Game Thread: 9/14 Smurfs @ Biggie

[Band of Brothers]

Correction... Giants have 9 games left on the road.

 

[msgkings322]

When the season started the smart money said LA division, SF wild card. And lookit what's probably going down...

Still an outside shot, but not likely. Then the craziness of the playoffs....if we can get hot that last week heading into the playoffs...

"They are who we THOUGHT they were!" - D. Green

 

[calsnowskier]

When the season started the smart money said LA division, SF wild card. And lookit what's probably going down...

Still an outside shot, but not likely. Then the craziness of the playoffs....if we can get hot that last week heading into the playoffs...

"They are who we THOUGHT they were!" - D. Green

You have been riding this logic all season, and I just don't buy it.

You logic of "OK, they have the BRIBB, but it will be close at the end because we are a 90 win team, and that is that" was just not proper logic (regardless of the results).

If you flip a coin 50 times and it comes up heads 40 times, you cannot tell me that if we were to flip it 100 more times, the total will end up being 75/75. That is inaccurate. The 40/10 is already in the bank. You can tell me the remaining 100 will go 50/50, I will buy your logic, but to predict the results will be 35/65 "because the numbers will regress to the norm" is BS.

This team lost it for 2 months. No excusing that. Their fall was epic, and there is no way that I can rank this regular season as "what I expected". You are welcome to, though you should know that your conclusion was arrived at using faulty statistical analysis.

 

[msgkings322]

You have been riding this logic all season, and I just don't buy it.

You logic of "OK, they have the BRIBB, but it will be close at the end because we are a 90 win team, and that is that" was just not proper logic (regardless of the results).

If you flip a coin 50 times and it comes up heads 40 times, you cannot tell me that if we were to flip it 100 more times, the total will end up being 75/75. That is inaccurate. The 40/10 is already in the bank. You can tell me the remaining 100 will go 50/50, I will buy your logic, but to predict the results will be 35/65 "because the numbers will regress to the norm" is BS.

This team lost it for 2 months. No excusing that. Their fall was epic, and there is no way that I can rank this regular season as "what I expected". You are welcome to, though you should know that your conclusion was arrived at using faulty statistical analysis.

There is a relatively recent trend for baseball nerds like us to follow the sport and believe it can all be broken down and predicted accurately to a p-value of .05 with numbers...we even sometimes (mis)use terms like 'logic' to 'back up' our takes and predictions, as if there was some scientifically observable 'correct' answer and way to look at things.

But this isn't physics, or mathematics, or logic. It's a game. At the beginning of the season the experts looked at the teams and said the Dodgers look like the best team in the West, the Giants look good but a bit less so. And this time the experts were right.

How we got there isn't really relevant, and it can't be broken down into immutable laws of probability, because it's just games. For the first 2 months the Giants played WAY above their level. Then they did have a horrid collapse brought on MAINLY BY INJURIES to key personnel. But at the end of the day they are right where they should be.

Ironically your feelings about this season aren't logical at all, but emotional. You probably 'logically' felt the Giants were a 90 win or so wild card team at season's start (is that far off the mark?). Then they got off to a 108 win pace and your emotions took over as a fan, so when they did indeed regress to their 'proper' level, the level you predicted at season's start (again, am I misrepresenting you?), your emotions did a 180 and they had 'no excuse' for their 'epic' collapse. When the end result is about where we thought they were. Some of us got so emotional about it that we took it out on the board here...

So bottom line is, we are all following the same team in our own way. I got kind of caught up in the first 2 months, but I really didn't think it would last. I just hated the June/July swoon, but I never believed they weren't good enough to make the playoffs. So here we are about where I thought they'd be at the start of the season. Can't 'prove' any of this with 'logic'. Nor do I need to. It's baseball, it's the Giants heading into the playoffs again, it's supposed to be fun. I'm enjoying it.

Let's get in playoff mode! Where there isn't ANY logic at all, SSS and momentum rules...

After all, there's no way the Giants beat Verlander with Zito in game 1, right?

 

[calsnowskier]

I did not feel (and I THINK I said as much at the time) that the team would win 108. Hell, the record is 116 by a team that did not even make it to the World Series.

And I did think, coming into the season, that they were an 88-92 win team (give-or-take).

However, after the start that peaked at a 10-game lead (including the delayed game), I still expected them to play the rest of their games at approximately a 90 win pace. I actually remember a convo that you and I had discussing this very thing. You were saying that the doggies would overtake us, and tz and I said it would not happen, and if it did, it would require either an EPIC collapse, or another 50-6 run by the doggies. Well, we got the collapse.

Look, tz has been a pain in the GDTs this season. But when he brought up the 16-38 (or whatever the record was during the drought), he was accurate. No true contender has that kind of swing in a season. That is EPIC bad. That does not mean the Giants cant do it. Before '04, no team had ever come back from an 0-3 in a playoff series. But to just poo-poo that string is full-fledged blinder-wearing.

The fact that the Giants are still in pretty comfortable control of the #1 WC spot is an amazing thing, given the slump, but because of the slump (and ONLY because of the slump, when looking at April, May, August and September), they have to burn Bum in a one-gamer, and then, IF they win that game, have to face the Nats, whom the Giants simply don't play well against (most recent series not withstanding).

I understand what you are saying. We were expected to win "90"; we won "90". However, as you yourself said, baseball is not an equation. The path matters. And this path to "90" was horrendous.

 

[msgkings322]

I did not feel (and I THINK I said as much at the time) that the team would win 108. Hell, the record is 116 by a team that did not even make it to the World Series.

And I did think, coming into the season, that they were an 88-92 win team (give-or-take).

However, after the start that peaked at a 10-game lead (including the delayed game), I still expected them to play the rest of their games at approximately a 90 win pace. I actually remember a convo that you and I had discussing this very thing. You were saying that the doggies would overtake us, and tz and I said it would not happen, and if it did, it would require either an EPIC collapse, or another 50-6 run by the doggies. Well, we got the collapse.

Look, tz has been a pain in the GDTs this season. But when he brought up the 16-38 (or whatever the record was during the drought), he was accurate. No true contender has that kind of swing in a season. That is EPIC bad. That does not mean the Giants cant do it. Before '04, no team had ever come back from an 0-3 in a playoff series. But to just poo-poo that string is full-fledged blinder-wearing.

The fact that the Giants are still in pretty comfortable control of the #1 WC spot is an amazing thing, given the slump, but because of the slump (and ONLY because of the slump, when looking at April, May, August and September), they have to burn Bum in a one-gamer, and then, IF they win that game, have to face the Nats, whom the Giants simply don't play well against (most recent series not withstanding).

I understand what you are saying. We were expected to win "90"; we won "90". However, as you yourself said, baseball is not an equation. The path matters. And this path to "90" was horrendous.

How you feel about the path is subjective. April-May was awesome, June-July sucked, now it's fun again. For me anyway, YMMV. And then the crazy playoffs, where anything goes.

Also, no guarantee the Nats play the WC winner, they are only 1/2 game ahead of LA right now, we might face LA if we win the play in game!

And I'm not 'poo pooing' (ewwww) anything, I was right there, they had a run of horrid suckitude, mainly injury related (ask Colorado, Texas, and other teams how that looks). But they came out of it in the nick of time thanks to renewed health, a great trade (Peavy) and 2 exciting rookies stepping in. What's not to like about that?