Why the Cubs suck

If the Chicago Cubs don't win the World Series this season, next year will be their 100th season without winning one. A century of failure.

With Alfonso Soriano taking the year off, and Carlos Zambrano being affected in the exact OPPOSITE way as all other players in the history of a contract year (aka panicking instead of playing better), it looks like this won't be the Cubs' year. Even in the remote instance they put it together and win the NL pennant, they're not going to beat anyone in the AL in the World Series.

EDITOR'S NOTE: the preceding paragraphs were written before Carlos Zambrano and Michael Barrett's fight and Lou Pinella's explosion, so you can add that to the reasons why they won't win.

The Cubs are not as bad as they seem. They've outscored their opponents 239-233, but because of their unprecedented record in one-run games (2-12) and extra innings (1-5), they currently stand at 22-31 and 4th in the NL Central (the worst division in baseball). I have no idea how this is calculated, but the Cubs' expected win-loss should be 27-26, an example of how unlucky/huge choke artists they've been.

So there's your statistics as to how much the Cubs suck, but the title was WHY. And I believe that reason is Day Games.

The Cubs are plagued by the most outdated tradition in baseball: playing most of their home games during the day (51 to be exact). Add this to the 24 day games they have on the road, and the Cubs play 75 day games in the season - far and away more than any other team (I have no data to back this up).

I think that if you polled major league players about preference of playing in the day or at night, the vast majority would choose night (again, no data). You have to wake up early (probably hungover) to play a game during the summer at the hottest time of day (around 1-4), then when you lose another 1 run game (because you're the Cubs) you have all day to think about how you fucked up, instead of just getting hammered and going to strip clubs like normal post-night game activity.

I scoured the internets, but data was hard to come by. So far this year the Cubs are 13-18 during the day (9-13 at night). They're 10-17 at home, 12-14 on the road (this data isn't the best because of 1) small sample size and 2) the Cubs record just makes it look like they suck everywhere). But in the past couple years (the only data I could find), the Cubs have also had losing home records. In 2006, they're 36 home wins were the lowest in the majors; and they're 38 home wins in '05 was fourth lowest.

So forget about Billy Goats (the most contrived curse ever invented) and Bartman. Either the Cubs love traveling, hate their fans, or would rather play their games like every other team in baseball - at night.

Guaranteed Yankee win streak with this post

This is just asking for horrible things to happen to the Red Sox, but I couldn't resist. Here's some interesting information from our friend Buster Olney from ESPN.com:

The Yankees have reached the point where they will almost require a historic comeback to make the playoffs:

• The Yankees' deficit in the division race is 14.5 games. Only one team has won a division or league with a deficit of greater than 14 games: the 1914 Boston Braves.

• The Yankees' deficit in the wild card is 8.5 games. Only four wild-card winners have overcome greater deficits than that: the '95 Yankees (who were once nine games out), the 2001 Athletics (once 10.5 games out), the 2003 Marlins (11.5 games out), and the 2005 Astros (11.5 games out).

• Only two other times have the Yankees had a larger deficit in May: 1984, when the Tigers started 35-5, the Yankees fell 17.5 games out in May; and 1913, when the Yankees were as much as 18.5 games out in May.

It's pretty much a consensus opinion at this point that Clemens isn't making his first start against the Red Sox because the Yankees are terrified of the ramifications of a bad outing, and I wouldn't do it either if I was Torre. Instead he'll face the White Sox, whose team OBP is an MLB-lowest .311. That's compared to the Red Sox MLB-best .361 - not good for Clemens (probably a 6 inning starter at best) to debut against a team who specializes in taking pitches and wearing out pitchers.

A real Duke and his Hazzards

Elijah Dukes of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays: my new favorite player.

Allow me to reintroduce myself my name is Blog

Like a movie or any good TV show, I decided to officially title my blog after some content. The only explainable reason for this is that I wanted to get the content out before I forgot it all - which explains why it's so scatterbrained and poorly laid out (the latter problem should be fixable over time).

I'm hoping to keep the posts short and to the point, although I have much difficulty editing myself.

Not to mention the majority of my thoughts/ideas/writing style/pictures/layout will basically be from ideas I get from other blogs. Try to guess which ones!

-Mark

Baseball Fun Facts!

For some reason I find this stuff interesting.

Youngest Team: Florida (avg. age of 26.6)
Oldest: Mets (31.1)
*Red Sox are fourth oldest at 30.7

Fattest Team: White Sox (avg. 220 lbs)
Lightest: Tampa Bay (199)
*Red Sox 13th fattest at 208

All teams avg. 6'1" or 6'2"

Comparing David Stern's irrationally stubborn apples to Bud Selig's steroid-laden oranges

If Major League Baseball had the same penalties as the NBA, you know who would have been suspended after Thursday’s Marlins-Phillies game?*

• Antonio Alfonseca, Clay Condrey, Adam Eaton, Freddy Garcia, Geoff Geary, Cole Hamels, Yoel Hernandez, Jon Lieber, Ryan Madson, Jamie Moyer, Francisco Rosario, Rod Barajas, Chris Coste, Carlos Ruiz, Greg Dobbs, Wes Helms, Ryan Howard, Abraham O. Nunez, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Michael Bourn, Pat Burrell, Aaron Rowand, Shane Victorino, Jayson Werth, Kevin Gregg, Matt Lindstrom, Randy Messenger, Justin Miller, Sergio Mitre, Ricky Nolasco, Wes Obermueller, Scott Olsen, Renyel Pinto, Taylor Tankersley, Dontrelle Willis, Matt Treanor, Jason Wood, Reggie Abercrombie, Todd Linden, and Josh Willingham.

That’s the 40 players who left the bench plus Dontrelle Willis (I left out Byung-Hyun Kim because I assumed he probably stayed in the dugout during the fracas). The list includes the entire Phillies roster, all Marlins’ bench players, and all Marlins pitchers (Dontrelle Willis would get two games). Not to mention both teams’ managers and coaches (notably Charlie Manuel and whoever manages the Marlins).

This, of course, is in reference to the NBA rule that roughly states that during an altercation, a player that leaves the bench is subject to a one-game suspension. If this were the NBA, the altercation would be Willis throwing behind batters and shouting at the Phillies' dugout. And the players receiving suspension for leaving the bench would be all of them.

**UPDATE! Coincidentally enough, Marlins' manager (Fredi Gonzalez) got suspended for a game for leaving the clubhouse after being ejected. I guess there are similarities in the NBA and MLB.


*Skip this list to get to the point - I also spent way to much time figuring out who would be suspended

Rock, Chalk, Playoffs

Two games into the Eastern Conference finals and there's been much more talked about than just two games with identical scores (which, ironically is probably the most interesting thing to happen). Let's break it down:

LeBron James, heavily criticized for passing up the final shot in game
1 to a WIDE OPEN Donyell Marshall, obviously had the ball in hands in
the same situation in game two. Clearly thinking about the press
reaction to his game 1 decision, James predictably forced up a
horrible shot while being swarmed by defenders and missed. Points of
interest on the play:

• James was more or less completely hammered by Richard "Dickie" Hamilton on the play, and while he and coach Mike Brown vented frustrations on the court neither complained after the game, instead saying they're a "no excuses" team. While they would have been right to complain, I actually find this admirable. The NBA has wayyyyyyy too much complaining, and it reflects poorly on everyone, not to mention it accomplishes nothing. I can only imagine if this had happened to Dallas, it probably would have consisted of something along the lines of Dirk Nowitzki's head exploding, Mark Cuban running onto the court and physically assaulting an official, and the Dallas Mavericks secession from the NBA.

• Know why it's so easy to blame LeBron for his clutch decisionmaking? Because the rest of the Cavs are terrible! They're second best player is Larry Hughes. Again, Donyell Marshall missed a WIDE OPEN 3 that he should have made.

• Detroit is one of the smartest teams in the league, they're starting 5 have been together forever and are closer than Greg Oden and Mike Conley on a weekend getaway to the Poconos. In short, they can coach themselves. So put them with semi-competent Flip Saunders and they're going to figure out that to stop the Cavs you quintuple-team LeBron and watch the rest of the players miss jump shots. So stop bringing up how few shots LeBron has in each game.

• After LeBron's miss, Cavs #2 Larry Hughes missed a wide-open 9-footer, followed by Rasheed Wallace nearly tipping the ball into his own basket to lose the game. The game recap says it was Anderson Varejao who touched it, but if you watch the video that ball was tipped by 'Sheed. We were inches away from the craziest finish in NBA history.

• Game 2 fun facts: Cleveland had a 34 point second quarter, but combined for 42 in the other 3.