The Chicago Cubs faced the misfortunate of closing the season at Atlanta and Milwaukee, losing the first four of those games by a total of five runs and ultimately losing the last playoff spot to the Arizona Diamondbacks by just one game with a 83-79 record.
The lack of any home field advantage in baseball playoffs was proven once again as both the ALCS and NLCS featured a road win in Game 7 - meaning the visiting team still has an all-time edge in baseball Game 7s while the home teams in other sports dominate.
How close were the Cubs to returning to the World Series?
With wildcards seeming to dominate in the new playoff format against the top teams with wins, the Cubs may have been very close. Once again the dominant teams - the 100-win Braves and Dodgers - were cast aside and the Diamondbacks that barely caught the Cubs are now representing the NL in the real World Series starting tonight. Arizona has the worst record ever to make the World Series except for the 1973 New York Mets (lost World Series) and the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals (won World Series).
In Statis-Pro it was the reverse, The Cubs grabbed a Wild Card spot and it was the Diamondbacks who fell one game short.
The Astros have already won our Statis-Pro AL World Series. The Phillies have won our first NL Wild Card series over the Brewers to move on and face the Braves. Now the Cubs play their 3-game Wild Card against our other non-real season team to make the Statis-Pro playoffs, the San Francisco Giants.
We went through the Statis-Pro cards and only kept the cards of players who were on the current MLB depth chart and NOT on the 60-day DL. This eliminated Roberto Perez. But other players who were just on the 10- or 15-day DL are kept in our game and have the note "allow" by their name below.
These are our Statis-Pro rosters for this wild card series, and the winner will get the Dodgers.
A blow the the Cubs is that even though we do select upgrades for the most improved batters and pitchers, we only adjust by one PB - so Justin Steele can only be upgraded from his project PB 4-7 card to a PB 2-7 - but not nearly as good as the PB 2-8 or 2-9 he will get next year based on this year's dominate season. Also we started out the Mark Leiter starting in Statis-Pro this season since he had started some games last year, but he stayed in the pen all year so will be the closer instead of pitching several innings a game.
If we did not have a card for the player yet, then we list the OPS and ERA on which their card is based. However, if they had fewer than 100 plate appearances or 15 games pitched then they get a below average card at best.
The only new/temporary cards of value for these playoffs are two good relievers for the Giants in a PB 2-8 Luke Jackson and a 2-7 Ryan Walker. For the Cubs, Mike Tauchman in centerfield has a slightly above average .739 OPS and gives a lefty bat with B/C speed, and reliver Jose Cuas is a PB 2-7 reliever with a 3.99 ERA over 72 games. The temporary cards can be found at the end of the 2023 pitchers and batters projected cards in the links below.
Next up the 3-game series.
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