“...the longest winning streak in the majors in more than a century.”
September 15, 2017 8:28 AM   Subscribe

Indians, One Strike From a Streak’s End, Rally to Win 22nd Straight by Benjamin Hoffman[The New York Times] “In their bid for sole possession of baseball’s longest winning streak in the last 101 years, the Cleveland Indians found themselves a strike away from losing on Thursday. They trailed the Kansas City Royals by 2-1 in the ninth inning, but a familiar cast of characters pulled Cleveland back from defeat: Francisco Lindor tied the score in the ninth with a run-scoring double, Jose Ramirez led off the 10th with a double, and Jay Bruce drove him home for the remarkable win. The hallmark of the Indians’ streak had been almost total dominance, which made their desperate rally in Thursday’s game seem all the more impressive. In the first 21 games of the streak, the Indians had trailed their opponents for a grand total of four innings, but with Lindor at the plate in the ninth inning, they were down to their final strike before rallying.”

• Close Call, But Indians Pass Cubs, Set Sights On Longest MLB Winning Streak by Christopher Dean Hopkins [NPR]
“The win gave Cleveland sole possession of the second-longest winning streak in Major League Baseball history, passing the Chicago Cubs. The record is held by the 1916 New York Giants with 26; if the Indians manage three more wins against the Royals, they could tie the record at 10 p.m. ET on Tuesday against the Los Angeles Angels. The streak, which began with a win Aug. 24 against the Boston Red Sox and includes series sweeps of the Baltimore Orioles, Chicago White Sox, New York Yankees, Detroit Tigers (twice!) and these same Royals, has rocketed the Indians to the top of the American League and leave them three wins shy of clinching a playoff spot. Thursday night's game was the first time during the streak that the Indians trailed entering the ninth inning and the first game that went to extra innings, and was only the fourth one-run win of the stretch.”
• Real or not? It's time to appreciate the greatness of Indians' win streak by David Schoenfield [ESPN]
A few nuggets, with research help from my friends at ESPN Stats & Information:
◦ The shutout was the largest ever to extend a winning streak of 15 or more games.
◦ The 19-game streak is tied for fourth-longest of the modern era (since 1900), but the Indians have a larger run differential than any of those other streaks.
◦ With a plus-100 run differential, the Indians became just the fourth team of the modern era with that large of a differential over 19 games: (1) 1939 Yankees, +130; (2) 1933 Senators, +104; (3) 1904 Giants, +103; (4) 2017 Indians, +100. The second-largest differential this season for a 19-game stretch is plus-68 by the Dodgers.
◦ The Indians have allowed just 32 runs in 19 games (1.68 per game). They've hit 38 home runs.
◦ They've trailed at the end of an inning just four times out of 171 innings (it helps that they've scored first in 18 of the 19 games).
◦ They lead the majors with 18 shutouts; next-most in the AL are the Twins and Orioles with 10.
◦ Lindor, who hit a bases-loaded triple in the second inning, is now hitting .365/.434/.770 with 17 runs and 18 RBIs during the streak.
◦ Carrasco has allowed zero runs or one run in six of his past seven starts.
“OK, a timeout from all the fantastic numbers. I hope everyone is appreciating what we're seeing here. This is arguably the most dominant winning streak we've ever seen. If they can beat the Tigers the next two games, the Indians will pass the 2002 A's and tie the 1935 Cubs for the second-longest streak, leaving only the 1916 Giants ahead of them at 26. And no offense to those Giants, but that was a little different era in major-league history. Not to mention they had a tie game in there, so that streak is really an unbeaten streak -- not a winning streak.”
• Indians' winning streak unlike any in history by Joe Posnanski [MLB]
“There are numbers that show this -- numbers we will get into -- but first we need to talk about just how unlikely an 18-game winning streak is. There have been two 18-game winning streaks since baseball expanded in 1961. A movie was made about the first of those -- the 2002 Oakland A's won 20 games in a row while Brad Pitt waited outside in his car. The second is this Cleveland streak. It is unclear if there will be a movie made about this Cleveland team's streak, but if there is I hope Kevin Spacey plays Terry Francona. They don't look all that much alike, but I think Spacey would get that Tito vibe. In any case, these streaks are rare, because of course they are. The chances for a mediocre team winning 18 games in a row is, as you might expect, almost nil. The math tells us that a .500 team's chances of winning 18 in a row is 262,000 to 1 -- these are the same odds of you flipping heads on an equally weighed coin 18 times in a row. Go ahead, try it. We'll wait. The odds of a very good team -- say a .650 winning percentage team (105 wins over a full season) -- winning 18-in a row are much better, but it's still 2,330 to 1. There are very rarely teams that win 105 games over a season, by the way; it has only happened nine times since 1961. And the odds are wildly against even those teams. So right away, we know this Cleveland streak is uncommon and special. But here's the crazy part: Even among the rare long streaks, this Cleveland thing is unique. No team has ever been so dominant over a winning streak.”
• The Indians’ winning streak needs to reach 26 to be a record by Grant Brisbee [SBNation]
“Today, it would appear that it’s time to discuss the context of another winning streak and compare it to the Indians’. I’m so, so sorry. But at least we get to do a deep dive into the rewarding world of semantics! The issue is this: The Cleveland Indians have won 21 consecutive games. If they win one more game, they will have set a new record for the longest uninterrupted winning streak in baseball history. That’s not my verbiage; it belongs to SABR [@sabr], and it’s pretty mindful of this stuff. There isn’t a lot of willy-nilly when it comes to SABR, unless you’re talking about the actual Willy Nilly, who was the center fielder for the ‘39 Bees. [...] The Indians are chasing 26 wins if they want the all-time record. But that doesn’t take away the fact that they’re in the middle of something amazing and that it hasn’t been equaled since baseball players were paid in oxen and traveled on the tops of train cars. If you want to ignore anything that happened 101 years ago, it’s more than understandable. If you want to get technical, though, 26 games is the official record, and it’s a lot less ambiguous than you might think. The 1916 Giants had 26 games on their schedule between Sept. 7 and Sept. 30, and they won them all. Except, wait, the Sept. 29 game was rained out and replayed as the second game of a doubleheader the next day, and that was the loss that snapped the winning streak. Which means the winning streak might technically be 25 games because ...”
posted by Fizz (36 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
So last the Cavs beat the Warriors to break the curse, and now this happens? What miracle does 2018 hold for the Browns, a rise to 2-14?
posted by komara at 8:35 AM on September 15, 2017 [13 favorites]


my poor royals :(
posted by dismas at 8:52 AM on September 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


My favorite tidbit on this is that the only player who's played in every game during the streak is Giovanni Urshela. The Cleveland roster as a whole has some really exciting players like Jose Ramirez, Corey Kluber, and Andrew Miller, but role players like Yandy Diaz and back-end starters like Trevor Bauer, Mike Clevinger, and Josh Tomlin have really been instrumental in making this streak happen.

It's really the kind of team you want to root for until you see their racist mascot.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:52 AM on September 15, 2017 [20 favorites]


Over the first 20 games of the streak they had held their opponents to only 32 runs. I was trying to see if that was the best mark over any 20 game period in baseball history, but couldn't really find an answer. The 1968 Cardinals gave up the fewest runs in a season ever but even they never held opponents to 32 or fewer over 20 games.

At any rate, this is a good time to note that the Cleveland baseball team blew a 3-1 lead.
posted by The Notorious SRD at 8:54 AM on September 15, 2017


As a lifelong fan of another AL Central team (go Twins) Cleveland's winning streak has been equal parts painful and fascinating to watch.
posted by Elly Vortex at 8:55 AM on September 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'll be the first. I love me some baseball, and this is a fun story, BUT, can they now please get rid of their fucking racist mascot/name?
posted by allthinky at 9:22 AM on September 15, 2017 [13 favorites]


A team named the "Cincinnati Jews", or "Los Angeles African Americans", or "Dallas Hispanics" wouldn't be tolerated.
posted by sotonohito at 9:34 AM on September 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


It's really the kind of team you want to root for until you see their racist mascot.

I saw a game at Progressive Field this year and I was surprised I didn't really see the mascot anywhere inside the field, other than on people's shirts. 90% of the shirts, but still. Instead they had these giant hot dogs running around. Maybe he was there and I just didn't notice, I dunno. I wish they'd get rid of the damn thing already.

As a Red Sox fan, I have a soft spot for the Indians because of Francona. I would have rooted for them in the World Series but I couldn't not root for the Cubs.

For some reason I thought the streak had ended at 21. I Can't wait to see how far this goes.
posted by bondcliff at 9:50 AM on September 15, 2017


As Metafilter fave and National Treasure Jon Bois put it:

"over the last 21 games cleveland’s staff has pitched 190 innings, so basically a full individual season. their ERA over that stretch is 1.47."

for the baseball uninitiated: that's really, really good. No one pitcher has done that in ~ 50 years, let alone a whole team.
posted by martin q blank at 9:52 AM on September 15, 2017 [10 favorites]


I have been puzzling over "streak" statistics and the math above is wrong. While it is true that for any set of n games the pr(win all n) is pr(win one)^n (assuming independence), it is not true that the pr(win a sequence of 20 games in a season of 162) is pr(win 20 in a row in 20 tries) or 1,048,576 to one. A 20-game win streak can start on any day of the season up to game 142. Also, there are 30 teams in the league. So any season theres's (30*142) or 4,260 opportunities for a streak to start. Over 25 years that works out to about a 9.6% probability of seeing a win streak of exactly 20 games in that period*. That's actually pretty high, and rises to about 33% over 100 years.

So enjoy the streak. But it's not as unusual is the numbers above would have you think. And they have to get rid of their "mascot."

(This is easiest to see with a streak of 3 iwins n a 5 game season with p(win) = .5 -- there are 5 (out of 32 possible) sets of outcomes that have a streak of exactly 3 wins: {WWWLW, WWWLL, LWWWL, WLWWW, LLWWW}. So the odds of a streak of exactly three wins in a season of five games is 5/32, not .5^3 = 4/32. There's also three more cases that embed three wins: two streaks of four wins and one of five wins possible, or 8/32 have streaks of three or more.

*I think. We need to use complementary sets to calculate this out: p(win 20 in a row, out of 162 games, over 30 teams and 25 years) = 1 - pr(no such streak) = 1 - pr(no such streak in one chance)^(30*142*25) = 1 - (1 -pr(one such streak in one chance))^(30*142*25) = 9.6% . This understates the probability by ignoring streaks longer than 20 games but I got tired and had to get back to work.
posted by PandaMomentum at 9:56 AM on September 15, 2017 [1 favorite]



As a local who has an on/off relationship w/ them, their dominance in recent weeks is astounding.

Things are clicking perfectly despite 2 of the expected everyday starters Michael Brantley and Jason Kipnis who haven't played at all during the streak (injuries). Andrew Miller, arguably the most dominant pitcher on our team, hadn't played during the streak until last night.

With the payroll system in baseball, the Indians identified some promising youngsters on the roster in recent years, and extended their contracts that, offering to the youngsters "we'll give you some long-term security and guaranteed cash" if you would sign now, plus a couple years of team options with a more money, instead of waiting a year or 2 later when those players were free agents and/or had demonstrated more of their value, and could command more $ with the front office. (I'm not sure how common if other teams do this).

In nearly all cases, these players [Kluber, Jose Rameriz especially, Carrasco, Brantley] reached or exceeded their potential. Perhaps only Yan Gomes hasn't really made a huge leap [yet] and he's still serviceable.

Secondly, the front office has done the following for the past ~10 years:
Identifying mid-career players who have been historically mediocre and believing these players hadn't reached their potential (or more likely, saw analytics that led the FO to believe they were better than what they appeared), or players who had a better past but struggled in their most recent year to 1-2 year contracts.

This year and last, the FO gambles on these players (Austin Jackson, Dan Otero, Boone Logan, Abraham Almonte, Rajai Davis, Mike Napoli) have really worked out relatively better than years past; where they're reaching their potential or recaptured some of the previous magic that they had earlier in their careers. (Last year, there were duds like Coco Crisp, Marlon Byrd, and Tom Gorzelany; searching baseball reference made me remember of some other ones like Gavin Floyd, brett myers, rich hill for sters...).

On the plus side, support to change the name has been getting more mainstream attention in Cleveland and grown just in the past 2-3 years..
posted by fizzix at 9:59 AM on September 15, 2017 [2 favorites]



bondcliff, they haven't had an actual official mascot/person dressed as Chief Wahoo on the field/in the stands for as long as I remember (but i'm only 30).

Since the early 90s, the team's mascot has been a bright purple furry creature named Slider.
posted by fizzix at 10:04 AM on September 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


This has been annoying me all week and people carrying water for Elias Sports Bureau annoy me too.

“Why the 1916 New York Giants' MLB record 26-game winning streak stands, despite a tie,” Jorge L. Ortiz, USA Today, 14 September 2017
posted by ob1quixote at 10:06 AM on September 15, 2017


Which is to say, a win streak with a tie in it isn't a win streak. ESB is wrong on this.
posted by ob1quixote at 10:06 AM on September 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


As a Red Sox fan, I approve of the Indians peaking a few weeks too soon.
posted by COD at 10:10 AM on September 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


As a Cleveland fan living in Seattle, this has more than a little Mariners-type potential: "We set the big record but didn't even make the World Series, so now we make a big deal about the record and don't mention the championship we've never won", which can lead to unfortunate displays like this.

(The Mariners hold the record for wins in a season and have never been to the World Series)
posted by Kwine at 10:21 AM on September 15, 2017


I'm looking forward to seeing them here in Seattle at our final home stand this season. I sort of hope they cool off before they get here.

My Ohioan uncle Hank, who passed away suddenly in August, had been in the habit the last few years of catching a Cleveland game with me out here in spring when possible. We went to a White Sox game this year in May. I'm sort of sad for him that the streak didn't get going until after his death. I can still watch the games for him though.
posted by mwhybark at 10:51 AM on September 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Which is to say, a win streak with a tie in it isn't a win streak. ESB is wrong on this.

But the tie, officially speaking, didn't happen. As noted in that article, "The Giants finished with an 86-66 record that season, not 85-66-1."
posted by Etrigan at 10:59 AM on September 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


I watch all the Royals games, which means I see a lot of Indians games, and despite knowing they're supposed to be my enemy it's really hard to dislike them. They're fun! That Francisco Lindor, man. Every time he does something amazing (which is basically every game) I say, "man, we gotta get that guy," which is hilarious because you'd have to trade essentially our entire team for him.
posted by something something at 11:03 AM on September 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


What miracle does 2018 hold for the Browns, a rise to 2-14?

"Oh shit"

-Raiders fans
posted by East14thTaco at 11:20 AM on September 15, 2017


Go Giants!

(And I mean Go!, not "Achieve the ignominy that attends a team that loses 100 games in a season")
posted by chavenet at 11:33 AM on September 15, 2017


I'm a Padre fan, and I've caught myself the last couple of seasons calculating out their magic number to avoid a 100 loss season. They just clinched in the last week.
posted by LionIndex at 12:05 PM on September 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


(update/fix on my comment above- Doc Gooden very nearly did that in 1985, with 276 innings (!) of 1.53 ERA pitching. granted, lower run-scoring environment, but wow, I had forgotten just how amazing he was. I was thinking of Gibson's 1.12 ERA in '68.)
posted by martin q blank at 12:43 PM on September 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


granted, lower run-scoring environment, but wow

Well know I have to go look it up. Post-steroid era looks like a similar run environment as the 80's to me for R/G. Interesting to see SO are way up though, and HR per game in (1.27) 2017 is on pace to be the highest ever.
posted by papercrane at 1:18 PM on September 15, 2017


and HR per game in (1.27) 2017 is on pace to be the highest ever.

Because the ball is juiced.
posted by enjoymoreradio at 1:25 PM on September 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


In honor of the Oakland A's 20-game run in 2002, which this win just surpassed, please enjoy this excellent montage of The Streak from Moneyball, which is IMHO one of the best scenes in sports cinema history.
posted by Rhaomi at 2:36 PM on September 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Detroit Tigers (twice!)

Salt in the wound...
posted by JoeXIII007 at 2:40 PM on September 15, 2017


The shitty Mets say “you’re welcome” for Jay Bruce. :(
posted by uncleozzy at 2:40 PM on September 15, 2017


I never cared much one way or the other about the Indians, but this is great, and I really hope they can keep it up and be uncontested champeens of the win streak.

> Which is to say, a win streak with a tie in it isn't a win streak. ESB is wrong on this.

No, you need to read the Grant Brisbee link (and thanks to Fizz for mentioning the authors' names!)—the tie was a No Game and does not count.

But Fizz, you buried the lead: also from that Brisbee story, "President Springsteen has a 69 percent approval rating." We can all breathe a sigh of relief!
posted by languagehat at 2:40 PM on September 15, 2017


Etrigan: “[T]he tie, officially speaking, didn't happen.”
Well that's what I get for lifting my takes off of PTI and not really reading the article I posted myself.

Now I want to know why anybody even mentioned that not-a-tie since it's the equivalent of grousing because it took Cleveland extra innings last night.
posted by ob1quixote at 2:54 PM on September 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Well, it was a good run.
posted by bondcliff at 7:49 PM on September 15, 2017


.
posted by mwhybark at 7:51 PM on September 15, 2017


This post needs the metafilterjinx tag.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:08 PM on September 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


Go royals :)
posted by dismas at 8:37 AM on September 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


And no offense to those Giants, but that was a little different era in major-league history.

Meaning what? I'm open to there being something different then that would make streaks easier, I guess, but you can't just wave your hands and say, "It was the olden days!"
posted by Chrysostom at 10:20 PM on September 17, 2017




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