Hunt and Peck

Why are the Cardinals so frustrating? - A Hunt and Peck

Part one.

By lil_scooter93 Aug 9, 2019, 1:00pm EDT

Perhaps it is just me, but the Cardinals this year seem to be uniquely frustrating. There are many anecdotal reasons for this, but in part one let’s dip our toes in to focus on something we can easily quantify.

My theory is the Cardinals seem to be streaky. The team will go a stretch of winning and then follow that up with a stretch of losing. Perhaps this is just the way it goes when playing 162-game seasons. There is only one way to find out: GRAPHS!

The vertical axis shows the games above five hundred. The horizontal axis shows the games played. I have highlighted this season in bold red.

What does this show? Well, each season appears to have some ups and downs, but for the past six seasons, the valleys are relatively small, leading to the graph to surge up overall. In 2019 you can see the graph jump up to a peak, then drop down to where it started. This represents a winning streak followed immediately by a losing streak.

This, among other things, might explain the frustration the team can cause. We will explore the other possible reasons in the coming weeks!