The All Star break is kind of like half time for a baseball season even though teams have played more than half the games already (81). Today let’s look at the State of the Cubs at halftime. Our data can only accurately describe what happened in the first half. We are not oracles here who can predict the future.
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That said let’s get to team statuses.
| BAT | PITCH | Rs | Ra | W | L | UR | LR | TeamID | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -6.5 | 27.2 | 356 | 336 | 39 | 38 | -3.2 | 2.4 | CHN | 6/28/2017 |
| -15.4 | 22.9 | 399 | 399 | 43 | 45 | -9.3 | 1.9 | CHN | 7/12/2017 |
Last two weeks the Cubs went 4-7 bleeding 3 games putting them 2 under for the season. Their BAT tanked and PITCH is slightly down even with the Lester disaster Sunday. That wasn’t that much of a disaster for pitching because there were 6 unearned runs given up and the Cubs lost a lot of ground in the UR category. Bottom line it was only one game and it doesn’t matter if they lose 25-0 or 2-1, MLB only counts each of those scores as a single loss.
Let’s look at the top Cubs players.
| Rank | WAA | Name_TeamID | Pos | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| +116+ | 1.81 | Wade_Davis_CHN | PITCH | |
| +130+ | 1.70 | Carl_Edwards_CHN | PITCH | |
| +135+ | 1.66 | Anthony_Rizzo_CHN | 1B | |
| +160+ | 1.43 | Brian_Duensing_CHN | PITCH | |
| +199+ | 1.13 | Koji_Uehara_CHN | PITCH | |
| XXXXX | 1.05 | Pedro_Strop_CHN | PITCH | |
| XXXXX | 1.01 | Mike_Montgomery_CHN | PITCH | |
| XXXXX | 0.99 | Ian_Happ_CHN | CF-2B-LF | |
| XXXXX | 0.86 | Kris_Bryant_CHN | 3B | |
| XXXXX | 0.61 | Eddie_Butler_CHN | PITCH | |
| XXXXX | 0.48 | Willson_Contreras_CHN | CR | |
| XXXXX | 0.40 | Kyle_Hendricks_CHN | PITCH | |
| XXXXX | 0.38 | Hector_Rondon_CHN | PITCH | |
| XXXXX | 0.29 | Jon_Lester_CHN | PITCH | |
| XXXXX | 0.25 | Javier_Baez_CHN | 2B-SS |
No one in top 100 and all Cubs’ pitchers in top 200 are relievers. Cubs relief is carrying this team. Combined Cubs relief is over +7 which means if that staff played completely average the Cubs would be 9 games under or around where the White Sox are now. Lester and Montgomery have fallen but still in above average territory.
Normally I would insert a blast from the past here but that would be too depressing. Even though the Cubs slumped into All Star break last season they were still top of the league albeit a little humbler. Let’s do a math exercise of what if. What if all of a sudden the core of last year’s World Series champions started playing that way again. What kind of record can we expect at the end of the season?
First let’s take a look at how last season ended for these players.
| Rank | WAA | Name_TeamID | Pos | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| +002+ | 8.88 | Kyle_Hendricks_CHN | PITCH | |
| +004+ | 8.02 | Jon_Lester_CHN | PITCH | |
| +007+ | 7.01 | Kris_Bryant_CHN | 3B-LF-RF | |
| +021+ | 5.44 | Anthony_Rizzo_CHN | 1B | |
| +035+ | 4.77 | Jake_Arrieta_CHN | PITCH | |
| +077+ | 3.46 | John_Lackey_CHN | PITCH | |
| +094+ | 3.04 | Ben_Zobrist_CHN | 2B-LF-RF | |
| +097+ | 2.98 | Addison_Russell_CHN | SS |
Simply astonishing! To make the math easy divide all those numbers above by half and add them up we get around +22. The Cubs are currently at -2 so they would end the year at +20 which is a record of 91-71. That should be plenty to win the NL Central this season. Kyle Schwarber is missing above and if he plays like second half of 2015 that’s another +3 or +4 so the Cubs have the potential to finish with 92-94 wins this season.
We won’t know until they play the second half. A few days ago we analyzed the Cardinals’ playoff first half/second half splits. Can’t let a good script go to waste so let’s look at the Cubs but we’ll have to travel way back in time to pick up the same amount of data we had for the Cardinals. Here is a similar table.
| Year | First Half | Second Half | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| W | L | WAA | W | L | WAA | ||
| 1935 | 40 | 32 | 8 | 60 | 22 | 38 | 2nd |
| 1938 | 38 | 31 | 7 | 51 | 32 | 19 | 2nd |
| 1945 | 42 | 28 | 14 | 56 | 28 | 28 | 2nd |
| 1969 | 53 | 32 | 21 | 39 | 38 | 1 | 1st |
| 1984 | 48 | 36 | 12 | 48 | 29 | 19 | 2nd |
| 1989 | 46 | 39 | 7 | 47 | 30 | 17 | 2nd |
| 1998 | 48 | 39 | 9 | 42 | 34 | 8 | equal |
| 2003 | 45 | 44 | 1 | 43 | 30 | 13 | 2nd |
| 2007 | 44 | 43 | 1 | 41 | 34 | 7 | 2nd |
| 2008 | 54 | 36 | 18 | 43 | 28 | 15 | 1st |
| 2015 | 46 | 38 | 8 | 51 | 27 | 24 | 2nd |
| 2016 | 52 | 34 | 18 | 51 | 24 | 27 | 2nd |
The Cubs were only first half teams in 2008 and 1969. Although they didn’t make the playoffs in 1969 they should have. The WAAs are color coded above. The blue highlights show the greater WAA half. Bold blue means more than 10 game difference. The tan highlights show the lessor WAA hopefully to make this table easier to read. We like to consolidate data here but there is no way to consolidate the above. The bold brown years show when the Cubs went to a World Series. Like the Cardinals they went 4 times but lost 3. We all know which 3.
tl;dr The Cubs have always been a second half team so this season will be no different if they can manage to make the playoffs this year.
That’s enough for now. I’ve been considering doing a state of the White Sox. If you think the Cubs are depressing now, look at the White Sox. We may take a look see into their minor leagues to see what they have brewing for next season. Hopefully they got something good for Eaton, a trade we recommended here.