Reassurances Here

[Guest Edgy DC]

Of varying degrees of realism.

Um, the 1986 Mets underwhelmed with a RS/RA ratio of 110-96 in September.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

The first round opponent may be the St. Louis Cardinals who, as mentioned in another thread, seem to be falling apart.

It may look like the Mets are staggering towards the playoffs, but the Cardinals really are.

[MFS62]

Willie has been resting at least one regular per game over the past few weeks, so we haven't seen the real Mets.

Try as hard as I can, that doesn't reassure me.

Later

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

They may be guilty of cruising now, but eventually will reap the benefits of having not played 3+ weeks of frantic pedal-to-the-metal baseball when their opponent's starters/hitters/bullpen falter from exhaustion and overuse.

[Gwreck]

Our first round opponent will (probably) be the Cardinals. Their closer is Braden Looper.


Let me repeat that, because it bears repeating:

Braden Looper.

[Guest cooby]

Gwreck wrote: Our first round opponent will (probably) be the Cardinals. Their closer is Braden Looper. Let me repeat that, because it bears repeating: Braden Looper.

My hopes have just soared

[MFS62]

Albert Pujols' real name is Joe Hardy, and the clock has just struck midnight.

You asked for varying degrees of realism, and this was as much of a variance as I could come up with.

Later

[metirish]

If the Astros do make it they could have a spent pitching staff,Garner is just about pitching everyone these last few games.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

There's a distinct possibility our first round opponent will have had to waste a few pitchers on a play-in game.

[metsmarathon]

there's no such damned thing as momentum, and it sickens me every time i hear it spoken in sports media. especially since half the time, you hear "you'd think the momentum from last time's wonderful performance would've carried 'em through, but it didn't." or "you'd think last time's crushing failure would've carried over, but it didn't"

half the time, momentum works. half the time momentum fails to have an effect. (or so it seems)

doesn't that flatly impugn the validity of the entire notion of momentum?

[metirish]

Remember when Bobby V and Mo Vaughn had that little back and forth about momentum,IIRC the Mets were playing a four game series against the D-Backs.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

No. It means that momentum, which may exist, doesn't last forever.

If a team is clicking, and feeling good about itself, why would it be impossible for that to carry over from one day to the next?

[Vic Sage]

"momentum is as good as the next day's starting pitcher"

[MFS62]

Yancy Street Gang wrote: If a team is clicking, and feeling good about itself, why would it be impossible for that to carry over from one day to the next?

If you could figure out the answer to that , you could make a lot of money a a sports psychologist.
A LOT of money.

Later

[metsmarathon]

some games you play well. that's not a guarantee that you won't play poorly the next.

its nice to think that momentum is a real commodity in sports, but i've come to be very much not a believer in that. if it was true, especially in sports like baseball, why don't teams with three-game winning streaks almost always turn them into four game winning streaks? fours into fives, fives into sixes, etc?

if you're playing well, playing well is likely to continue. what i'm arguing against is the carry-over effect. or perhaps more to the point, the extent to which the carry-over is overemphasized as if it were a causal fact, and one to be heavily weighted in predicting who will win what game.

case in point, the (NFL) giants game. you'd think that the week 2 win against hte eagles would've built up some momentum. they clicked in teh 4th quarter, tehy got lucky, they played exceptionally well, they had a teriffic win, a momentum building come-from-behind improbable win against a division rival.

is there no better recipe for momentum?

and where did that get them against seattle? they were flat. they were awful. they played like crap. they played like statues. they played like hte crap on statues that don't have the little pointy spikes that scare off pigeons and keep them less crap-covered. they were awful.

what happened to momentum?

yes, there's confidence. yes there's chemistry. yes tehre's good team play. what there isn't is momentum.

to put it in a more metly context...

i'm no more afraid of us playing the houston astros than the st louis cardinals as a result of any supposed momentum that might be ascribed to them as a result of their making it into the playoffs on the backs of a rousing september push and simultaneous st louis collapse than i would be from the inherent talent and personnel that the team brings to the game.

the ability of a manager to rest or not use a certain player aside, wether a team wins or loses its previous game has terribly little to do with wether a team wins or loses its next game.

when a team wins the game immediately following a great win, its attributed to momentum, and when they lose, its blamed on everything but. when a team loses a game immediately following a heartwrenching loss, its attributed to momentum, and when they win, its credited to everything but.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

I'm not convinced that it doesn't exist, but I do agree that it's over emphasized.

[metsmarathon]

i suppose it could be statistically measured, comparing a team's rate of winning after a win, and losing after a loss, to a team's overall win-loss rate, across baseball-time.

if momentum is real, a team will be signifcantly more likely to win a game after having just won a game than would be expected by their 0.566 winning percentage, and likewise with the losing.

but i'm only geekly enough to propose such a thing. i can't begin to start doing it!

[metirish]

Didn't the Dodgers lose the next teo games that that amazing game in which they hit four consecutive home runs,you'd think that game would have given them momentum.

[Gwreck]

Johnny Dickshot wrote: There's a distinct possibility our first round opponent will have had to waste a few pitchers on a play-in game.

Exactly. St. Louis has a potential game to make up against the Giants (which would be Monday, in St. Louis), and then could have to do a 1-game playoff against Houston (Tuesday, in Houston).

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

I can't string together all the scenarios in my head, but isn't it possible that the team that's supposed to open the NLDS on Tuesday might be involved in a playoff game that day?

Would the other NLDS series (the one slated to start on Wednesday) start on Tuesday instead? Or would there be one fewer game on Tuesday and one more on Wednesday?

I thought the series involving the wild card was supposed to be the Tuesday series? They might want to reconsider that, if true.

[Guest OlerudOwned]

metirish wrote: Didn't the Dodgers lose the next teo games that that amazing game in which they hit four consecutive home runs,you'd think that game would have given them momentum.

http://firejoemorgan.blogspot.com/2006/09/im-not-sure-what-you-mean-by-carryover.html

[MFS62]

No, those four dingers tied it. They won on a walkoff homer by Nomar in a later inning.

Later

[Elster88]

metirish wrote: Remember when Bobby V and Mo Vaughn had that little back and forth about momentum,IIRC the Mets were playing a four game series against the D-Backs.

I've forgotten this one. Remind me?

[metirish]

I will as best I can...IIRC the D-Backs were in town for a four game series, the Mets won a game and Mo talked about how that game would give the team momentum...the back pages the next day had Mo-mentum as the banner..Bobby basically said that there is no such thing as momentum and that it was a silly thing to say...then again maybe I am wrong in my memory.

I do remember that the media had a blast with it though.

[soupcan]

Just a snippet from the recap article...




September 27, 2006
Championship Hangover Lingers for Mets
By BEN SHPIGEL

But Randolph was a part of what was almost a colossal collapse. In 2000, when he was a coach with the Yankees, he watched a bunch coming off two consecutive World Series titles stagger down the stretch. Those Yankees lost 15 of their last 18 regular-season games, including the final seven, and backed into the division title with a Red Sox loss. It took a while in the playoffs for them to regain their swagger, needing all five games to defeat Oakland, then six against Seattle before dispatching the Mets in five games to win the World Series.


15 of 18 and 7 in a row to close out the season.

Not saying that I'd prefer that the Mets finish up like that but it does prove that momentum may actually be overrated and that perhaps, once the postseason begins it in fact IS a brand new season.

[smg58]

The statistical analysis from Baseball Prospectus that suggested that pitching and defense are statistically significant factors in the postseason also said that how a team finishes the regular season isn't one.

[HahnSolo]

Don't remember all the numbers, but the White Sox were pretty dismal the last 40 or so games last year, leading to speculation they would either: a) be bypassed by Cleveland, or be eliminated in the playoffs by the more "postseason tested" Red Sox, MFYs, or Angels. And we all know how that turned out.

[metsmarathon]

maybe this should be split from here... i dunno...

but i was in a procrastinatey mood just now, and i decided to look at how momentum has affected the mets this year - are tehy more or less likely to win a game following a win, or lose a game following a loss, than you would expect based on their record for the season?

so i took the mets winning percentage = 93 / (93+64) = 0.592; and a corresponding losing percentage of 0.408

i then tallied up all of the mets' wins and losses follong wins or losses, respectively, in the previous game

what i found out was that the mets won 54 games after having won the previous game, and lost 25 games after having lost the previous game.

(they also won 39 games after losing the previous game, and likewise lost 39 games after having won the previous game.)

so, how does that compare to what we'd expect?

well, the mets had 92 opportunities thus far this season to win a game after having won the prior game (the first game they won would have no predecessor), and the mets also had 63 opportunities to lose a game after having lost the game previous (the first game they lost would have no predecessor)

if we multiply 92 opportunities by a 0.592 winning percentage, we find that, statistically, the mets would have been expected to win 54.496 games after having won the game prior.

if we multiply 63 opportunities by a 0.408 losing percentage, we find that, statisticall, the mets would have been expected to lose 25.68 games after having won the game prior.

54.496 versus the actual 54
25.68 versus the actual 25

what this tells me, based, admittedly, on this very small sample size, is that "momentum" has played no role in the mets season, and wether the team has won (or lost) the game prior offers no indication as to their liklihood of winning (or losing) their next game.

further study is of course warranted.

[MFS62]

ElDuque, Glavine and Traschell are three veteran (every time I hear that word I think of Murph) pitchers who can deliver quality starts in the post season.

Later

[metsmarathon]

its better to slump at the end of the season when you're already in the postseason, than once the postseason actually starts. provided you get out of said slump that is.

as a corollary, slumps don't last forever.