RockCoCougars

Random stalls often tend to caused be a sensor of some sort. Not familiar with the Dodge model, but I was thinking this sounds like it could be a crankshaft sensor. Wouldn't hurt to check the fuel pump either, but if this is a fairly long term problem that occurs only in cold weather, probably less likely.

With the news the other day that Bedard might be out until May or June, I think the Brewers should maintain contact with his people because his asking price will likely plummet. I wonder if he'd take something like $3-4 million base with bonuses tied in with every chunk of innings or starts that he makes. A calculated risk, yes - but not one that would break the back of the team. With Bedard in their back pocket, the Brewers would have the flexibility to drop Manny from the rotation if he flops or even more likely to fill the spot of whoever gets injured between now and then. I guess the major problem with this would be that he's yet another lefty. Obviously this would stretch the budget out to or past the limit, but keep in mind that the team either contends or barring injury they would have three starting pitchers (Davis, Bush and Bedard) that they could flip for prospects if they were out of it by the trading deadline.

Nice deal for Cincy. I'm thinking if Votto can get his head together this year and the pitching comes through, the Reds are going to be a strong contender for the division.

I'm going out on a limb and will predict that Gregg Zaun will have a career season at the plate at age 39.

It's easy to Monday morning quarterback an injury. I kind of compare it to 20 years ago when Higuera was re signed, and went down with the injury soon after. I can't call that a bad signing. Going further, a team like the Brewers needs to pull out all the stops to keep their own stars, because they aren't getting them from another team. All they will get is slightly above average players like Wolf who have to be convinced to come to the Brewers in the form of extra cash. By the way, in my view, Sheets could have thrown nary a pitch last season and would have hurt the team less than Suppan pitching to his 'career norms' after throwing out his worst 6 starts.

Exactly. There was no reason to give Suppan that contract. Melvin created the hole in the rotation himself when he traded Davis. Thank god the other guy Melvin targeted- Dave Roberts, decided to sign with San Francisco. I shudder to think of what would have happened if they'd have given him $25-$30 million. I'll withhold judgment on Wolf. I think they gave him about $5-10 million too much money though (over the 3 years of the contract), and 3 years is probably a year too long. That said, it would be tough to argue the fact that Melvin jumped the gun on signing him. No way would Wolf have gotten this kind of contract had the Brewers not signed him. Heck, he may have only gotten a one year deal in this market.

I would say if this is what you believe than you should learn more about statistics. There are statistics that measure everything. Just take a look at Ennder's post earlier in this exact thread, he lists statictics for both "Late & Close" and "High Leverage Situations." If you are ignoring these, than sure... you may not get an accurate measure of a players performance, both in general and in "clutch situations." I actually like Late & Close and High Leverage stats (Cameron's are terrible by the way). How do they factor into WAR, UZR or whatever? It's pretty hard to score a lot without players on base, don't you think? In all actuality we're talking about evaluating a specific player on offense, not the whole team and nothing to do with defense. That being known, what do you think an offensive player is trying to do when he's at bat? I would venture to guess if you said, "trying not to make an out" you would be correct. Well, the best stat to look at for this is OBP, because it is basically telling you how often a player did not make an out. Agreed. But I'm not a big fan of weighing OBP as heavily as sabermetrics do. A walk just isn't as valuable as a hit, and rarely drives in a run. Like I said in my post, I would put more of the walk on the pitcher than on the particular hitter's acumen. Pitchers almost never want to put a guy on base. Because even some of the worst hitters in the game still get a hit 1/5 to 1/4 of the time. If you have no outs, than that's three players with those chances to get a hit. That means more often than not, one of the next 3 gets a hit. I disagree. As much as I think that Cameron is overrated, if I have two outs, a guy on base and I see Jason Kendall in the on-deck circle, I'm not giving Cameron anything good to hit. I'll try to get him to go fishing for my pitch, but I'm not grooving a fastball 3-1. If this were true... since all the players on the Brewers face the same pitchers on any given day, shouldn't they all have basically the same walk rate? But they don't... Also why did Rickie Weeks have a high walk rate? I'm certain pitchers were not trying to pitch around him to get to Braun and Prince... I hear your point. It's obvious that some hitters have more plate discipline than others. Everybody is pitched differently. It's obvious a guy like Corey Hart is exploited due to his horrible plate discipline. Like I said, that will be reflected in poor 'traditional' stats, and the guy will end up playing his way out of the league. Wins in general are not a lucky stat. It's when looking at the win/loss record of a specific pitcher that it gets pretty dicey. Wins tell you almost nothing about how good a pitcher pitched. Wins are a team stat, not an individual one. When trying to evaluate a specific player you should not use a team stat. If you looked at is this way, Ben Sheets would have been a bad pitcher because he had a bad win/loss record. Also Braden Looper would have been the best pitcher on the Brewers last year because he had the best win/loss record. There's a reason that both of these are no where near true. I completely agree. That said, some sabermaticians completely discount wins which I think is foolish. In my opinion, the three most important stats for a pitcher are WHIP, strikeouts to walks, and strikeouts per 9 innings. Anyway, I'm done arguing this, but the main reason that I'm against sabermetrics is using stats to support foolish ideas like the fact that Tulo should have been ROY over Braun. I think that is crazy. Braun didn't start playing until Memorial Day weekend and still put up one of the best rookie seasons ever.

Why should Sheets look in the mirror? How can he be blamed for having an inner ear disturbance and another freak injury? When healthy, which was most of the time, he was one of the 10 best starters in baseball. For some reason, people love to pile on Sheets because of these injuries, but I've had a gut feeling for a while that this is going to turn out like the Paul Molitor "he's just a DH" situation. Remember, Molitor was "hurt all the time" too. It's not like Sheets is coming off a torn rotator cuff or TJ surgery either. Regarding Suppan, why was it a needed move to sign a low upside #4 ish starter to a four year contract paying 8 figures per? Especially if he's coming off his best stretch of pitching ever. I would say that most people in baseball thought giving Suppan that contract was a big reach. Going further, there would have been no pressing need for a middling starter anyway if Melvin hadn't have traded Davis for a fat and lazy catcher. Davis could have been the "innings eater" that they supposedly needed for a lot cheaper than Suppan. Instead, they ended up with a year of a catcher who went for three months without throwing a base stealer out and one year of Guillermo Mota. At some point, Melvin has to be accountable for these moves.

Why not? I'd rather have him than a pile of garbage like Duffy or Bourgeois who bookended last season "stealing" at bats from guys. At least Edmonds has proven that he can hit MLB pitching in the past.

Works for me. Even though he didn't play last year, I think Edmonds has a higher probability of success than a guy like Trot Nixon did last year. Reed Johnson would work for me as well.

So, correct me if I'm wrong but I'm assuming that you are in the camp that both wins and RBI's are largely meaningless stats. The problem that I have with these advanced statistics do not effectively measure whether a hitter is clutch (for example, Mike Cameron is not a clutch hitter). Yes, RBI's are a functon of your teamate's performance, but you still have to get the job done when they are on base. Correct me if I'm wrong, but basically an at bat the 8th inning of an April game with the Brewers down 9-0 basically has the same weight as an at bat with the Brewers tied 3-3 in the 9th inning of a September game. If so, I have a problem with that. I also have a problem with putting such a high value on OBP. The objective is to win the game by scoring and driving in runs, not to get to first base. Hitting 6th for a good chunk of last year, Cameron should have had a high OBP, because generally the guys hitting 7-8 were trash. I'd pitch around him too. Walks are much more a function of the pitcher, not the hitter. Some guys have poor plate discipline and will end up playing themselves out of the league with a low BA and high strikeouts, but some guys like Vlad have terrible plate discipline, but are (or at least were for Vlad great hitters). Also, do you feel wins are a lucky stat? How do you account for the fact that some days weather conditions and/or just the ball carrying at Miller Park for whatever reason favors the offense? In any case, if a guy gets a win he was in theory at least able to outpitch the opponent that day.

Can you commit suicide twice? Melvin "committed financial suicide' on December 24, 2006 when he signed Suppan. As I predicted that day, the end result has been losing Sheets (or any financial flexibility, hindering the team during the small window of opportunity it has to contend). I don't blame Sheets a bit for being upset. How would you feel at your job if you were among the best at what you do, someone incompetent is brought in at more money, they continue their incompetence working next to you, and your boss won't discuss giving you a raise? Say what you want about the injuries, I'll take Sheets' 2008 season ahead of Suppan's entire body of work with the team. In the end, this is Melvin's fault, and he's going to look really bad if (as I'm predicting now) Sheets bounces back and has a good season.

Well, the Brewers should have signed Sheets. Obviously, something went down behind the scenes where at least one of the parties hated the other at the end. Hopefully now he's signed somewhere the truth comes out. Ask yourself, who would you rather have for the coming season? Doug Davis and LaTroy Hawkins, or Sheets? More like Davis, Hawkins and Counsell, or Sheets? Sheets will be on the DL for sure at some point in 2010. I made my original comparison when the number being thrown around was $8 million. That said, I'd still probably bite for $10 million.

I disagree. If players were all the same type of robots, or part of a computer virtual reality game, sabermetrics may be as important as you believe. That said, players are human playing in real world conditions. Baseball is largely based on random occurrences such as weather, field conditions and player health. When you are comparing two guys 50 years later, how do sabermetrics take into account the fact that one guy played through a nagging injury all season? Going further, I don't buy into assigning stats for 'Park Factors' and 'Range Factors' and the like on defense. The beauty of baseball is that no two plays are exactly the same. One ground ball to short is not the same as the other... I don't think the "sample size" argument can counter that fact effectively. I will rely on my flawed memory and continue to objectively watch the game to compare players while using stats as well. I think that the obvious flaw with sabermetrics is that some guys (Mike Cameron, anybody?) come out of the computer as much better players than they really are. If sabermetrics are the end all be all, why hasn't Bill James been hired as more than a consultant, and why hasn't Billy Beane been able to achieve at least one winning season in the past several?

No. Frankly, I'm starting to get really annoyed with how sabermetrics are being used as the end all be all for player analysis. Especially when this analysis is done retroactively, sometimes on players that the 'analyzer' was not even old enough to watch. Kind of ironic, because I've always considered myself to be a stat geek, but like I said, the game is played on the field- not a computer. Enough is enough.

I give props too, but he is over 30 years old and has a (albeit brief) Rangers tie-in which is right in Melvin's wheelhouse.

This guy needs to stick his nose back into an old Bill James almanac and go replay a old season from APBA making out lineups based on his sabermetric genius.....Maybe if the game was played on a computer or something, but it's actually played in real life on a field. It's just like all of these people who now contend that Lofton should have won ROY over Listach in 92 just because Lofton had a much better career and his stats 'look better' 18 years later. They don't remember how Listach had big hit after big hit for a Brewers team that would have probably never been in contention without him.

Come on, who can blame the guy for trying to recoup some of the $30-$40 million he likely left on the table when he turned down the long term contract? Brewers dodged a big time bullet there.

Not quite sure why this team needs to use a roster spot on another infielder to throw into the mix? Isn't there already like 4 guys on the MLB roster who can step in if Weeks gets hurt again? The outfield depth is lacking in the worst way, and if Melvin is planning on using him in the outfield, all is can say is "David Hulse".

Nady is someone the Brewers should have looked into. Very underrated player in my opinion.

Well, the Brewers should have signed Sheets. Obviously, something went down behind the scenes where at least one of the parties hated the other at the end. Hopefully now he's signed somewhere the truth comes out. Ask yourself, who would you rather have for the coming season? Doug Davis and LaTroy Hawkins, or Sheets?

The way they treated Loretta and to a lesser extent Ronnie Belliard that last season was a crime. Talk about a lost organization.Come on, Dean Taylor netted Ginter and Franklin for Loretta. That's a lot of talent to turn your nose up at. Not to mention how he picked up studs like Rusch, Diggins, Navarro, Snyder, Wright, Haynes, Blanco, Quevedo and Acevedo for bums like Burnitz, Cirillo, Vina, Valentin, Eldred, Weathers and Houston. Also got to love how he dumped that bum Matheny for nothing (or was that one on Bando?). Not sure how he ever saw the field considering how many great catchers the Brewers have had over the years .

Given what I saw from Macha last season, I will not be surprised at all if Gamel is not playing and Suppan is in the rotation instead of Parra.

I'd actually say that Jeff Suppan is the Jim McIlvaine of MLB. A good dude, but you have to wonder what the team management was smoking when they made the contract offer.

Orlando is a garbage sports town. The Magic have been towards the bottom of the league in attendance since Shaq left. Like Tampa, a good chunk of the residents are transplants so I suppose the team would draw when the Cubs come to town and that would be about it. Obviously the story is B.S. anyway. MLB has two failed franchises in Florida already- they won't be putting another there.