What If 83-79 Cubs Edged 84-78 DBacks? Statis-Pro Playoffs Rosters

 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.

Click for the free Statis-Pro Master Baseball Game. Click here for 60 of the all-time great MLB teams, or on teams of many of the all-time great players on teams by nation or state with one sheet for each team. Or click on the 2023 pitchers and 2023 batters in card form. You simply print two teams cards and then either print theaster link above and fast action cards in master link or buy the dice to start playing. 

 

Giants	STARTER	2ND
C	Patrick Bailey .644 SN	Blake Sabol
1B	LaMonte Wade Jr.	Roberto Perez (out 60)
2B	Thairo Estrada
3B	Wilmer Flores	Casey Schmitt
SS	Marco Luciano .641 limited	Brandon Crawford
LF	Michael Conforto
CF	Tyler Fitzgerald.733 42 PA	Luis Matos .661
RF	Mike Yastrzemski
DH	Joc Pederson	Mitch Haniger allow
Rot 1&2	Logan Webb	Alex Cobb allow
Rot 3&4	Sean Manaea	Keaton Winn
Clos/SU	Camilo Doval	Tyler Rogers
Rel 3&4	Kyle Harrison 4.15 6 IP 7 Gm	Taylor Rogers
Rel 5&6	Luke Jackson 2.97 2 IP 33 Gm
Rel 7&8	John Brebbia	Ryan Walker 3.23 2 IP 49 Gm
Cubs	STARTER	2ND
C	Yan Gomes	Miguel Amaya
1B	Cody Bellinger	Jared Young
2B	Nico Hoerner allow	Miles Mastrobuoni
3B	Jeimer Candelario	Nick Madrigal
SS	Dansby Swanson	Patrick Wisdom
LF	Ian Happ
CF	Mike Tauchman .739 401 PA LN	Pete Crow-Armstrong  .176 19 PA
RF	Seiya Suzuki	Alexander Canario
DH	Christopher Morel
Rot 1&2	Justin Steele	Marcus Stroman
Rot 3&4	Kyle Hendricks	Jameson Taillon
Clos/SU	Adbert Alzolay	Julian Merryweather
Rel 3&4	Mark Leiter Jr.	Drew Smyly
Rel 5&6	Brandon Hughes	Brad Boxberger allow
Rel 7&8	Jose Cuas 3.99 2 IP 72 Gm	Javier Assad

Next up the 3-game series.

Tatis-Soto-Bogaerts HR & 10-17; 1st Rainout & 1st 2 Sweeps

 Unbelievable. We noted last game our Statis-Pro season started with 16 games without a single 5-run "sweep." Then we had two in a row. 

Average so far - 2 of 18 games = 5-run "Sweeps." Average runs/gm 4.1. Average start, 5 1/3 innings, 2.95 ERA. Click for game-by-game.

Arizona had the home game first, and in their hitters park jumped on Joe Musgrove and a reliever. In the bottom of the 5th Evan Longoria hit a 2-run double to extend the DBacks lead to 8-3, and the next play was a Z-plays rainout. It was already an official game, and the 5-run lead meant we count it as a 3-game sweep for the DBacks.

In the ultimate pitchers park in San Diego for the second game (only 11 is a homer on a deep drive), You Darvish threw 5 innings with only one unearned run allowed and the Padres powered to an 8-2 win to claim their own sweep to make the entire series 3 games to 3.

After Josh Hader's previous team the Brewers blew a sweep and a the whole game by giving up 6 runs into he 9th, Harder threw a scoreless 9th to complete the sweep.

The Padres new powerful lineup was lead by the 1-2 and 4 hitters of Fernando Tatis, Juan Soto and Xander Bogaerts who all three homered and went a combined 10 of 17.

Tatis' homer.was the longest of the year based on it being his 9th homer, which we tally as being getting up toward the 500 foot mark.

The Padres seem to have the best cards and line-up for both our Statis-Pro season and the real MLB season, but they are 6-6 in our league and 9-10 in real baseball.

Reminder Note: To play our own Statis-Pro Baseball games, click and print the batters cards here, then these pitchers' cards and finally the Statis-Pro rules which will have everything you need to play. Also note that we had one error in earlier notes - the adjustments listed at the bottom of some pitcher cards to the batters they face (changing a HR to Out or vice versa) must be used every time they pitch, not just in road games as previously listed. You may notice this season that our blogs are picked up by https://www.baseball-reference.com/ so when a player is mentioned you can link for their stats by clicking.