The Cubs will begin the first round of the playoffs on Wednesday, but other than that, much remains in the air with only 4 games left in the regular season. The Cubs don’t know who their NLDS opponent will be, though they do know they’ll have home field advantage throughout the National League playoffs. They don’t know what time the game will take place either. There are 3 potential NLDS opponents for the Cubs: Mets, Phillies, and Dodgers. The Mets and Brewers are currently tied for the Wild Card and Philly is just one game ahead of the Mets so any of those 3 teams could win the Wild Card. The Dodgers have clinched a tie in the West and barring a collapse, they’ll win that division.
The Cubs will play the wild card team in the NLDS if that team is not from the NL Central. They’ll play the division winner with the worst record if the Wild Card does come from the NL Central. In other words, the Cubs will play the Dodgers if the Brewers win the Wild Card. The Cubs would play the Mets, or the Phillies, if one of them wins the Wild Card.
The playoffs are mostly a crapshoot anyway. Sure, the superior team will have higher odds of winning a short series, but the odds they lose the series are still high. The odds of winning or losing depends on the opponent, of course, but even if one team is so far superior to another that they have 70% odds of winning a short series they still will lose 30% of the time, which is a lot.
Since the Cubs clinched the division and the best record in the NL, we’ve spent a lot of time the last couple days talking about desired opponents. Obviously you’d like to face the worst team possible, but even then, the odds of losing are still relatively high. SS mentioned momentum last night. He argued the Dodgers were the most dangerous team by how they have been playing of late. Myself, and a couple others, quickly chimed in that momentum in baseball does not exist. I’ll get to that in a moment, but first, do the Dodgers really have the momentum over the Cubs?
Over the last 10 games, the Cubs are 7-3 while the Dodgers are 6-4. In that span, the Dodgers have played the Rockies (1), Pirates (4), Giants (3) and the Padres (2). Not exactly tough competition. In that same span the Cubs have played the Astros (1), Brewers (3), Cardinals (3) and the Mets (3). The Cubs have played 10 games against teams over .500 while the Dodgers have played 10 against teams well under .500. And the Cubs have done better than the Dodgers.
Over the last 20, the Cubs are 11-9 and the Dodgers are 15-5. Still, the Dodgers have done that against only one team in contention and even that team, the Diamondbacks, is under .500. The Cubs have done it against almost exclusively contenders. Over the last 30, each are 18-12. So what we have are 3 10-game stretches in which the Cubs have gone (in order of most recent 10-game stretch) 7-3, 4-6, and 7-3. The Dodgers have gone 6-4, 9-1, and 3-7. No momentum in favor of the Dodgers. None at all.
In Bill James 1988 Baseball Abstract (taken from Baseball Analysts), James said:
“As a sports fan you hear a lot about momentum. As a scientist you’ll have a hell of a time proving that any such animal exists,” James writes in “Momentum, Ad Nauseum.” By studying the issue, he concludes “that which is called momentum in baseball is not a characteristic of play but a characteristic of the perception of play.” He calls momentum “one of those superficial concepts that is hard to resist if you don’t think it through” and says “the illusion of momentum will in time, I think, be overpowered by its own absurdities.”
Momentum is a lot like those little things we often hear about. Actually, it’s not. The little things actually do have some impact though it’s minimal. Momentum can neither be proven nor seen and changes on a dime.
Joe Sheehan recently talked specifically about the Dodgers in a Baseball Prospectus article. Sheehan mentions the 8 game losing streak in which the Dodgers were outscored 54-15 that dropped them to 4.5 behind the Diamondbacks. They then turned it around and won 8 in a row (5 over the Diamondbacks) by a combined score of 52-18. Sheehan adds this comment:
There is no such thing as momentum in baseball, and we’ve had any number of examples of this principle in just the last few weeks. The Dodgers are the most obvious one, but take a look at the Mets, who took a devastating loss in Philadelphia on August 26, and were trailing the next night late in the game with their ace having been knocked out. They won that game, and five of the six that followed, all on the road against above-.500 teams. The Phillies, meanwhile, dropped three straight off of that great win. The Dodgers’ performance turned on a dime on the afternoon of August 30. The Yankees had a number of points where it seemed like they would climb into contention, but could never play well over a long enough stretch to contend. The Astros are 29-11 over their last 40 games with essentially the same team that was 47-56 before that. No, wait: they’re doing that while being down their second-best hitter and highest-paid player, Carlos Lee.
Momentum is a lot like the hot hand theory, which is that you stick with the hot hand at whatever position or positions you want and ride them out. The problem with this theory is that you can’t predict when that hot hand will return to normal production and you often hurt your team when employing this strategy. The fact of the matter is that momentum implies that a team is capable of sustaining a level of play above or below their true skill level. In order for one team to sustain a better winning percentage than they are truly capable of, it has to come from the production of the players on the team.
Each and every player has a true skill level. You have a true skill level at whatever job you do and in any short amount of time you could exceed that level or fail to reach it, but overall you will perform your duties at a level that you are truly capable of. This skill level is repeatable. It’s what your employers can expect from you and if you fail to meet those expectations for a long time, you will either be fired or demoted. If you pass those expectations for a long period of time you will, if you’re lucky, get compensated for improving your true skill level. In baseball this true skill level is always changing, but the amount it is changing on a daily or weekly basis is very, very small. Over one or two or three seasons it could change significantly, but the idea of momentum for a baseball team is not a long-term process. As such, the true skill level of any team will change so little in a short period of time that you won’t even notice it. That’s true for players as well.
In Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman, and Andy Dolphin’s The Book, a chapter was devoted to hot streaks and cold streaks for individual players. It’s really simple: if momentum exists in baseball, individual players should be able to sustain hot or cold streaks.
Between 2000 and 2003 there were 543 players who had a 5-game hot streak in which a player posted a minimum wOBA of .525. There were 6408 total hot streaks among those players. The average wOBA during the streak was .587. The expected wOBA just one game after that 5th game was .365. The actual wOBA in that game for those players was .369. The expected wOBA for the 5 games following the streak was also .365 and the actual wOBA was also .369.
Using the same years and now looking at cold streaks, there were 633 players who had a 5-game cold streak (maximum wOBA was .195). The toal number of streaks was 6489. The average wOBA was .151. The expected wOBA on the first game after the streak was .336 and the actual wOBA was .330. The expected wOBA during the 5 games following the streak was .337 and the actual wOBA was .332.
Same years, but now 7-game streaks. 6303 hot streaks, average wOBA of .553, expected wOBA for 3 games after streak of .369, and actual wOBA of .373. 7508 cold streaks, average wOBA .186, expected wOBA for 3 games after streak of .336 and an actual wOBA of .328.
If you take the 10 players who had the hottest 7-game streaks in 2003, the average wOBA during the streak was a ridiculous .712. The expected wOBA after the streak (3 games) was .370, but these 10 players had an actual wOBA of just .341. The 10 coldest 7-game streaks in 2003, average wOBA of .076, expected wOBA after was .324 and the actual wOBA was .324.
In other words, if hitters do perform better or worse than their expected levels of production, it’s not by much at all. And certainly not enough to make a .525 team anymore dangerous than a .526 team in the future. There is some improvement or decline after the streaks from the expected levels, which means that it’s not such a bad idea for a manager to stick with the hot hand, but it’s not a significant enough difference.
As for pitchers, there is even more indication that a hot streak is indicative of how that pitcher may pitch one game after the streak, but not beyond that. As for pitchers who have been on a cold streak, there is no predictive value in that streak in terms of how they will pitch after the streak.
I’ll say what I did last night and what many others have said, there is no such thing as momentum in baseball. You’ve got as good a chance, if not better, of being right by flipping a coin.
Before anyone tries to name a player or two, or a team or two who have remained hot, save your time. Nobody is saying that a player or a team can’t get hot and sustain that performance for a short period of time. It happens. What I saying is that you simply cannot predict it and if you can’t do that, then there is no skill involved and it’s mostly luck. Tim McCarver said something similar to SS this past Saturday in that he thought the Dodgers were the 2nd most dangerous team. I don’t really know what dangerous means. Any team that can eliminate you from the playoffs is dangerous. Every single one of them. While the better team is going to win more often than not, they are still going to lose often as well. It doesn’t have anything to do with momentum or hot streaks or dangerous teams. It’s just statistics.
As for which NL playoff contenders you might want to face, here’s each of the 5 team’s offensive wOBA and pitcher’s wOBA allowed.
TEAM wOBA wOBA allowed CHC .358 .315 LAD .333 .306 MIL .345 .326 NYN .346 .322 PHI .343 .325
Same teams using VORP (Offensive and Pitching).
TEAM OVORP PVORP CHC 275.4 254.6 LAD 172.4 263.2 MIL 190.9 225.2 NYN 236.6 193.9 PHI 228.1 239
And here’s defense measured by RZR and OOZ.
TEAM RZR OOZ CHN .835 419 NYN .83 444 MIL .829 449 LAN .824 428 PHI .819 474
So based on this little info and your own opinions, who would you rather face in the NLDS?
frameborder=”0? scrolling=”auto” name=”poll_number_1”>
1. Jame Gumb ® (view all comments) — Sep 25, 2008 @ 04:51 AM