Monday, July 25, 2011

Rox Talk - Week 17

The Week That Was
A 3-4 week against the Braves and D-Backs. The Rox currently stand at 48-54. Eleven games behind the Giants for the division lead in third place. Currently 26-26 at home and 22-28 on the road, the Rox have been outscored by its opponents 466-457 (expected wins is 50 versus historical wins at 48). On pace for 76 wins with 726 runs scored and 740 runs against. Playoff indicator (Runs scored/Runs Against ratio) is 0.98 (1.16 indicates high playoff potential).

The Real World
Dave Cameron of Fangraphs has been diagnosed with leukemia.  I don't know Dave but his work has been a bedrock of the baseball stat world (Mt Rushmore maybe?).  As baseball nerds, we certainly can get buried in the minutia of the game.  I found this to be an interesting quote from someone who does play the numbers game,
"History has given my doctors all kinds of data about cure rates and life expectancy, and statistical analysis is helping them decide just what kind of chemotherapy I’ll be taking..."
I think it is helpful for us all to remember that while baseball stats do tend to show tendencies and likely outcomes, the human element can make a difference even if it doesn't show up in the box score.  That is why I think Dave will beat this because he is a baseball fan and understands the numbers don't always decide who wins or loses.  Does Dave Roberts steal of second base in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS a statistic blip or does it show what the human element can do to influence a win or to live life?
Of course looking at the Rox it has been an incredibly disappointing season.  Once again expectations were so great and 100 games into the season all we have to show for it is a close to .500 season.  Numbers would seem to have been in our favor but somewhere that human element showed up and no matter what the numbers say in the end we sometimes just shrug our shoulders and hope maybe it will be better next year...Cubs fans sure hope so ;)

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