cwolf2012

I don't agree with you on this. He had a taxed bullpen and only one inning that he needed to get to the guys he could use. Putting Julio out there sucks, but it was an inevitability of him being on the team. At least it led to the Brewers finally cutting him. If everyone's arms were made of rubber, then yes, it was poor managing, but I honestly believe he didn't have much of a choice.

I don't think it's that he "won't" make the adjustments, he simply just isn't talented enough. It's easy to say "just look to go the other way," but it's a completely different story to actually do it. I would bet a significant amount of money that his opposite field hits are more a product of luck than adjustments.

Is talking to the media in his job description? That's not meant to be snarky. If it is (I believe it is), then he is obligated to speak with the media, upset or not. I don't expect him to be cheery or anything but pissed off when he loses, but it's his responsibility as a professional athlete to deal with the media, win or lose. Now, on to his attitude, I like it. I'm pretty similar. When I lose, I get upset, mostly at myself for making mistakes. I usually put this aside when the match is over and shake the team's hands, then immediately leave and cool off for a bit. He probably should have gone through the formality, but I'm not particularly upset about it though.

One month is more than enough notice. 2 weeks is all that is expected by most employers. The risk of being let go the day you tell them (depending on your role, if you're in a role with access to confidential material, this is more likely to happen) is not worth the reward looking like a great guy for getting them early notice. Your best bet with your employer, assuming you want to keep the option open is to simply tell them that you're going back to school. Almost every employer understands this and will reconsider you after you're done with school should you want that option. How do you feel the resignation meeting will go? As in, what does "could turn very ugly" entail? Is the person really insecure and would see it as a betrayal? EDIT: Also, if you're receiving benefits from this job, it's more likely to get ugly if you leave right after the 1st of a month. Then the company would have to pay your benefits for time when you aren't employed there. That could very easily hurt your status and cause conflict.

This guy has "Billy Beane" written all over him. I could see this guy batting .200 and being out of the league in 6 years because of mental issues. We'll have to wait and see. His swing is beautiful, though (except for that weird leg twist, that'll be gone as soon as he hits the minors).

He got it because he made a great play in one of the games with the highest exposure. That's enough to put you on the radar. Once you're on the radar, that's all you need. Braun didn't have that great of a bat last year. Not to say it was bad or anything like that, but he didn't hit the ball nearly as well as it seems. He also didn't make any flashy plays that get you noticed by the voters. The absolute most important thing is to make one great play in a clutch situation and then a couple more great plays. You don't have to actually be good to win a GG, you just need to get noticed and then hit well.

"I went through the lineup and there are only 2 positions that are exceeding expectations CF (Cameron) and 2B (Weeks / Counsell / McGehee)" Braun is exceeding my expectations for sure. I always knew he'd be a high-AVG high SLG kind of player, but his OBP is over 100 points higher than his average. That's huge for the future. I think he'll come back around and start slugging the ball again. If the OBP holds, I could see him having over a 1.000 OPS for the season.

He got a gold glove because of the throw he made in the allstar game and because of his bat. The guy is not a good CF.

He loads his hips incredibly well. As his body matures even more, he's going to develop an amazing amount of power. I would have like to see him hitting with a wood bat, but whatevs.

Backupcatchers, do you consider fangraphs "runs above replacement" to be a valid statistic (do you question its validity as much as the dollar value?)? The value number is simply a translation of that stat. EDIT: The hypothetical of "Would they sign him if they knew he wouldn't be available?" seems pointless to me. You can't know for certain anything that will happen in advance, you can only make predictions. Regardless, if DM had the option of having Sheets last year for 10 million with the guarantee that he would give 4.3 WAR but be unavailable for the playoffs, I would really really hope he would take that deal.

Former Brewerfan.net Madison is having a good season so far as well. We've locked up 1st place in the 1st half after going 4-0. We still have one more game tonight, but we're likely getting bumped up to the 2nd highest league, where we will get summarily stomped by teams that have the ability to hit the HR ball consistently.

That's easy. You just take Value/IP, and you have the number you'd need to compare the value of 2 pitchers when both are healthy. And you can absolutely make an estimate on how much you should be giving in incentives based upon that number. In Sheets' case before this season, you can pretty safely estimate that he's going to pitch about 150 innings. Now that's not necessarily true, since he obviously pitched more than that. If his elbow issue had set in before it did, then he could have pitched a lot fewer than 150 innings. But on average, that's what you expect him to do. So from there, you take a 3 year average of Value/IP and multiply it by the number of innings you can reasonably expect him to pitch. Then you have what that person should be worth on the FA market. Now this is pretty fast and dirty, but it's not a bad way to guess at the true value of a pitcher. In the case with Sheets, he has about $100,000 dollars/IP value on the free market over the last 3 years. Since he's coming off an injury, that value is likely to go down. As such, the 80-100 IP a GM could reasonably expect him to pitch next year would be worth ~$6-7m. To put this in context of last season, we really could only expect him to pitch 150 innings, as that is the average of the 3 seasons before that. At $100,000/IP for value, you could reasonably expect him to put up about $15m of value. As it was, he exceeded that by over $5m. I think we got way more value out of Sheets last year than we reasonably could have expected before the season started. The extra five million was gained in the opportunity that he would pitch an extra 50 innings. In the same respect, in 2006, we could have reasonably expected him to pitch somewhere around 180 innings based upon the 3 seasons before it. He ended up pitching only 108, so we lost 72 innings of opportunity due to injury. He still had a total value that exceeded his contract, but we lost nearly 8 million dollars of true value to injury. That's opportunity cost. If you begin to value specific wins over others based upon context, then we've lost any means to quantify the argument, and it regresses to a "no, he wasn't" "yes, he was" argument.

It's impossible to get to the point of being not provisional. I always get kicked, despite my assurances that I've played a lot of sheepshead in my life.

So you're looking for the opportunity cost lost by him not pitching? I guess it would be Total value/Total starts * number of starts missed. I don't see how you can subtract that number from his total value, but whatever. If Sheets stays healthy for another 20 innings last season, his value would have been about 22.7 million assuming he continued at the same pace. So the opportunity cost of him missing 3 starts was ~2.1 million dollars (about .5 wins). His injuries cost the Brewers about 1/2 of a win for the season.

You still have to get there to talk about winning the world series. He generated 20 million worth of value in the process of getting there. That's over 4 wins better than a AAA replacement pitcher, all by himself. I don't understand the point of your argument. You say the fact that he got injured severely by the end of the season somehow subtracts a number from his actual value for the full season (including playoffs)? It obviously hurt the Brewers that Sheets hurt his elbow, but I don't see how his value is any less because of it. If he isn't on the team, we don't even get the chance to play in the playoffs. How does that not translate to him being worth what he was? Now, would someone pay him 20 million a season for one year's worth of work? Absolutely not (well, maybe for this past season, I know the Yankees would have). His injury risk is even higher than it was before. GMs are smart enough to hedge bets based upon how many IP they think he'll have. It's pretty obvious that with a guy like Sheets, you need an incentive laden contract. I see something like 1 million for this season just to sign him + incentives in case he comes back and 5 million plus incentives for next year being the contract he's offered. If a guy like Sheets pitches 200 innings, he's worth pretty much the same as any other top pitcher in the game. That doesn't mean teams should pay him based upon the idea of him pitching 200 innings. It's a far more fair guess that he'll hit around the 100 IP mark next year. So a team will offer him something like 5 million, with a bonus for every 20 innings past 80 or so. You can't fault a person for getting injured. If anything, Sheets played through injuries last year to help the team. He came out against the Cubs against doctor's orders because he wanted to make the playoffs.

"It's most certainly is not a fact because we can't really tell if we would have or not because we don't know what else we would have done with that same money. We need look no further than this years rotation to see it is possible to win without him. We don't have the same level of pitchers in the rotation this year but that doesn't seem to be a problem in the win column so far. It is telling that we are ahead of last year's pace when he was in the rotation and healthy so that money must have been spent pretty well. " You think we could have gotten MORE than 20 million dollars of value with the 12 million we paid Sheets? If every free agent/arbitration/contract extended player on our team performed a 1.67x the cost of his contract, we'd be in the playoffs pretty much every year. If you take away 1.2 wins (5 million of value) from him last year, we don't make the playoffs. I don't understand how someone can be upset with someone who pitched 200 innings of 3.09 ERA baseball. It's not like we were paying him 23 million for that.

Why can't it be "without Sheets or without Sabathia we don't make the playoffs"? Each of them were extremely valuable.

"If you want to believe fangraphs that Sheets was worth 20.6 mil last year despite missing the most important time of the year then go ahead. I will disagree and be thankful you are not pulling the strings for the Brewers. " He was worth 20.6 million dollars worth of runs according to the free agent market of last year. When those runs happen doesn't matter over the course of a full season. If you want to go ahead and take 5 million of that and put it in the playoffs, you wouldn't have the chance. Without Sheets last year, we don't make the playoffs, and that's a fact.

"If it was such a non-issue, he'd be signed by now" I'm not sure what to make of this statement jjhardy7. I guess you're right in that injuries are a concern right now, as he had to have elbow surgery, but I'm guessing it has more to do with the fact that the team that signs him has to give up a 2nd or 1st round pick if he signs before the draft. And since the earliest he would come back is August, why would any team give up a draft pick to sign him. I'm guessing he will receive a couple offers after the draft, and Texas is most likely going to be the highest bidder. And fangraphs calculates value by determining how many runs better than a AAA replacement pitcher he was. So if he pitched full seasons in each of the last 4, he would have out gained his contract by ~40 million. As it stands, he was only worth 20 million more, but to me that makes it sound like he was one hell of a deal for the Brewers.

Is the "full" supposed to be in blue, Invader?

In terms of raw hitting stats, Gamel should outperform Hardy in my opinion. Hardy is a .280/.340/.470 kind of hitter, and I expect Mat to at least match that. Now, if we factor in a comparison to his peers at his position, then Hardy is significantly better.

If it makes you feel better, I read it as "after the draft" originally. When it was pointed out as trade deadline, I had to go back and reread it. I would love for us to sign him for 2 years, with an option for a 3rd year. I have to believe the odds of that are minimal at best, but I can dream.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090526&content_id=4960488&vkey=allstar2009&fext=.jsp#nlvote_0526 Take note of the 7th paragraph. Anyone see something wrong with the last sentence?

Morneau won an MVP, he's clearly not underrated and clearly gets attention. Mauer is twice as valuable as he is.

I completely disagree. Mauer is, in my opinion, clearly the best of the 4 without a doubt.