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CardRed wrote:They won't maintain this dominance. It's impossible

That's all I'm saying. Do they have 100 win roster? Sure. 110 win/best team ever roster? Not a chance. That's not to say it won't happen, hey the bottom of the NL is really bad, and they have a great team. But they are playing well above what even their wildest projections suggest.

plus the cubs have a fine manager that does not manage for stats

It's very unlikely they will give up more than 600 runs. That's my point. They don't need to keep up their current pace to allow only 600 runs. Their currently on pace to allow for 450 total runs. Obviously thats not likely. But 600? They can allow about the league average amount of runs per game and still be at 600. Taking into account all regressions, they're not going to allow more than 600 runs. That's the point, I'm not counting on them sustaining that. I'm giving realistic expectations (league averaging pitching from here on out) and showing where they finish with x amount of offense.

For the record. There were two teams in the NL alone last year that gave up less than 600 runs. So it's not some amazing feat

That's fair.

As you said using the pythagoream win-loss formula, in order to win 110 games, they would need to score 865 runs, while allowing 600 runs. The latter is possible, the former is where I don't see it. But we'll see. We're 29 games into the season.

Magneto2.0 wrote:

haltz wrote:Well if they ever get it together it will be interesting to watch. They're on pace to join the 1999 Indians as the only teams to score 1,000 runs in a season in the expansion era and that's not even the ridiculous part. They're preventing runs at 172 ERA+ clip, which is significantly better than the career mark of any starting pitcher ever (Kershaw, Pedro et al) and about 35 pts higher than any staff in history. I'd call that firing on all cylinders but I guess it's semantics.

Yeah I don't quite understand why anyone would argue that they're playing at a pretty unsustainable pace. Not saying their performances aren't matching the record up to this point, just saying the performance their putting up, for an entire season, would literally make them the greatest team ever assembled. And it's not, by any means. That's not hate.

They're also beating their peripherals on each side of the ball. The Cubs have a BABIP of .249, lead the league in strand rate, FDP-WAR (fielder dependent wins), and are outperforming their BaseRuns on offense by another 15 runs. They also lead the league in UZR, of course, since they've divinely ordained, but that only accounts for about half of the RA discrepancy.

AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:I'm just going to say that there is a lot of blind hatred here. The Cubs are a monster of a team. They probably won't maintain a 780 or whatever win% but not even getting to 100? Please. That's all but a given unless Rizzo and or Arrieta go down.

Keep in mind that this question was asked before the season. And frankly, almost no team is ever predicted to win more than 100 games. Even the best ones. That's not blind hatred. It's law of averages. Any team would have to be insanely talented and good to assume 100 wins. Like... legendary.

What Jim said is accurate, though. If their true talent is 95-99 wins from here on out, combined with their ridiculous start (which is in the books and won't change), then they are definitely a 100 win team.

JL21 wrote:

AWvsCBsteeeerike3 wrote:I'm just going to say that there is a lot of blind hatred here. The Cubs are a monster of a team. They probably won't maintain a 780 or whatever win% but not even getting to 100? Please. That's all but a given unless Rizzo and or Arrieta go down.

Keep in mind that this question was asked before the season. And frankly, almost no team is ever predicted to win more than 100 games. Even the best ones. That's not blind hatred. It's law of averages. Any team would have to be insanely talented and good to assume 100 wins. Like... legendary.

What Jim said is accurate, though. If their true talent is 95-99 wins from here on out, combined with their ridiculous start (which is in the books and won't change), then they are definitely a 100 win team.

We agree on everything. But people are still saying they wouldn't change their vote to over 100. That question was asked a day or two ago, not preseason.

Well, also in fairness, the thread was bumped by presumably a Cub fan who wanted to say "Hey, how my ass taste", which is not likely to elicit a rational response.

Magneto2.0 wrote:

CardRed wrote:They won't maintain this dominance. It's impossible

That's all I'm saying. Do they have 100 win roster? Sure. 110 win/best team ever roster? Not a chance. That's not to say it won't happen, hey the bottom of the NL is really bad, and they have a great team. But they are playing well above what even their wildest projections suggest.

"Not a chance" is literally saying that it won't happen.

TruffleShuffle wrote:

Magneto2.0 wrote:

CardRed wrote:They won't maintain this dominance. It's impossible

That's all I'm saying. Do they have 100 win roster? Sure. 110 win/best team ever roster? Not a chance. That's not to say it won't happen, hey the bottom of the NL is really bad, and they have a great team. But they are playing well above what even their wildest projections suggest.

"Not a chance" is literally saying that it won't happen.

You joined in 2006, and have less than 100 posts, but are now parsing words. Amazing.