Seven Series in Seven Days: Chicago Cubs at Astros, April 6-8
by Evan Hochschild on Apr 6, 2009 9:11 AM CDT
22 comments
Today is the day! It occurred to me that today would be a more appropriate day to run this preview than when I posted it last week...
Our full schedule is heavily backloaded- a hot start appears to be a pre requisite to any hopes of seeing October baseball..or at least being relevant in September. Of the first seven series the Astros play, six will be against division opponents. In total, the month of April will see our boys take on each of the other five NL Central teams, including the Cincinnati Reds seven times. We start our look, however, with the team that has won back to back NL Central titles, the Chicago Cubs.
This will be a test right off the bat. Chicago fans travel (too) well, meaning that the tenth anniversary celebration for Minute Maid Park will be full of nasally accents and snowbirds traveling to Houston from all points sandy/beachy. It'll be a battle for noise supremacy, but Astros fans have become more vocal and opinionated over the years so it should be a superb atmosphere.
Opening Day will feature a matchup of two stud starting pitchers- Carlos Zambrano and Roy Oswalt. In his career, Zambrano is 12-7 against Houston, with a 2.70 ERA and 151 strikeouts in 166.2 innings of work. Included in that performance is his infamous no hitter on the "road" against the Astros last season. He has had injury concerns swirling around him this off season, but Big Z always seems to pitch well against Houston.
Roy O is 12-11 with a 3.88 ERA against Chicago with 133 strikeouts in 160.1 innings pitched. He will be making his seventh consecutive Opening Day start for the Astros.
The next longest Opening Day streak for the Astros belongs to Lance Berkman, whose health will be one of those aforementioned questions. Name the stat and Berkman tops the Astros in it: batting runs above average, VORP, OBP, OPS, RBI and 2B, the loss of Berkman will hurt the Astros tremendously. The loss will be an even more acute pain since the departure of Aaron Boone to heart surgery.
Chicago's only weakness in my eyes- baserunning, isn't even a true weakness. Their team features players who all had above average OBP's in 2008:
| Alfonso Soriano | .344 |
| Ryan Theriot | .387 |
| Derrek Lee | .361 |
| Milton Bradley | .436 |
| Aramis Ramirez | .380 |
| Mike Fontenot | .395 |
| Kosuke Fukudome | .359 |
| Geovany Soto | .364 |
Astro pitchers will not have a break this first series. Presumably after Roy, Wandy Rodriguez and Mike Hampton will start for Houston, with Rich Harden and Ryan Dempster starting the final two for the Cubs. This has been a nip and tuck series recently, with the Astros winning the season series last season 9-8, although we were outscored 78-60 (pythagorean record be damned!)
No better way to start off the season than to beat the best, Chicago was that last year in the Central. No rest for the weary, as a road visit to St. Louis follows the series against the Cubs. A fast start to the season hasn't been the Astros mode of operation, but it may have to be in 2009.
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just to get the hate rolling
Chicago fans travel (too) well
While I’m sure some of our cubbie friends at MMP actually do travel all the way from Chicago, I think the far more realistic explanation is that Illinois and most of the upper midwest is a rapidly declining shithole and has been for twenty years, meaning that most of the cubs fans at MMP moved here for economic opportunity. They remind me of my ancestors, arriving in Texas to start a better life. Except mine stopped holding allegiance to France and Ireland and were productive members of society, while Cubs fans are, of course, cubs fans – contributing nothing to our fair state except drunken belligerence. And the rednecks endemic to Houston can provide that without the annoying accent.
by Only_A_Lad on Mar 30, 2009 9:49 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs
seven days
Seven days until baseball nirvana.
AAAAAH!
I can’t wait anymore!
I can’t think of a better way to start the season than playing the Cubs. (and beating them.)
AWESOME
Astros for Life
by astrofan91 on Mar 30, 2009 10:36 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs
Berkman is quoted as saying he will be back by opening day.
He said that a cortisone shot would allow him to be ready if needed…but that he was going to try and avoid the shot and see if his arm gets better on its own.
by clack on Mar 30, 2009 12:43 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
Zambrano
So let me get this straight…
“Zambrano is 12-7 against Houston, with a 2.70 ERA and 151 strikeouts in 166.2 innings of work.”
“[…] The Astros always seem to get the best of Big Z.”
Those two statements don’t seem to go well together. You’d have probably been better off mentioning how Zambrano is 0-1 with a 5.57 ERA in opening day starts over the past four years. Just sayin’.
Good luck this year.
by grogg_2434 on Mar 30, 2009 2:29 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
Zambrano
When you throw in the fact that he no-hit us last year it makes those statements all the more confusing.
by Artest4Prez on Mar 30, 2009 2:32 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
how do they not go well together?
Big Z was inconsistent and injured last year: http://www.baseball-reference.com/pi/gl.cgi?n1=zambrca01&year=2008&t=p
He pitches well against Houston, as his career record shows…
I guess I’m missing something here
by Evan Hochschild on Mar 30, 2009 2:33 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
ohhhhhhh
I didn’t mean that the “Astros always seem to get the best of Big Z”, as in they always beat him or play well against him…
I meant they get the best of his performances. Sorry for any misunderstandings..
by Evan Hochschild on Mar 30, 2009 2:35 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
Ahh
Ok, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks.
by grogg_2434 on Mar 30, 2009 2:35 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
thanks for pointing out how that could have been misinterpreted
i went ahead and changed it!
by Evan Hochschild on Mar 30, 2009 2:37 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
best of - best from
Almost the same thing.
I keep thinkging the Astros can take the Cubs – then I see their starting rotatiin for the sereis and I wince.
How does Wandy fare against the Cubs?
Astros fan for life
by Joe in Birmingham on Mar 31, 2009 10:18 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
It just occurred to me
That at least 9 of those runs in the Pythag record are the result of Backe getting shellacked in less than 4 IP in earlier July/August.
The Crawfishboxes
A good friend of mine used to say, "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." Think about that for a while.
by Stephen Higdon on Apr 6, 2009 9:40 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs
yes...I have made that point when we had the Pythag discussion.
A lot of the Pythag differential had to do with Cooper’s handling of starting pitchers who were getting blown out (namely keep them in the game “too long”). Backe is the most significant example. But it also happened with Chacon and R. Hernandez.
by clack on Apr 6, 2009 10:01 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
If you think that threw off our Pythagoras charts....
…think about what it did to Backe’s ERA!
On a more technical/statistical note, I’ve been wondering whether you could tweak Pythagoras to get a better approximation of the real record by stripping out games where the run differential (or just runs scored or just runs allowed) would be outside of 2 or 2.5 standard deviations of normal games. I’ve been meaning to do that for a while, but I just don’t have the time.
by AstroAndy on Apr 6, 2009 11:45 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
OK
I’m busy procrastinating, so I went out and answered my own question.
I looked at the run differentials for the Astros in 2008. The mean run differential was 3.39 and the standard deviation of the run differential was 2.41. We’d expect roughly 5% of the games to fall outside of 2 standard deviations from the mean. For the Astros, this means that 5% of the games would have a run differential greater than 3.39 + 2(2.41) = 8.22.
So I found all the games where the run differential was 9 or greater and stripped them out of the record. This ended up being 8 games (or 4.9% of the season). When you take these seven games out, whether they were wins or losses, the Astros scored 688 runs on the season and gave up 656. Notice that there are now more runs scored than given up…this reflects a point I made previously that the Astros lost significantly more blowouts than they won. Only one of those 8 games removed was an Astros win.
When you plug these numbers into the standard Pythagorean Win Formula, you get a win percentage of 52.4%. Over the course of a 161-game season, you get a win loss record of 84-77. This is much much closer to the Astros actual record of 86-75. I’m not sure if this method would work for all teams, but it certainly worked here for reasons that Only-A-Lad mentions above.
And yes, I did bury this in a comment thread instead of a putting it in a FanPost because Pythagoras discussions tend to get pretty heated and contentious.
by AstroAndy on Apr 6, 2009 12:37 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
Fair enough
Excellent work, but consider making it a fan post…I love a heated debate.
Interesting, interesting results.
The Crawfishboxes
A good friend of mine used to say, "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." Think about that for a while.
by Stephen Higdon on Apr 6, 2009 12:40 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
You're right
It’s more FanPost Material. I’ll put it up there shortly.
by AstroAndy on Apr 6, 2009 12:43 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
It'll take a little while longer
I screwed up some of the math in a small way
by AstroAndy on Apr 6, 2009 1:05 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
okay
I just got Bill James’ 2009 Gold Mine in the mail today, and he’s got some interesting stats to share (for instance, average hitters turned into David Wright when facing Backe). The Astros were 1-16 when allowing more than 10 runs, 0-7 when allowing 9, and also 0-7 when allowing 8. Altogether, they had a spectacular losing record when allowing more than four runs: 13-55. In other words, when the Astros’ pitchers collapsed, the Astros lost, and they lost big.
When scoring allowing fewer than five runs, the Astros were 73-20. That’s ridiculous. The Astros shut out their opponents 13 times and gave up one run 15, winning each time. In other words, they were never shutout when a single run would have won or tied the game. What’s more, they were 25-18 when scoring only 3 or 4 runs.
What it comes down to, I suppose, is the bullpen, as we’ve talked about. As long as the starters were able to give the Astros the lead after five or six innings, the bullpen could take over and usually preserve that lead. And, in the second half, Oswalt, Wolf, and Wandy were good enough to usually do that. In many ways, the Astros were the mirror universe Mets: unable to win big offensive games, but generally able to preserve very close leads.
Again, the Astros probably can’t repeat that type of performance, but maybe they can.
Ultimately, Pythagorean record would probably be better used if we dropped some of the high and low outliers. What Pythag record is trying to describe is the number of games a team “should” have won if they hadn’t gotten unlucky in the 9th so many times or gotten so many walk-offs or whatever. Blowouts either way just distort that.
by Only_A_Lad on Apr 6, 2009 12:33 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
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