Brewers, Cubs, and Cards

The 'second half' of the baseball season gets fully underway tonight and we find the Cubs in first place by four games over the St. Louis Cardinals and five games over the Milwaukee Brewers. Setting aside my personal angst over Brewers versus Cardinals, let me just say I hate the Cubs - a Cubs-Red Sawx World Series is surely a sign of the apocalypse (and surely Lou Pinella would be regarded as a false messiah).

So, how does it shape up?

A favorite stat is run differential from which one can derive a projected wins and losses using Bill James' Pythagorean theorem of baseball: Runs scored [squared] / (Runs scored [squared] + runs allowed [squared]). This formula was designed to relate a team's runs scored and runs allowed to its won-lost record.

The Cubs are right where they should be based on their 507 runs scored versus 401 allowed with a 58-37 record. If they keep winning at that almost 62% pace, forget it, they win 99 or 100 games and the division.

The Brewers, however, have won more than their fair share - not a good sign. They have outscored opponents by just 440-427, but are nine games over .500. They should be just games over (49-46). If they don't increase their run margin they are not likely to keep winning 55% of their games.

The surprising Cards are in the same boat, they are 11 over .500 and should be about 5 over.

Oddly, given all their bullpen problems, the Brewers have an excellent record in one-run games (20-10). One run wins tend to be distributed randomly, i.e. by 'luck'. Diamond Mind Baseball. Of course, that luck doesn't have to be random within a limited time span, i.e., a team could stay lucky all year.

The good news is that the Cards are leading for the wild card and the Brewers are one game back. For the Brewers the trick is to get into the playoffs. Their leading duo of Ben Sheets and CC Sabathia give them a big edge in a short series. Taking advantage of the all star break, the Brewers are using Sabathia again tonight, meaning he has started three of their last seven games. That's getting your money's worth!

Eight of the Brewers next fourteen games are against the Cards (at Busch July 21-24) and Cubs (at Miller Park July 28-31).

The Brewers get a chance to feast on the weak NL West as do the Red Birds, while the Cubs are done with them.

The Cubs and Brewers play 6 of the last 12 games, including the final three games of the season in Milwaukee.

If the Cubs keep winning, the Brewers most important series of the season may be September 11-14 at Philadelphia for the wild card.

Bad news tiebreaker: The Cards are managed by Tony LaRussa, who has third most wins (2297) games of any manager all-time and the Cubs are managed by Lou Piniella, who is number 18 with 1519. They are each in the Top 100 Winningest Managers. Ned Yost is not. LaRussa's teams have made the playoffs 12 times. Pinella's teams have made it six times. Yost has not done it - yet?

Baseball managers are vastly over-rated in terms of managing to win one game, but some guys know how to handle a clubhouse over a long 162 games season. LaRussa and Pinella have proven they can do it. Yost really has only had one marginally legitimate chance and came up just short with a very young team.

Of course, if Prince Fielder gets hot, Ned Yost gets a lot smarter.