There are two ways to look at the series between the Cubs and the Giants. The optimistic view is that both teams are pitching great, but the Cubs are pitching a bit better. The pessimistic view is that both teams are hitting poorly, but the Giants are just a bit worse than the Cubs. The Giants offense produced a .190/.188/.254 slash line so far. Not the their OBP is worse than their batting average as the team has yet to receive a free pass via a walk or HBP. The Cubs are hitting .200/.213/.350, not exactly setting the world on fire.
A very crude way to calculate runs created is to simply multiply OBP by total bases. For the Giants, this works out to 3.0 runs, for the Cubs 5.75. That’s pretty spot on. The Giants should have scored three runs instead of two, but either way there’s not a lot of good or bad luck involved. The Cubs, over the regular season, were a better team than the Giants on both sides of the ball, and that’s holding up so far in this series. Things aren’t going to get much better, as last year’s Cy Young award winner, Jake Arrieta, hasn’t pitched yet.
The Cubs have lots of weapons, to use against opponents; great offense, good pitching, and outstanding defense. If one doesn’t work they can fall back on the other two. So far, the offense hasn’t worked, but the pitching and defense rose to the occasion.
from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2dTWWl8
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