squally1313

Some assorted thoughts: You weren't 'discounting' the first two months. You were ignoring them entirely with all the 84 win team talk (I've got 45-40 translating to 86 win team, but splitting hairs). Ignoring them because they were so historically good makes even less sense. They showed elite levels of production for two months. That absolutely holds some weight. If you had some all powerful/all knowing deity come down and tell you that this team was a true talent 84 win team, and then you told me that since June 1, they would have by far the biggest disparity, in a negative direction, between their xwOBA and their wOBA (no other team is above 20 points, we're at 27)....I would expect them to play a lot worse than at an 84 win pace? I mean, you could also argue that the statistic as a concept is some degree of flawed/worthless, obviously a different conversation, but setting that aside the Cubs are a pretty extreme outlier. Now you could argue we've been on the other side of that luck on the pitching side but I don't think there's any way to say it's been overall equal. And I've been very negative/critical of the pitching staff and the way it was assembled/wasn't supplemented at the TDL. But I also expected Boyd or Horton to go on the shelf by now, and every day is another day closer to the playoffs with them still penciled in for 2 of the 3 first round starts. We all bemoaned the concept of having to start Matt Shaw every day and not getting Suarez, and we've all seen what's happened since. Hitting can turn quickly. I'm sorry but the other teams still matter. Cubs are 45-40 since June 1. We're very likely to play the Padres in the first round, probably in a three game series all at Wrigley. The Padres are 46-41 since June 1. The Dodgers are 43-42 in that stretch. Theoretically by that measure they also 'don't have a legitimate reason to turn around'. The Brewers, historical stretch, discount/toss that out, 11-10 since the start of the 5 game Cubs series. I guess Phillies will just cakewalk? Because they've played 2.5 games better than us over a 2ish month stretch? The 2025 Cubs don't have to beat the 2016 Cubs to have success in the playoffs. They need to beat three or four similarly flawed teams in what are glorified coin flips. I get your point on the sample size, and I'm very aware 9 games or whatever is dumb. It was mostly reactionary in that every. single. loss becomes this referendum of 'see, I told you they were bad'. Every loss is 'horsefeathers pathetic' etc etc etc. But we've yet to have a truly bad stretch, which is something you can't say about any of the other teams. 90 win teams don't win 55% of their games every week. They get hot, they play mediocre, and ultimately that's where they end up.

Look man, I made one post today about how the 81-62 that is 10 games clear of a playoff spot is not a terrible team. There are dozens of negative posts from the same people (typically people that have showed up in the last two years) every time we give up a run. The guy who has like 100% negative posts and has called out Palencia for being mentally weak and Ben brown for ‘not putting in the work’ or whatever the ****** comment was, both totally baselessly, in particular set me off. the other teams absolutely matter because for the cubs to lose like so many people here are clearly waiting for with baited breath, other teams have to beat them. 90% of the complaints rehashed here can be applied to all the other playoff teams, and ultimately someone has to win here. the team absolutely has flaws, the trade deadline and the end of the offseason were botched in very critical ways, and the lack of pitching depth is probably going to die them in when we turn the ball over to Ryan brasier or whatever in the fifth inning of game 2. Losing 2/3 to the nationals while Tucker and PCA are pretty voluntarily out in a spot in the season where the leadership has clearly prioritized rest and health (because we’re more than comfortably in a playoff spot) is absolutely not an indictment of anything meaningful, and it certainly doesn’t mean the team is garbage and awful and has no chance of doing anything in the playoffs. 3 months is more relevant than 9 games, and 5 months is more relevant than 3 months.

Good call on the home stand, not sure what I was thinking on that. calling me out for sample size issues, big or small, and then cherry picking a sample size in bad faith in the same argument is a bad look. Also all these other teams suck too.

I think he’s sweet but he’s absolutely flawed, pitching wise. Team is like 4 pitchers short

The cubs have gone 5-3 on the brewers series home stand 5-4 on the road trip 5-4 on the latest home stand take any combination of those numbers, turn them into a winning percentage, multiply that winning percentage by 162, or look what all the other teams that we’re going to play in October and what they’ve done over that stretch, and maybe, just maybe, it’s going to be ok

This guy sucks so much

Guys we can’t hit any pitchers (except the pitchers we hit, those don’t count)

Ignore me, been drinking, am an idiot, cubs are still good

Jesus christ

9.5 up for making the playoffs, 4.5 up on home field in the first round, 5 back on Milwaukee (who's bullpen is quickly becoming a giant mess)

115 wRC for Happ. His bad baserunning is probably going to keep him under 3 wins unless he stays hot the rest of the year, but with the soft schedule I wouldn't be surprised if he keeps up his (overall) metronomic hitting ways (122, 119, 121 the last three years)

Willi Castro and Luis Urias (cut by the Athletics, playing for the Brewers AAA team) were offered as upgrades to Nico Hoerner like, 2 months ago in a whole article around these parts. Nico rocks.

PCA getting all the right results at the plate is encouraging. One of those guys that needs to see the ball go through the hoop I feel like.

Good point on the directional thing, so the implication for a team that might be expected to consistently underperform would be a team full of players who generally go back up the middle? Fair point but one that hasn't really been borne out in recent data. Below starts in 2025 and then goes back in time.

But wouldn't you expect a dip in BABIP if that was the case? League wide it's .291, same exact number as last year (where the difference between xwOBA and wOBA was only 2 points).

Yeah I've started to get a little hesitant to lean on it just because like, if everyone is underperforming then no one is, right? I'm a little comforted(?) that Dansby, Seiya, Happ, Busch, and Tucker are all in the top 76 in terms of the difference between xwOBA and wOBA, and, like you said, we don't have any of the 77 players outperforming their xwOBA. But still weird.

101 wRC on the year for Dansby. His xwOBA was .360 going into today, which is his career high either by that metric or his actual output, and 51 points higher than his actual output so far this year. I probably need a smart person to explain why league wide xwOBA is 11 points higher than wOBA, but even if you should be discounting xwOBA a little bit, he's fourth in all of baseball, per Savant, in the difference between actual and expected.

Cubs offense fixed!

'one weakness of this cubs offense is that they strikeout a lot' the cubs have the 4th lowest K rate in baseball

PCA is, per the rules above, broken, but the Cubs up 1-0 early

Yeah I mean, one game sample size and all that, but this pitcher is very, very bad (among qualified starters, he's the only one with a negative fWAR, given up the second most home runs in baseball, has a 5.42 ERA and is actually overperforming his peripherals).

You can't put up a .430 OPS, even if you're prime Andruw Jones out there. But the amount of value PCA brings to the table defensively means you can't just look solely at the offensive output. Obviously isn't apples to apples, but kinda works since WAR is a cumulative stat. In 2023 Castro had 409 PAs, put up a .750 OPS, very good baserunning (15th in baseball metrically, 31 SBs) and slightly above average defense and was worth 2.5 fWAR. PCA in 2024 had 410 PAs, so an equal amount, had a .670 OPS (down 80 points), very good baserunning (17th in baseball metrically, 27 SBs) and elite defense, and was worth 2.6 fWAR. Oversimplifying by a lot, but based on this comparison, what PCA brings defensively is worth like 80 points of OPS. Seiya Suzuki as a .670 OPS guy would be pretty downright unplayable, though, in a somewhat separate topic, there's no reason to think that's his talent level at the moment.

This is a good thread to remind everyone that these weird ups and downs are not Cub specific, they're just baseball. The Cubs didn't even make this, tellingly. Apologies for making you click through to X, feel free to ignore.

I think, conceptually, the only way to statistically say the offense is broken is by looking at what they did in August. Like, here are some assorted sample sizes of the teams offensive production in terms of how they rank league wide. YTD: 4th in fWAR, 10th in wOBA, 4th in xwOBA, 5th in wRC June 1-July 30: 3rd in fWAR, 5th in wOBA, 1st in xwOBA, 3rd in wRC July 1-July 30: 3rd in fWAR, 5th in wOBA, 1st in xwOBA, 4th in wRC July 1 -today: 16th in fWAR, 22nd in wOBA, 4th in xwOBA (hm), 20th in wRC August 1-today: 23rd in fWAR, 28th in wOBA, 7th in xwOBA (hm again), 26th in wRC So really you've got a month of them having at least (very) bad results. Should we give it slightly more weight because it's the most recent month? Sure. Is it dumb to throw away the season based on a months sample size when we still have a brand new sample size of a month that we basically haven't played yet? I kinda think so. If we spend September with bad results/bad metrics, and I'm having to defend them as like 'we'll, they're just playing out the string, making sure they don't get hurt'....I'm going to feel worse about their chances. But, since you asked for optimism/pessimism: Optimism: We're into September and Matt Boyd and Cade Horton's collective arms are still attached to their shoulders, offensive production can turn quickly and all signs are saying that it should, and I think the talent is more than sufficient on that side of the ball. Pessimism: By far the biggest: there are 12 teams, only one can win, there is a 90% chance it won't be us and everyone who shows up in the game threads when we go down 2 runs can gloat about how they were right to be miserable all year. More specifically, we have like 5 good pitchers, and that doesn't seem like nearly enough.

FYI https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/2025-standings.shtml TLDR: you're mostly right