Today is Happy July 4, 1984 and since there are no baseball games on the radio I thought it would be interesting to handicap the final game of a 3 game series against San Diego. Rick Sutcliffe is on the mound for the Cubs.
Tier Combos
| WAA | Vegas | TC Sim | EV | L | S | R | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CHN | 9 | X | 0.428 | X | 2.10 | -2.46 | -0.56 | |
| SDN | 14 | X | 0.572 | X | 0.18 | 0.11 | -0.37 |
Cubs fielding a Tier 2.1 lineup which is around half their usual value. Cubs starter value is over one standard deviation below league average.
Tier Combo simulation gives Padres a 57% advantage in this game. We don’t have Vegas lines to calculate Expected Value (EV) of a 100 unit bet.
Starters
| Rank | WAA | IP | Name | TeamId | Rest | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -019- | -2.50 | 115.3 | Rick_Sutcliffe | CHN | 5 | -2.46 |
| XXXXX | 0.13 | 109.0 | Eric_Show | SDN | 5 | 0.11 |
And Cubs under water starter is Rick Sutcliffe. Since we’re from the future we know right now Sutcliffe is the best pitcher in baseball. On July 4, 1984, the above is all anyone knows about these two starters.
By the end of 1984 Eric Show finishes ranked at #158. Next year (1985) he pitches even better for the Padres ranked #45 of all players in MLB.
Let’s see what happens.
Line Scores
| TeamID | Linescore | R | TB | H | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CHN | 010010000 | 2 | 12 | 9 | 2 |
| SDN | 000010000 | 1 | 10 | 7 | 1 |
Sutcliffe pitches 8 1/3 letting up no earned runs. Cubs 2 errors led to a run which will hurt their UR in team status tomorrow. This is a Clayton Kershaw like pitching performance even though he won’t be born for several years.
Cubs take 2 of 3 from Padres and it’s off to San Francisco tomorrow which we’ll cover with a matchup analysis. Until then ….