2012 Preview: Chicago Cubs

Theo Epstein, Chicago’s new General Manager, is going to make the Cubs better in a hurry because like a new doctor in town who has previously practiced his craft in the crucible of a war zone, he not only can identify a patient’s ailment, he also knows the cure. The last two seasons Chicago finished in 5th place in its division after three straight seasons of finishing first or second – seasons which included two playoff appearances. Offensively the Cubs stopped scoring runs, having plated nearly 15% less runners the last two seasons than the two before, while dropping a total of 24% from 2008 to 2011. Here’s the key symptom:

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2012 Preview: Cincinnati Reds

Last month, the New York Giants earned the distinction of being the first team to win the Super Bowl despite a certain regular season deficiency. The anomaly didn’t get a lot of play among football commentators and mainstream columnists, but data analysts took note of this fact: The Giants were the first team to get to the Super Bowl, let alone win it, having been outscored by its opponents during the regular season.

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2012 Preview: Milwaukee Brewers

Now that Fielder has departed, what sort of team is Milwaukee left with in 2012 compared to the squad that came within two wins of its first World Series appearance in nearly thirty years? In terms of year-to-year projections, the loss of Fielder hurts Milwaukee much more than the loss of Albert Pujols hurts the Cardinals. Not only was Fielder the better player in 2011, by about 1 ½ wins, but while the Cardinals are effectively replacing Pujols with Carlos Beltran, the Brewers have turned to a little-known, former third base prospect, Mat Gamel.

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2012 Preview: St. Louis Cardinals

The St. Louis Cardinals took a remarkable two-month path from 9 ½ games back in the wild card race to celebrating in a champagne-splattered clubhouse on October 28. The incredible comeback(s) in Game 6 of the World Series, overcoming three different one-game deficits across two different series in the National League playoff series, etc.; none of that would have been possible without first making up a 9 ½ game deficit in the NL wild card race with just 30 games left to play. It’s been written often that the Cardinals' chance of overtaking the Braves in the last 30 games stood at less than 1%. From a theoretical standpoint, assuming the outcome of each game was a 50/50 proposition, that’s correct; the odds were 7 in 1,000 or 99.3% against. These are the same odds that, after two people each flipped a coin 30 times, one person would get ten more heads than the other.

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2012 Preview: Atlanta Braves

For as long as stories of epic late-season collapses are told, the 2011 editions of the Atlanta Braves and the Boston Red Sox will forever be linked in misery. Both teams had nine game leads on its nearest competitor for a post-season berth late in the season, and the first time either team fell behind that competitor in a bid for the final wild card berth was during the last half inning it took the field. Despite the similar results, both teams have taken very different paths since that final fateful inning.

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