The Cubs in the Playoffs? Get Over It

If hope springs eternal, it springs relentlessly in Chicago, especially in the Spring. And not since 2008, coming off a roaring 97-win season, has hope taken residence so distant from reality.

Over the last five years, the baby bears have averaged 93 losses and a fifth place NL Central finish while they weaned their young on the farm. Discerning observers could see a plan in action and wisely counseled patience, which began to pay off last season.

In their fourth seasons, Anthony Rizzo bloomed to a 10th place MVP placement. Jake Arietta shoved a 2.51 ERA down NL throats by fanning a batter-plus an inning and hardly walking any.  And flashy shortstop Starlin Castro recovered his hitting shoes. Rookie Kyle Hendrick bamboozled NL hitters to a 2.46 ERA in 13 starts. Journeyman Hector Rondon shook off elbow woes to claim the closer position with authority. And mega-prospects Kris Bryant, Javier Baez, Jorge Soler and Addison Russell were knocking on the door. So when management indicated rebuilding's end by enticing Jon Lester to deal aces and Dexter Fowler to patrol center, Chi-town hearts started fluttering.  PECOTA forecasts them for 85 wins and many pundits have them snagging a Wild Card, or even a division.

And because everyone loves the Cubs, largely because no one has had to fear them since 1908, the bandwagon has grown.

But as the great philosopher, Quick Draw McGraw, used to say, "Now hoooooold on thar, Baba Looey!"

The Cubs are still on the right path and their time might indeed be nigh. But nigh is at low tide, not yet high. They're coming off an 89-loss season despite those lofty positives. Several of last year's performances were career outliers and will require confirmation before we can trust them. The rotation is thin after the first five and the bench is bare after Tommy LaStella and some catching depth. The big call-ups, like Soler, could flame out just as easily as they could catch fire. Teams relying on big years from freshmen are playing with fire themselves.

The Cubs will be improved, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. A couple of the veterans won't live up to billing. Some of the newbies won't even make the show. (There's a reason clubs send uber-prospects back to Triple-AAA , and it's almost never to save a few rubles.) The roster is still shallow and the learning curve is steep.

Cub fans, enjoy this one, but wait 'til next year.

When Models Look Extra Ugly

Democrats are predictably excoriating Paul Ryan these days for his "attack" on Medicare. His voucher plan for the government-sponsored health care insurance for the elderly (and the not-nearly elderly; you can join at 65) diminishes benefits going forward.

Democrats are comparing Ryan's plan to perfection, or to the current system. Neither, of course, is an apt comparison. Medicare is rushing headlong off the financial cliff without reform, and threatening to take the entire American economy with it. Relative to insolvency, which is the ultimate fate of the program under everyone else's plan (i.e., no plan at all), Ryan's proposal is a revelation.

A similar debate is shaking the Sabermetric community these days in the wake of a pair of disturbing arithmetic developments. But the conclusion is the same: the measure of a new idea isn't in comparison to perfection, but to the old paradigm.

First, some context. Ever since Voros McCracken unveiled the idea in 1999 that pitchers have limited control over what happens once their pitch is put into the field of play -- a conclusion now much more nuanced and qualified -- seamheads have been whipping up concoctions to strip luck and defense out of pitching results to determine how well pitchers are actually pitching.

One of the many formulae brewed by the stat wizards is FIP -- fielding independent pitching. Without excavating spreadsheets filled with higher math, it can be described this way: given the number of batters a pitcher has fanned, walked, hit with pitches and allowed to homer, how many runs should we expect to score against him given average defense and ballpark?

In July, Reds closer Aroldis Chapman broke FIP (in the words of CBS Sports). He faced 52 batters in 14 1/3 innings and whiffed 31 of them. He allowed just six hits, two walks, a HBP and nary a run, nailing down 13 saves. Batters posted a desultory .122/.173/.143 line against him.  In other words, Chapman was Superman for a 30-day period. (He's been no slouch under other moons.)

Putting those numbers through the meat grinder yielded a FIP for Chapman of -0.99. That is, Chapman could be expected, given his performance, to yield minus-one run per nine innings. Certifiably nuts.

Others have noted odd sightings in Baseball-Reference.com's WAR (Wins Against Replacement) calculations. WAR attempts to review all of a player's performance and all of the context and measure him against a Triple-A replacement at his position. In mid-August, Cubs keystoner Darwin Barney had a higher WAR than Brewers slugger Ryan Braun. Just for context, Barney is hitting .268/.309/.386, or about 12% below the MLB average. Braun, at .301/.380/.526, is 53% above average. Braun is also superior in the baserunning department and has grounded into fewer double plays. Moreover, Wrigley Field and Miller Park are about equally kind to hitters, and both batters suffer equally in their inability to bat against their own team's woeful pitching staff.

What WAR sees that we don't is defense. It credits Barney for defense double in value of any other second-sacker's, while Braun's left-field stylings more resemble the staccato flight of a pigeon. Subjectively, there appears to be a grain of truth here, but clearly not enough that anyone in Wisconsin would trade Braun for every Barney ever known, including the purple dinosaur. WAR is suffering convulsions and has been put on bed rest, at the very least.

These two developments have led some to observe FIP and WAR's death throes. The projection models have failed and it's time to put them out of their misery. But in the words of that great philosopher Quick Draw McGraw, "Now hold on there just a doggone minute, Baba Looie."

No model is perfection, not even Adriana Lima. Clearly outlier performances like Chapman's make mincemeat of statistical models. As I've mentioned before, quantitative analysis of defense is just in the bloom of its youth, beholden to bursts of impaired judgment. I rarely rely on WAR or WARP and pay much more attention to offensive valuations, leavened by a general sense of a player's glovework.

Nonetheless, FIP is an extremely useful tool, and though the value it applies to Chapman's performance is nonsense, it's not really wrong. FIP says Chapman was virtually unhittable, and by golly, he was. Only 18 batters out of 52 could even put the ball in play.

The real question then is, are these models less imperfect than the old tools? WAR certainly measures something bigger and more relevant than Triple Crown stats do, but whether it measures relative positional value better than Triple Crown stats measure hitting performance would require some sort of study. There's no doubt that FIP tells us much more about a pitcher than W-L and ERA; it's been shown to be vastly better at projecting performance.

All of which presents the same moral that every other development in quantitative analysis has: the state of the art is improving, but will never be perfect. After all, they measure the performances of people.