fine with it. ND lost by a combined 4 points to 2 (currently) top 10 teams. USC hasn’t played anyone yet. We’ll get a datapoint this weekend since USC just played Purdue and Notre Dame plays them this weekend. And then they play each other in a month anyway.

I'm sure some of these games will be entertaining but seems like a pretty boring slate.

That was an arm punt if I've ever seen one.

Both ND-A&M and Georgia-Tenn were fun watches today.

Why did Busch not just stay on first there? If the ball wasn’t caught, the runner’s on second so you can’t go anywhere. If the ball got caught, then the runner gets doubled off. You gain nothing by running to second.

Looks like this is a “check back in 45-60 minutes to see if things changed” situation.

I miss when the B-R Play Index was free because I would have looked up how many teams had ever gone 39-9 before. Don't know what their best 48 game stretch was, though it was better because they went 44-7 at one point, but the 2017 Dodgers started 35-25, then were 91-36, then were 92-52. It’s just wild that a team would go 56-11 and then immediately follow it up by going 1-16.

I didn't realize that the Brewers are only 2 games up on Philly for the 1 seed now. Relevant to us since we'll be in the 1-2 WC matchup which means we'd play the 1 seed if we advance. I've just assumed that would be Milwaukee because they were way up but they're 4-6 in the last 10 while Philly is 8-2.

The Brewers have a better chance of a long playoff run but that's mainly because they don't have to play the WC round.

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.

Not good. Would be perfect for us for LA-SD to go down to the last day since we'll likely be playing one of them.

It was the e fourth time a player had a shot at 5 home runs. Mike Cameron actually had 2 chances. He homered twice in the 1st, in the 3rd and 5th before getting hit by a pitch in the 7th and lining out in the 9th.

Yep, that’s the one I was thinking of. 13-16 in August, 12-16 in Sept/Oct, up 5 games on Sept 7, lost their final five games (the last three were to the 62-100 Royals) to lose the division by a game.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/STL/2006-schedule-scores.shtml 13-15 in August and 12-17 in Sept/Oct. They were up 7 games with 11 games left but then lost 8 of 9 and saw their lead trimmed to 0.5 games. I seem to remember another team in the last 20 years that either nearly blew the division or did blow it but got a WC, then went on a run in the playoffs.

That’s amazing. His senior year of high school, his average game was 35 carries, 328 yards and 4 TDs. For the season he had 4261 yards and 55 TDs in 13 games.

Derrick Henry currently has 11592 rushing yards, which means he's 6763 yards behind Emmitt. He's currently in his age 31 season. At age 28 he had over 1500 yards with Tannehill as his QB and at 29 he had 1167 yards with Tannehill and Levis splitting time. Then last year with Lamar he got over 1900. If he could average 1300 yards over the next three years, that would mean he'd only be 3000 behind Emmitt (taking out the 169 he got last night). He'd obviously have to stay healthy, but he's only had 1 year where he played fewer than 15 games. Maybe he stays with Baltimore for a couple more years and averages 1500 yards through 2027. That puts him about 2400 behind Emmitt and he'll be going into his age 34 season. Three years as a part timer at 800 yards a year gets him there at age 36. It's definitely not likely, but I don't think it would be the craziest thing if he managed to surpass Emmitt. And we never know who the freak outliers are until they're actually doing it (like Brady and LeBron, though obviously the RB position is different than QB or an NBA player).

It holds a small amount of weight but not much when it goes against all other evidence. Again I ask, which of those hitters would you reasonably expect to revert back to how they hit from April and May? I'll give you Tucker if he was healthy, which he's not. So four of those hitters way overperformed what was expected of them and the fifth is injured, why on earth should I reasonably expect that offense to return? Is it possible? Sure. But it's not smart to expect the 1-5% end of the bell curve to happen again. You're making an argument against a point I'm not even making. I'm not ranking the teams 1-30 where there has to be a best team and a second best team, etc, and I'm not talking about how likely they are to advance in the playoffs. The best team in a season isn't necessarily a great team. This season is different than 2017-2023 where they were 3 or 4 100+ win teams. If you have five dudes who are all between 5'-6" and 5'-10", that doesn't make the 5'-10" guy tall. It just means he's taller than the other guys. The Cubs can be the second or third best team this year without being a great team. And I'm not trying to say they're like the 16th best team. I would recommend scrolling rght past the dumbasses. It's very easy to because I do it most times I venture into a game thread. Or if you can't scroll past all of them, pick the 3 or 4 dumbest of the dumbasses and block them so you don't even see their posts. Also it's a game thread and people are allowed to overreact a bit. Not everyone is a robot like David. And yes, some are worse than others. So block the worst ones.