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Once we empirically decide if it is or isn't, then we can start trying to nail down effects or dismissing all possibility of them.
Reminds me of Palins stance on global warming.
He obliterated his previous GIDP record, so, yeah. He’s been frustrating all season.
Start with this: How often should a team that is a combined 200 or so runs of run differential better than its opponents over two years be expected to lose five straight games by a combined run differential of about four per game?
If we know how likely that is, we have some idea if there might be an effect or not.
I'm certainly not arguing that there certainly is. I've just not heard one real argument as to why it should be dismissed out of hand. Only childish mockery.
Stares at strikes, swings at balls in the dirt.
Funny thing about global warming, we can measure that it's happening.
Funny thing about Cubs underperforming dramatically in the playoffs, we can measure that it's happening.
But there is something odd about experience...the Phils roster last year looked completely lost agasint the Rockies (who were also post-season rookies). This year they seem to be playing much better and the Brewers are misplaying balls and walking pitchers. It's very strange.
I still pin it back to the Cubs not playing meaningful baseball for the last week of the season and not being able to get back into that mode.
Your reasons for why there might be an effect have been incredible childish in their logic so why should you expect a reasoned response?
Same city, same park. I mean come on, what kind of response do you expect when you write that? Same 1, 3, and 4 hitter. Wow that is convincing.
My reason for their being a possible effect is that we are observing an extreme difference in performance.
YOU brought up the fact that they were different teams, and then you don't like it when someone points out the commonalities among the two teams? How are commonalities between the teams irrelevant when you are the one bringing up dissimilarities?
I'm sure they could do well in the playoffs playing for other clubs. But they are now playing under a cloud of expectations, foreboding, and doom the likes of which professional baseball has never seen. The sense of inevitable disaster is palpable and amazingly potent, and if you think it's not felt by the players, you're crazy. And, yes, players are often under pressure, and they're usually not affected by it, for the oft-cited reason that the guys who are affected by it are weeded out before the majors. But my point is this: this is a whole new level of pressure, and most of these guys can't deal with it.
I liked his pregame comment that if the Cubs lost, they'll just not get on the plane to LA and forfeit b/c there'd be no point in trying. Hammers home the point that a loss tonight does not = end of season.
When the differences in quality of play are *this* spectacular, yes.
" So what would the solution be, get to the playoffs then fire all your coaches, players organizational staff, uniforms and home park?"
No idea. It's a long way from "maybe there is an effect" to "there definitely is, here's what it is, and here's how we fix it."
[edited because I am an incoherent turd]
Same park means building a team around that park, means playing most of your games during the day (the only team to do so).
And the majority of the team is the same across two seasons. But in your idiotic argument, they can't possibly be considered to have any connection to each other. Might as well just draw all the MLB players names out of a hat every year and reassign them randomly to teams, because teams have no carryover from one year to the next.
Then how are we going to research it? You are pointing out results, there are, quite literally an infinite number of reasons why those results ended up the way they did. Could there be an overriding effect that causes that? Maybe, but I don't see how, so you're the one that's going to have to come up with a plausible explanation. Once we have that, we can actually run some numbers.
That's not the point. The point is we should be asking ourselves if we are seeing something happen that is beyond the realm of normal statistical variance.
You're not listening. Correlation does not imply causation. Things happened. What can you measure? Once you give us something to analyze, something we can measure, we can start taking the "organizational effect" seriously. Until then, it is just spurious correlation.
I want to know if we have a statistically significant correlation.
You are right. That 98% to make the WS in 2003? Fluke.
That being swept by a team that had a negative run differential? Fluke.
Having a +150 run differential in the regular season and being outscored by 11 runs in two games while your top-rated offense scores two runs, your second-best pitcher walks seven and your defense makes a ton of costly errors? Fluke.
Nothing to see here.
Even if it is, it's still spurious without a mechanism to link them.
on a grand total of 5 games? This is just plain absurd.
So at no point in the season (not including last week with the AAAA lineup) do you think you can find the cubs losing back to back games? The other points don't matter. It's only 2 games.
g'night all.
Run differential doesn't matter? That's a new one on me. If these were one-run losses, we have proof that those are mostly flukes and I'd move on gladly.
How much difference in run differential over how many games do we have to see before we consider an effect? Simple question, no one ever wants to answer it. Not even give a ballpark.
That being swept by a team that had a negative run differential? Fluke.
Having a +150 run differential in the regular season and being outscored by 11 runs in two games while your top-rated offense scores two runs, your second-best pitcher walks seven and your defense makes a ton of costly errors? Fluke.
You do realize that the DBacks went to the World Series right? You do realize that an 83 win Cardinals team won it all. You do realize that a 116 win SEattle team couldn't get to the World Series? You do realize that the greatest franchise in baseball history lost not once but twice to upstart franchises that with less then 10 years of existance in the world series and the winning teams were not exactly favorites or juggernauts.
It is a short series, the first series even shorter. Things happen and a huge chunk of the time it has nothing to do some conspiracy like theory.
Beat that strawman. Beat it hard! Kill the strawman!
Makes you feel good, no?
Even the phils went through a 40 game span where they sucked ass. It happens. The season is 162. The playoffs are 5-7-7.
Yep. You do realize that the Cubs are about to lose eight straight playoff games at a negative run differencial of more than -4/game?
I get that. But those are for correlations we see after the fact.
The Cubs Effect correlation is proving awfully predictive, which is one of the ways we separate spurious correlations from effects.
Okay here is an answer. 162 games.
You've got a sample size of two in 2008 and 3 in 2007. It is absurd to draw any kind of conclusion from that small amount of data spread out over such a large timeframe involving probably thousands of variables.
Again, you are telling us what is happening, not why. You are the one that wants to know why and we say we don't know. Then you say, aren't you curious? There has to be a reason? We ask you what the reason is, and you have no idea. Spurious correlation, I will continue to say this to every one of your posts until you pick up a statistics textbook....
You do realize that lots of statistics become statistically significant way before 162 games. Why arbitrarily choose that number?
Oh my god it's the C on the hat! So now you want to add games from 2003? Why stop there, why not go all the way back to 1910? Maybe it is all Veeck Sr. fault?
Hell, the Dodgers beat the Cubs in back-to-back games earlier this season, and the second was with Zambrano pitching! Gave up 7 ER that day, did Z. I'm sure it was just because the weight of all those Cubs postseason losses was wearing him down.
Why arbitrarily pick 5 games a year apart? Why in the world would you think that is even close to being statistically significant.
Yes, but when he doffed his cap and pointed to the sky, was he thanking his favorite deity, or blaming it for the crappy Cubs' defense?
That is not possible. By definition, 100% is the max they can give.
That was just bizarre. What a weird display; a bizarre combination of resignation and thanks.
Because they are games specifically separated from the rest of the season and given a unique meaning.
"Why in the world would you think that is even close to being statistically significant."
Because they are getting utterly demolished. Not like they are losing close games here and there.
I'd like to say we're going in circles at this point, but it'd be an insult to circles. I'll stop bringing it up until at least tomorrow if Harden gets lit up.
I know this was brought up, but the Red Sox had to be in worse shape before 2004. The Cubs hadn't won the World Series in a longer time, but the Red Sox had many more post-season appearances, and therefore more failures. So any mistake was always "Here we go again" with the Red Sox.
I'm asking why the errors and walks and opponents runs keep happening at rates far above regular-season averages, and the Cubs hits and walks and runs keep coming at rates far below them.
I will state categorically that I am not talking about anything supernatural.
In 2003 the Cubs won 88 games and only got into the playoffs because the Astros could beat a last place team.
Neither team was very good and trying to draw any conclusions based on combining all three of these teams is just silly.
The Cubs didn't commit an error last year in the playoffs.
Pick any two games sets from the regular season and you are bound to find things that are way abover or below the seasonal averages. That is why people bring up sample size.
Almost all playoff stats for all teams are either way abover or below seasonal averages. That is what happens in shorts series, this basic logic.
Great typo! I chuckled heartily.
I will state categorically that I am not talking about anything supernatural.
Then what is it? Wrigley wind patterns in early October?
Obviously it is the farm directors fault. They keep signing chokers.
Jerks *and* liars at the same time, an impressive combination.
And no one can give you an answer. Personally, I don't think there is "an" answer, the game is far too complex and too many things contribute to the end result. So either come up with an idea or let it go, pestering everyone again and again isn't answering your question.
I will state categorically that I am not talking about anything supernatural.
If you can't measure it, it might as well be. All you have to go on is W/L, offensive production and pitching, and those numbers aren't giving you an answer. So I think you're theory is SOL from a sabermetrics POV. You're back to "chemistry," "curses" and good old fashioned choking. Not real sabermetricly friendly....
Winner! KyleJRM wins the argument!
A fool comes into game chatter and says the cubs are losing because they play in Chicago and in Wrigley and then demands that we find correlation on losing and an unknown variable (which by the way is an impossibility) based on 5 games. Yet we are the jerks?
The numbers are giving me an answer. The question is, it is a real answer or is it statistical noise?
Probably statistical noise. But I'm reserving "certainly" for some sort of real statistical explanation of the odds of a good team having a stretch of being outscored 51-14 over eight games.
I've done no such thing. If someone asking questions and responding to rebuttals pisses you off, you should perhaps find a corner of the interwebs that does not include discussion.
"
I didn't say that. I said it was possible. Unlikely, but possible.
The Cubs' recent playoff performances have been worse than their regular-season performances by a wide margin. It's *probably* statistically insignificant.
Are you really that dense? Do you really fail to perceive that the Cubs are operating under pressure many, many orders of magnitude greater than, say, the Rays, or any other team in this, or almost any other, postseason? Do you not feel the palpable anxiety and doom at Wrigley (it's been around since before the game yesterday)--I can practically touch it through my TV! Guess what: the players can feel it, too; just as you can walk into a room in which someone is about to get fired and sense, through nonverbal cues, that something bad is about to happen, so too can they sense that something terrible will happen. This is not magic, or a curse, or any supernatural crap, but instead a team cracking under pressure of an extraordinary magnitude.
This is an incredibly stupid statement.
The odds of this happening over eight games is 100% for every single franchise in the history of baseball. Probably in the history of every single team in the history of sports in which they use points to determine who won or lost.
You've got 8 games spread out over 3 seasons spanning 6 seasons. I can find a 51-14 spread over that time span for any time in existance.
And I didn't ask for a correlation between losing and an unknown variable.
I said it was silly to dismiss any and all possibility of an effect without at least finding out how likely it is for an organization to underperform this wildly in a stretch of a certain number of games.
See, this is the jerky part. Where you wildly misrepresent things I say so that you can mock them.
Oh, I guess we're not talking about the game anymore.
There, now I have a real, shiny hypothesis that can be tested.
So...no on the wind patterns?
Yet in 2003 Cub fans thought the Cubs would win the World Series. In 2007 they thought they would win the World Series, same as this year. The Cubs were up 3 games to 1 in 2003 and they lost 3 in a row. There was no sense of impending doom in that series until the 7th game and even then the Cubs had a chance and were winning. Last year the sense of doom was not there until at some point in the second game. Again in 2008 there wasn't a sense of doom until after the first game. Fans thought the Cubs were going to steam roll the Dodgers.
The numbers are giving you a pattern, or at least the sense of a pattern, once again, that's not statistics. Let's say it is really unlikely, then what? What if you run the numbers and it has only happened in one time in 250. You're still right where you are now, grasping at perceived patterns. You can't go about it the way you're proposing and come up with a meaningful answer.
Holy crap, a reasonable explanation of why I'm approaching this wrong.
Thank you, that's all I wanted.
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