logan82

Wow, 4 very close pitches for balls. That is if Gameday is correct.

I would expect a .340ish OBP with a .750ish OPS and below average defense. He is just now reaching 2 years worth of PA in the majors and has a poor hitting MiLB track record. I am not sure what to realistically expect from Lucroy yet. He doesn't really have many PA above A+ ball and I think we can't really read much into last year. I don't think we have a hitter clearly better than McGehee outside of Weeks, Braun, Fielder, Hart.

Without looking, I am guessing that Kotsay's bat again a righty projects to be better than Gomez.. I also am guessing that Gomez's defense more than makes up for that. I think Gomez has pretty neutral splits against RHP and LHP. I doubt that will continue but there it is.

Gomez is one of the best defensive CF in baseball. Kotsay is one of the worst. Does anything we have seen on the field dispute that? I am not sure we could have a more night and day defensive scenario. Add in that we can probably expect similar offensive production and there is no reason to let Kotsay play in CF(baring bodies buried in the Arizona desert). The only nail missing in DPR's coffin for me at this point is a few stats of Kotsay over Morgan. Then he is done.

We already drink the $8-9 a six pack beers with the occasional $12 a 4 pack thrown in. Of course we don't drink in volume like I did when I was younger. Congratulations on winning. What categories?

Also the show with Courtney Cox needs to go away as well. I was never a fan of Friends and think any show with the actors from it should go away. Especially Matthew Perry. He plays the same character in practically every single movie/show he is in. I don't know if it will come back but Sherlock on PBS Masterpiece Theater was pretty good. My wife really liked that one.

I wouldn't put Betancourt in front of the pitcher. It is the one place in the order I think actually gets pitched differently because of the next hitter. Betancourt swings at way to many bad pitches. Then again I am not sure why any pitcher would actually throw a strike to Betancourt.

And scored a run and kept an inning alive where we scored more.You are talking about a different game.

The Cape (NBC) At this point I think it is safe to say that you shouldn't get to attached to any show with Summer Glau in it.

Kotsay pretty much won the game for us with his bat last time he started there. Not really. He drove in 2 runs and cost a run in that game. We won 5-2. I take that back. That was the game before. In the last game I beleive he went hitless and we lost.

Not really. There has been plenty of comment about his lineups in other threads. he has put out a few good lineups over the last week but just as soon as you think "maybe DPR is figuring it out" he plays Kotsay in CF. Holy crap. I didn't even check the lineup before posting that. I really really don't like our manager.

From DPR's post game press conference last night. I wish I could just write it off as a manager just talking but his actions to this point say otherwise.

I think we all want Kotsay to do well no matter how we think he will do. I actually would prefer Branyan so that Morgan, Hart and Gomez get more playing time. I would hope that if given a guy who obviously shouldn't be in the field was given to our manager he wouldn't play him in the field. Now that Hart hit three HR in a game, maybe Roenicke will decide Hart is no longer "in Spring Training," and we will see less and less of Kotsay. Then Morgan will come back, and we'll only see Kotsay a couple times a week. I am not hopeful.

I don't remember who came up with this, but I like this idea for broadcast revenue sharing. Each team keeps 50% of their local broadcast revenue. The other 50% (since it takes two teams to play a game!) is thrown into a general fund which is then distributed equally among all 30 teams. The Yankees would still be rich, but at least the other teams would benefit. I am not sure I had the original idea but that is what I have been thinking for a while. I am not sure I would go with 50%. That might be a little low. I don't mind the big teams having a big revenue advantage. This would let teams lock up one player long term without the player having to take a hometown discount like Braun did. I was actually thinking something like 80% or whatever number would put the payroll difference at $50m between the highest and lowest teams.

Yup, I agree with that. I will have to try it again I guess. On the other hand I would hate to get attached to another show and have it canceled ala The Good Guys. At least I still have Archer. That show is hilarious.

Sure there was some hyperbole, but can you honestly say that you're being objective about Kotsay? 100% objective, no. Nobody is. A little hyperbole is to be expected. I will ask you to point out where I made any outrageous claims about Kotsay in this thread. It gets a little tedious when every thread seems to turn to the same subject, so even though I agree on most points, I just decided to question whether those bashing Kotsay were being objective. I said this about Betancourt and before the season started, every time a thread about signing a player is started it will inevitably turn into a Kotsay or Betancourt thread because they are the 2 weakest links on the team and neither does anything well enough to overlook their faults. If Kotsay were used on the bench solely for pinch hitting against righties, I don't think we'd have the outcry against him that we are seeing. I do. Look at the threads from the offseason when he was signed. That was before Hart was hurt. I completely disagree. If Kotsay was just a pinch hitter he would be mostly forgotten. Ron for some reason keeps starting him an thrusting him upon us. I just asked a simple question as to whether there may be a reason Kotsay's numbers have been what they were, and you seemed to take it personally. I've posted a couple of times why I think that just maybe we can expect a little more than the ZIPS projections going forward, and how maybe he isn't as bad as some are making out. I've also mentioned that a 4th/5th OF who can get on base, even if he doesn't have power, has value to this team, which is made up of plenty of guys with power. I probably did take it a little personal and I shouldn't have.(honestly I probably thought you were tyring to give more weight to 50-60 games over the 2300PA he had 2005-2010 where he was bad) If you look at his career though you will see that he really was never a much better than average hitter. He was a pretty good hitter for a CF but he only had 4 better than average years. None since 2004. That is a very long time ago. Yes he can get on base. Nobody is arguing that. What they are arguing is that Branyan, in this case, would be expected to get on base at a similar rate and have the added benefit of being able to hit for power. If we are going to talk about reality then this thread is probably done on page one. Branyan isn't likely to get signed.

I was in the group that didn't want Kotsay signed, and am in the group which feels he should be replaced if a reasonable replacement presents itself. Even though I don't necessarily like him, I find myself defending him against the onslaught of posts that make Kotsay out to be the worst player to ever don a uniform. Who in this thread is making Kotsay out to be the worst player to don a Brewers uniform? I see a post how Kotsay is a singles hitter which really isn't much of an exagertion and how Kotsay shouldn't/can't play the field. Not much of an exagertion there either. People think Branyan is a better option than Kotsay. I am not sure what point you are even trying to make anymore.

The projection for Branyan is better than the projection for Kotsay. That is what I am concerned with. Of course it doesn't matter what we think but if we all go with that then there is no message board. No they are not. You said yourself they are using 340 games. Who cares if it isn't enough PA for a full time player, besides you? It is plenty of PA to get a really good feel for how he should be expected to perform. Between 2008-2011 that is very close to 1000 PA. Plenty to get a good feel for a player. If you disagree start adding previous years in. You can still add in the roughly 1300 PA from 2005-2007 and you get the same picture. He is a bad hitter. Given Kotsay's age there is no real reason to expect a guy to be the same player he was 7 years ago, the last time Kotsay had a good season, no matter how you slice it.(baring PED's) So I guess no, I don't agree that his stats could be skewed by a few injuries here and there like you propose.

I agree that Kotsay is bad, but as I wrote in the other Mark Kotsay thread (this thread seems to be about him more than Branyan), he was terrible in the 56 games he played in Oakland in 2007, after a decent 2006. He was also terrible in the 49 games he played in Boston after a good stint in Atlanta. After leaving Boaton, he was pretty good for the White Sox for the end of 2009 and had a down year with them last year. You are going to see goofy things when you start splitting out hitting stats into 50-60 game pieces. That is why nobody is doing it.

What are people's expectations of a pinch hitter/bench player? Honestly, that doesn't look like a terrible line for a bench player, IMO. Yes, that is "below replacement", but that would be for expectations of a starter, not a bench player, right? Doesn't matter what we expect out of a bench player. It matters what we would expect out of Kotsay and Branyan. It matters who we think would be better. I am not really concerned how they will hit compared to a regular bench player.

Boggs can play defense. One of Nieves or Rivera will be gone at some point(more than likely when Morgan is back) and one has to be kept. Kotsay is the most similar player on the roster to Branyan except not as good.

Branyan is projected to have a better OBP but Kotsay is the better choice if you need a guy to get on base?

You mean like Kotsay except with a better bat.

The reason I used wOBA here is because Punto and Betancourt have such different skill sets that looking at slash lines say very little. The slash lines tell you a lot. You just need to know how OBP compares in value to SLG. wOBA does that for you.

I would say that it is miles better than OPS. wOBA is very roughly proportional to 1.7OBP x SLG, so you can see how bad OPS undervalues OBP.True but OBP and SLG generally fall in a certain range so you will not find to many players that will rank differently in OPS and wOBA. Generally a player with a better OPS will have a better wOBA. In most cases people are not concerned with how much better, just better. I go with wOBA because it is simple but in most cases people are afraid of OPS let alone a more advanced stat like wOBA so OPS works well enough. I am not concerned with 95% accuracy vs 97% accuracy unless the situation calls for it. Besides, it is hard enough to get some people to look beyond BA/RBI/HR/FLG% let alone using an advanced stat like wOBA.