TooLiveBrew

"I don't like books -- they're filled with facts" -- Stephen Colbert, playing "Stephen Colbert"

Mark DiFelice's ranking as the team's 4th best reliever, being Shouse/Stetter/Torres, and projected to be better than Riske, Mota, Villanueva (in a swingman role), Coffey, Gagne, and McClung. I really like DiFelice and hope he gets a crack at the 25 man next year. I am another DiFelice backer. His chances have really been limited, but he's basically done nothing but succeed. Imo DiFelice gives us insurance to let Villanueva try to bail us out of having Suppan as our #4 in 2009. I'm not totally sold on Coffey, but adding him plus DiFelice to the bullpen in full-time roles (or close) would have to help improve over the 2008 'pen.

Resting Cam more against RHP should help keep his numbers up a bit. I'm really starting to hope Melvin & the Brewers find a way to try Weeks in CF. Like Braun to LF, I think CF fits Rickie's skills a bit better than 2B. If the team commits to moving Weeks to CF, I would want to see the Brewers pick up Cam's option & deal him somewhere. To me that would be worth a shot in '09.

Seeing Salome atop that list really surprised me. I guess I kinda forget about him with all the prospects we have. He's probably the wrong one to forget, since he happens to play the toughest position. I think 2009 would be a perfect year to break Salome into the bigs... play him as a 3/4 of the year type of callup, unless that projection is overly optimistic. ZiPS seems to be fairly conservative as a general rule (which I like), so I'd be interested to see their +15% line for Salome.

This recent Chupacabra video is pretty intriguing. I thought La Chupacabra was supposed to be some form of a flying creature... this looked like a small dog. For my own conspiracy thoughts... I think JFK was murdered through an organized effort, not one random gunman (who claimed before his own murder, "I'm just a patsy"). The following is from the "Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories" Wikipedia page: Former U.S. Marine snipers Craig Roberts and Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, (who was the senior instructor for the U.S. Marine Corps Sniper Instructor School at Quantico, Virginia) both said it could not be done as described by the FBI investigators. "Let me tell you what we did at Quantico," Hathcock said. "We reconstructed the whole thing: the angle, the range, the moving target, the time limit, the obstacles, everything. I don't know how many times we tried it, but we couldn't duplicate what the Warren Commission said Oswald did. Now if I can't do it, how in the world could a guy who was a non-qual on the rifle range and later only qualified 'marksman' do it?"[12][/sup] I know hardly anything about ballistics or weaponry, so I don't pretend to be able to speculate on these things. However, I've encountered enough evidence/testing on the supposed manner in which JFK was killed, and things just don't add up. I don't know what the real answer is to the question 'How did JFK die?', but I'm fairly certain that the 'historically recorded' way is pretty far from the truth.

Thanks fellas. I figured there was some relatively crude explanation for why IP totals like that would be so (seemingly) low.

How well is ZiPS regarded when it comes to pitching? They've projected Gallardo for only 82 IP & Parra for just 128. Here's the BBTF blurb on how ZiPS handles player injuries: Players that are expected to be out due to injury are still projected. More information is always better than less information and a computer isn't what should be projecting the injury status of, for example, a pitcher with Tommy John surgery. Not clear to me how you could project such low IP totals for two pitchers nearing and/or entering their primes.

Hear, hear, phxMILW One caveat i should add though is i don't know exactly just how much Fielder hurts Weeks and all the infielders with Prince being so short and how much he struggles at scooping throws in the dirt. Put say Lee at first instead of Prince, he'd save all the infielders a fair amount of errors. Oh man, just watching more than a couple Cubs games shows you how Aramis Ramirez [tv baseball analyst stooge]"Has improved his defense so much from his Pittsburgh days!"[/tv baseball analyst stooge]. It's Derrek Lee. The man saves Ramirez so many throwing errors it borders on obscene. I think it's a very good point to highlight the defensive deficiency we have at 1B when trying to analyze Weeks's defensive effectiveness. As you mention, danzig, his throwing mechanics are not pretty, which must lead to him making more poor throws. But having a 1B that could convert some of those errant throws into outs (like many MLB MIFers have) would make Rickie look significantly better in the field imo.

The nah's point, which is also my point is that he has good over-all value, but in the context of the Brewers his value is reduced becuase his weaknesses parallel much of the rest of team. To me, the only context that matters is his position. I just don't understand the basis for the argument that, 'He does things poorly that other Brewers hitters do poorly, therefore he should get dumped.' The only part of it that makes sense to me is that the Brewers have a 100% direct yes/no choice on Cam for 2009. Imo the rest of it is from the land of the 'Our lineup already has enough HR/power' arguments. Compared to the players with which the Brewers could realistically replace Cameron, he is better (or the same, at worst). To me that's just a no-brainer guy to keep in the fold. What alot of people I've talked to fail to realize is that Cameron makes the hard plays look easy. I can be sure that not many players would have even layed a glove on the ball hit to CF in NLDS that Cameron dropped. Yes -- Cameron really is good enough that he makes things look easy. The catch he made at Coors Field (don't recall which game, sorry... I know it was a night game) in deep right-center made me gasp audibly. He didn't even have to dive, because he just tracked the ball perfectly & ran all the way through the catch. The man is a next-level defensive player imo in terms of his reactions, instincts, & routes. The only area where his defense has gotten worse is that he's aged. I'd really like to see Cameron back for 2009, because I don't think either Braun (who I'd like to see tried in CF at some point if Weeks isn't) or Hart are ready to step up & man CF to the point that they don't hurt the team.

Thanks for sharing that, Boy Jeenius. It's cool to hear that our perception (or at least, mine) of Melvin -- honest, down-to-earth, direct -- is shared by others outside of a biased, Brewers-supporting base.

Wow -- ditto to that, Casey. I am now fully pulling for Blengino to get the gig. "Among his current responsibilities, Blengino is responsible for all amateur scouting in Canada, and prior to that, scouted in the northeast part of the U.S." So he was largely responsible for Lawrie, correct? Who are some other guys that would have been Blengino 'products'? "'I was a very small kid. I had a very late growth spurt. By the time I grew at all, I was in high school, and I wasn't one of the guys at that point in time,' he said. 'I knew if I was going to get into the game, I knew it was going to be off the field.' His involvement in SABR helped him to do just that. He joined SABR in the early 1990s, and his membership with SABR and subsequent work on the book Future Stars helped him gain valuable experience and contacts to help him get his start in professional baseball. 'I was a crazy baseball fan just like anyone else,' he said. 'I was really into statistics and read all the Bill James stuff. SABR helped me make the connections and make the big steps along the way to where I am now.' ... Prior to his career in baseball, Blengino worked as a CPA out of college, first at a Big 8 accounting firm before working as a CFO in the non-profit arena. Blengino said that the background he gained in accounting and business has benefited him in his career in baseball." Ok, so sign me up right now. Blengino please.

This is the write-up from the linked FanGraphs article: Mike Cameron: 1 year at $7 million with $10 million team option for 2009 Signed to provide some outfield defense at a bit of power, Cameron exceeded expectations for the Brewers, having a terrific season at age 35 and helping push Milwaukee into the playoffs. Injuries and a suspension limited him to just 120 games, but that makes his 1.42 WPA/LI all the more impressive when you consider he racked it up in just 508 plate appearances. When you combine average to above average center field defense with a bat that's worth 1.5 wins over an average hitter, you have a +4 win player. Based on Cameron's 2008 performance, he was worth between $15 and $20 million on the free market, or more than twice what he actually made. Toss in the team option that now looks like a no-brainer, and Cameron was truly one of the best signings of the winter. The arguments that Cameron was somehow part of a larger problem that needs to be addressed this offseason continue to puzzle me. Even with a slight but expected decline as he gets one year older, Cameron is easily worth his $10M option.

How about Joe Torre, Bobby Cox, and Terry Francona. All failed pretty miserably before and now are known successes. You just listed arguably the two most overrated managers of all-time in Torre & Cox. Francona is (imho) MLB-Manager-Vanilla, like 80-90% or so of the guys that have MLB jobs.

the blind support for one of the two is remarkable to me. The posts I can recall in support of both Valentine & Johnson haven't been 'blind support' And the fact almost nobody endorses any of the "other four" is also startling, as the difference is not that staggering. There have been people to speak up in favor of Randolph, Macha, and even Brenly. And people have provided evidence as to why they wouldn't support each of these candidates. Brenly or Randolph : Brewers Manager : : Bullet : Kneecap Macha : Brewers Manager : : Bullet : Pinky Toe Very well-done. Much better than my russian roulette 'analogy'

Weeks just makes them more often than others and people end up dwelling on it. A dive and miss on a play that another player makes doesn't seem to bother people as much as just making a silly error. It might be interesting to re-visit rulz's thread on assigning a numeric (1-10) value on how 'exciting' an offensive play is, except use how 'frustrating' certain defensive miscues can be. There were numerous tangible examples of Weeks's overall superiority in the field to Durham even in just Ray's short tenure here, but I'll be damned if the Weeks-bashers ever seemed to take notice. Weeks does make more frustrating errors than many infielders. He also makes more plays overall than many infielders. One is more of a pet peeve than the other, though, so you get people talking about, 'man, I know Weeks is terrible -- I don't need to look at it objectively!'

So if the choice comes down to Macha/Randolph/Brenly, isn't that a bit like playing russian roulette with a 3-chambered gun? And instead of putting in just one bullet, you put in two? I have never before hoped so strongly that Ken Macha is our new manager. *gulp*

Congrats Jack! At least I won't have to stumble my way through spelling (& pronouncing) Zduriencik as much anymore... http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif I have confidence that, like Melvin, Jack Z had very good help working under him. Blengino sounds like a good guess as to the new Scouting Director

How is saying, "Maybe Billy saw the same thing the players saw," about your former manager being fired not a harsh criticism? And what does that prove about or have to do with any point you've tried to make? Perhaps Kendall has changed his opinion since then, but it's pretty safe to say that you couldn't find a bigger supporter of Macha's firing at the time than Kendall.

If Escobar has such little power how did he manage to slug at the same level as Hardy both years? The insane BABIP in 2008, coupled with what endaround mentioned about Huntsville playing much more as a pitcher's park in 2003 (when Hardy was there), is what made them so close in terms of full-season, Double-A numbers. And don't forget that Hardy posted his line a year younger/earlier. I'm sure there are other factors I'm overlooking that better-versed people won't miss. More and more I like the idea of moving Hardy to third if they can't find a decent LH platoon guy for Hall or an everyday 3B. I would like Escobar to get a year at AAA but could see where he may not. What complicates this is that Hardy has said he would not be open to moving off SS. It could cost him some big money.

To provide further context on Escobar's performance at Huntsville this season, the MLE (major-league-equivalent) tool at Minorleaguesplits.com (source for my numbers on Escobar) spit out this line for his 2008 Double-A totals: .282/.318/.361/.679, with a BABIP of .328 (which would seem high to expect from a guy with as little power as Escobar posseses)

The first thing that jumps out to me is Escobar's insanely high .380 BABIP this past season at Huntsville. I'm having a hard time finding what Hardy's BABIP was at AA, though. I crudely calculate Hardy's 2003 Huntsville BABIP at .297 (I used Escobar's 2008 total of 7 sac. flies bc I couldn't find any SF total in 2003 for Hardy... if anything, he'd probably have had a few more). There was a ton of luck in Escobar matching Hardy's offensive output at the same level, and Hardy was in his age-20 season at Double-A... compared to Escobar in his age-21 season in 2008.

Weeks is in the bottom 3% of mid infielders in the league defensively, if not the worst mid infielder. This is a huge part of the problem in having the kind of discussion logan wants to set up (& I'd imagine part of the reason why he posed the question) ... that comment just isn't true.

No surprise about Hardy really. He is an average defender. And for a "defense first" position, that adds up. Nice offense for the position, but defense is key in a shortstop. He does 2 things well defensively, throw and field balls that are hit right at him. I think that when Escobar finally does arrive, a lot of Brewer fans will realize how much the team was set back by Hardy's defense. On the flip-side, I think that when Escobar finally does arrive, a lot of Brewers fans will realize just how hard it is to find a bat like Hardy's at SS. I certainly disagree strongly that Hardy's defense was as bad as this model indicates, but I won't disagree that (all in all) J.J. is an average SS. I'm inclined to rank him myself as 'above average', and that's with watching quite a bit of baseball around the league this season (though I'm certainly no expert). I really think the combo of the kind of offense Hardy brings with avg. to above-avg. defense is harder to come by than the combo of defense & offense that Escobar brings (& I am saying that assuming Escobar as an elite defensive SS). Alcides is going to have to hit quite a bit better than he has to this point to be noticeably better than Counsell once he gets to the bigs. Then the debate thickens a bit, beyond 'which O+D combo is harder to find'... to 'which O+D combo is more valuable'? I would think the first question would impact the answer to the second, though that's just my guess.

So, ugh, who should I be rooting for between Macha and Brenly? No whammy! Your thoughts are kind of what I was thinking, but to me it just seems odd [Johnson] hasn't been offered another manager job. I guess maybe he has, but it just seems odd he hasn't managed again with the records he's had. I'm sure there's a 'two-way street' factor in play with Johnson to some extent. However, it may be as simple as the fact that he manages differently from the Ol' Boys Club Managerial Code & doesn't play nice when people start telling him what to do/to do something else. Well, that, or he's just been hired & fired like many MLB coaches... the lightning-rod treatment.

Heh, well what I didn't realize at the time was that MNBrew beat me to the punch... and much more succinctly, to boot http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif