Cubs start a series with the Brewers tonight.  I heard this is the first Friday night game at Wrigley Field ever.  Let’s look at the Brewers.

BAT underwater, PITCH above and the Brewers are +4 in the win/loss columns.   The last time we did the Brewers on July 29th their PITCH was slightly underwater and BAT was at +28.  Now it is reversed.  This is why the Brewers have stagnated.

The Brewers are +4 and the Cubs are +13 so the deltaWAA is 9 in favor of the Cubs.  According to our table the Cubs should have a 0.565 probability of winning tonight with no other information.  Let’s see what the Ouija Board has to say.

DATE 09_08 8:05_PM  MIL CHN
LINEAWAY MIL [ 0.476 ] < 0.476 >
STARTAWAY 2.94(0.578) Jimmy_Nelson_MIL
LINEHOME CHN [ 0.565 ] < 0.545 >
STARTHOME -1.28(0.461) John_Lackey_CHN


The Ouija Board started out exactly what our table said and moved slightly in favor of MIL.  We do have more information.  Lackey is a tier 4 starter and Nelson is around tier 2.  The Brewers have a clear starter advantage today.

Because of September call ups expanding rosters we’ll revert back to lineups.  Here are tonight’s lineups.

Not bad considering their seasonal BAT derived from run differential.  They have one standout hitter in Shaw.  Braun is having a bad year for him even though he’s above average.  Perhaps he needs some steroids.  This is a tier 3 lineup which will be going against Lackey, a tier 4 starter.  We don’t have numbers worked out but this alone should depress CHN’s probability which is what happened.  Let’s see what lineup the Cubs are fielding.

Rizzo and Baez in the top 100 and the Cubs are fielding what looks like a tier 2 lineup.  This means we have a tier 2 lineup going against a tier 2  MIL starter.   We’re still working on this.

Since the Cubs are 3.5 games up in the standings from MIL it is expected they have lineups or starters of higher tier.  Both these teams are still close.  Eyeballing both matchups the standard table should be depressed for the Cubs and the Ouija Board seems right on target like it usually is.  For Cubs’ fans this game is a discard do not bet.

If we assume the CHN probability is 0.545 then MIL probability is 1-0.545 = 0.455.  That line would also be a discard.  You never want to bet unless you have an advantage and in most games there is no clear advantage because the market usually settles on the right answer and the house has a spread where they make their money.  It’s difficult to beat that spread which we’ll discuss in more detail.   Soon we’ll do some rudimentary analysis on the 8 years of daily lines we have for every baseball games.  I estimate 4 out of 5 games are going to be discards.  More on that later….

Let’s look at starters in MIL rosters.  These include September call ups but the Cubs could see any one of these players in the next couple games.

Looks like ex-Cub Matt Garza is pitching like John Lackey this season.  They’re carrying a lot of starters.  That is all of today.  We’ll present lineup starter combo part 2 findings either tomorrow or day after.  Until then….