We promised yesterday to talk about the impact of Jacob deGrom missing the rest of the season, after it was announced earlier this week that the best pitcher alive (when healthy, in an important caveat) will undergo Tommy John surgery and miss the rest of the year. Here are the high-level numbers.
The Rangers’ AL West championship probability, per FanGraphs, is 44.5%, down from 51.5% entering yesterday.
The Rangers’ ALCS championship probability, per FanGraphs, is 12.9%, down from 17.1% entering yesterday.
The Rangers’ World Series championship probability, per FanGraphs, is 5.4%, down from 7.8% entering yesterday.
The Rangers’ mean projected record is now 91.2–70.8, down from 92.5–69.5 entering yesterday.
Now, the Rangers did win last night, and the Astros lost, and that helped the Rangers, boosting their projected record by 0.5 or 0.6 wins and buoying their success probabilities as well. For reference, the Brewers—who won while the Cardinals, Cubs, and Pirates all lost, our closest available parallel to the Rangers’ situation in the standings—saw their division probability rise from 51.7% to 60.1%, their pennant probability rise from 5.1% to 5.8%, and their World Series probability rise from 2.2% to 2.6%. Individual games even out over the course of a week, but they’re a big deal, and the Rangers got good results in theirs last night. The probability drops would have been much worse without that piece.
The postseason numbers are, we notice, bigger than the regular season ones. The Rangers are no longer the AL West favorites thanks to this, but it was narrow favoritehood anyway, and they’re now narrow underdogs. On the other hand, their championship hopes dropped by somewhere around a third thanks to the deGrom injury news and the deGrom injury news alone. Aces just pitch more in October, and I believe the FanGraphs model already had deGrom missing a portion of the rest of the regular season.
The Rangers can still win it all. They’re the sixth-likeliest team to do it, per the model, trailing only Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Los Angeles, Houston, and the Yankees. But they were the fifth-likeliest before yesterday, and they’re at the top of a big pack right now. They could slip more quickly than they could have before.
One bright spot, I suppose, and this is just for Texas and not for deGrom himself, is that the Rangers have nearly two full months now to try to patch the hole via trade. Marcus Stroman is not Jacob deGrom, but he’s a good pitcher. Shane Bieber is not Jacob deGrom, but he’s another of the best pitchers alive and the Guardians may decide to trade him. Lucas Giolito is not a bad pitcher.
But in terms of the MLB landscape, there may not be a more significant injury there could have been than this one. The man capable of producing the largest impact over a single game is out for the year. The Rangers’ hopes have changed accordingly.
Game 3
Let’s say that in games in Miami this series, the Heat are 50% likely to win, and in games in Denver, the Nuggets are 75% likely to win. This is a little behind where the market has the probability, leaning towards the Heat, but we’ve been out-betting the market following FiveThirtyEight this postseason, and it’s a little ahead of where FiveThirtyEight has things, leaning towards the Nuggets.
If that’s the probability breakdown, or at least close to it, then the median result entering the series was that the Nuggets would win in six games. After Game 1? Still six games. After Game 2? Nuggets in seven. The Nuggets were “expected” to win 1.5 games at home, which is obviously an impossible expectation but does leave two wins as overperformance and one win as underperformance. There was no way to meet expectations. Underperformance ended up being the result.
Looking at tonight’s leverage, then, we have a scenario where—again, if this is close to an accurate probability breakdown—a Nuggets win shifts the median back to Nuggets in 6, while a Heat win shifts the median to an exact tossup. If you give the Heat two wins, give the Nuggets one, and assign win probabilities of 75% for the Nuggets in Games 5 and 7 and 50% for both teams in Games 4 and 6, you get 3.5 wins apiece in this median situation.
So.
There’s no way for the Heat to become series favorites tonight outside of an injury or a suspension materializing.
There’s a way for the Nuggets to reset the series back to its initial expectations if they win.
Tyler Herro’s still out, I’m not sure that matters, I do think this game is just about a tossup, for whatever my thoughts are worth. The Nuggets’ best is better than the Heat’s best, but the Heat’s best is incompatible with the Heat’s opponent playing its best. We’re not going to see both bests. One team isn’t going to play up to its potential.
Lillard to Miami?
The Damian Lillard “speculation” is only that at the moment, but what basically happened is that Lillard was asked who he’d want to be traded to *if* he ever wanted out of Portland, and he responded immediately by naming the Heat, citing his friendship with Bam Adebayo. So, it’s far off, but it’s a lot of fun to envision Lillard and Jimmy Butler both under Erik Spoelstra, even if that would end a heroic run by Lillard keeping dreams alive in Portland.
What Happened With Conor Daly?
Conor Daly and Ed Carpenter Racing announced today that the native Hoosier is no longer with the team, a shocking midseason split that leaves a full-time ride available in the middle of the year and Daly at least briefly out of a job.
Daly has not had much success under Carpenter, but to be fair, Carpenter hasn’t had much success as a team owner, especially lately. The team’s won one race in the last six and a half seasons, and it has just two top tens this year, with Daly and Rinus VeeKay finishing 8th and 10th at the Indy 500. Regardless, the midseason split points towards something having come to a head, and it’s unclear what that was.
For the moment, Daly’s peers seem to be on his side, if there are indeed sides in the matter. Marcus Ericsson, Felix Rosenqvist, and Tony Kanaan all commented on Daly’s Instagram in support virtually immediately upon Daly posting his statement, with Kanaan specifically saying, “That is low.”
Hopefully, Daly gets back in a full-time ride, and ideally into a better one. We’re IndyCar fans here, and we’re fans of the state of Indiana. That means we want an Indiana driver in the series, and we would like that Indiana driver to do well.
Sooners vs. The World
The Women’s College World Series begins its best-of-three final tonight, Florida State the latest team to take a crack at Oklahoma. Oklahoma is 59–1 on the year, its lone loss coming on February 19th by a single run to Baylor. The win streak has reached 51 games. The run of dominance is longer than that.
Last season, Oklahoma finished 56–4, winning the national championship. In 2020, the team was 20–4 when the season was canceled. In 2019, the Sooners went 57–6, losing the championship series to UCLA in a two-game sweep. In 2018, the Sooners went 57–5, losing in the WCWS semifinals to Washington. In 2016 and 2017, the program won 57 and 61 games, winning the national championship each of those times. In 2013, there was another national title.
Five of the last nine national titles in softball have gone to Oklahoma, and in a sport known for its randomness in small samples, the sixth will likely go OU’s way in these next three nights. The program hasn’t lost double-digit games since 2014, when it finished 51–13 and effectively tied for fifth in the nation. The team hasn’t lost the Big 12 since 2011. And there’s another national title under Patty Grasso’s name back in 2000.
This is getting to the territory of UNC women’s soccer back in the day. It’s John Wooden and Geno Auriemma. It’s USC baseball back in the 70s. It’s Minnesota women’s hockey. It’s Iowa wrestling. This is one of the greatest dynasties in the history of college sports, and of American sports. This is a whole lot of fun.
The Cubs and “Average”
There is a stat called wRC+ which normalizes each hitter’s overall offensive production around an average. The average is 100. The way the scale works, a hitter with a 120 wRC+ is 20% better than average and a hitter with a 70 wRC+ is 30% worse than average. Here is the wRC+ for every Cub with 100 or more plate appearances so far this year:
- Ian Happ: 123
- Cody Bellinger: 122
- Seiya Suzuki: 119
- Dansby Swanson: 118
- Patrick Wisdom: 107
- Nico Hoerner: 104
- Yan Gomes: 101
- Trey Mancini: 81
- Eric Hosmer: 68
For those struggling to quantify an average player.
It was a tough loss last night, but Hayden Wesneski was at least adequate, and it’s important for Cubs fans to remember that in all likelihood, development is the important thing this year. Identifying talents is the important thing this year. It’s been a while since the Cubs were good, but progress can be made even without the win/loss record improving relative to 2022. That all said, winning is nice, and hopefully Jameson Taillon builds tonight on what looked like it could have been a breakout on Friday in San Diego.
