Fun with Numbers

Baseball Musings has a fun little line-up analysis that you can put in 9 guys and it spits out the lineup that will score the most runs. It's based on the players on-base and slugging percentage. Here's what it spit out for the Cubs.

1. Lee
2. DeRosa
3. Soriano
4. Ramirez
5. Barrett
6. Floyd
7. Theriot
8. Pie
9. Pitcher (Hill)

I used Floyd because of he has the highest OPS of the three remaining outfielders. I used Hill as the pitcher because he is pitching tommorrow's game. Obviously Lee is not going to bat lead off, but it does show that DeRosa and Theriot might switch spots while DeRosa is still hitting hot.

Baseball Prospectus plays the rest of the season 1,000,000 times to determine who will and gives them playoff odds. I generally like to eliminate teams with less than 10% of chance, so goodbye to: Devil Rays, Royals, Nationals, Pirates, and Diamondbacks. The last one kind of confuses me, but I guess the computers have not been convinced. The Cubs are at 38% right now, which is still pretty good considering that they have a 1/4 chance of making it at the start of the season. Really it's less than that with 6 teams in their division.