Week 6 EGI: Cubs-Brewers Take Over

This week the Cubs and Brewers have taken over the leaderboard. The Cubs are also pulling themselves from the bottom of the league with two different exciting games. Here are the top 10 of the week.

*denotes extra innings

The Brewers hosted the Cubs in an amazing game last Friday. 13 innings long, one comeback in the 9th by the Cubs, two comesbacks by the Brewers, one in the 9th, and a walkoff hit for the Brewers. The Brewers win expectancy is worth looking at.

Large comebacks in the 7th and 9th punctuate this unique game

Looking at the chart, it’s clear to see that the Brewers went through a very up and down game. Down 4-1 with one out in the 7th, their chances had nearly bottomed out (the first trough) when Carlos Marmol struck out Rickie Weeks. However, a rally capped by Jonathan Lucroy doubling off of Michael Bowden scored all three runners and made it 5-4 heading to the 8th inning. This pushed their chances all the way up to 75%. A quick 8th inning by both teams improved the Brewers chances to 84%. However, in the 9th, when Aramis Ramirez couldn’t handle an Ian Stewart grounder, the Cubs had life. David DeJesus tripled off of John Axford to tie the game. DeJesus scored on a wild pitch that also allowed Starlin Castro to reach on a strikeout which put the Cubs in position to win. Alfonso Soriano singled and the Cubs had a commanding 7-5 lead going into the bottom of the 9th. The Brewers chances got even bleaker when Ryan Braun flied out to start the 9th. This is illustrated by the second trough, and the Brewers chance of winning was less than 5%.

Ramirez walked to give the Brewers life, and Corey Hart homered on the 10th pitch of his at bat to tie the game. Heading to extra innings, there are bigger spikes than we’ve seen in other extra inning games (see Red Sox-Orioles from last week). With the exception of the top of the 12th, both teams put their leadoff runner on base in their half of the 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th innings. There were 5 different baserunners in scoring position, but neither team was able to capitalize on the scoring threats until the 13th.

Lendy Castillo came on for the Cubs to pitch the bottom of the 13th and quickly hit Weeks and Braun. After a Ramirez single, Hart was up again, this time with the bases loaded and no one out. On the first pitch, a single into centerfield ended the drama and gave the Brewers a dramatic 8-7 win.

This game easily tops the Nationals-Dodgers game from two weeks ago.

The Nationals still have a very comfortable lead overall for the year, but have gone down a bit from last week (39.93).

As big as the Nationals lead seems, if they play average baseball for another month, they will likely return to the 36 level. At the bottom of the chart, we can see an even larger discrepancy, as the Angels trail the Rangers and Cardinals by large margin.

The Angels didn’t help themselves this week, as they played the worst game of the week, on May 11, with a score of 11.13. This was a Rangers game where the Rangers went up 6-0 in the 1st and won 10-3. The Angels also were only able to average an EGI of 22 for the entire week, a league low.