cwolf2012

There's a difference between liking Eckstein and thinking he's good. From my impression, you simply like his style of play and his attitude. Those are two things I can commend about him. As soon as someone says he's good, though...

Mauer playing catcher makes him WAY more valuable than any other position. Not only is he a very athletically gifted catcher, he hits the cover off the ball. He was worth 6(!) wins last year. The reason this would be somewhat difficult is that Morneau is not nearly as good as the media thinks he is. I think I still have to go with Mauer/Morneau simply because Mauer is an absolute beast and he plays the most valuable position on the field. EDIT: According to fangraphs, Braun and Fielder combined to be worth slightly more than 6 wins. Morneau and Mauer were with more than 9 wins combined. You remove defense from the equation, and Mauer and Morneau are still worth significantly more than Fielder and Braun. This is a no-brainer.

"Will Bill Hall every make adjustments?" Short answer: No. Long answer: Definitely not.

You could probably get one. Some assembly required, though.

The #2 hitters job is to get on base. If you're putting a bad hitter in a position to get the 2nd most plate appearances on the team simply because he can make outs consistently, you deserve to be fired as a manager.

Do you honestly believe that batting in the 2 hole is THAT different than any other spot? Do you really think that he'll somehow forget how to hit left-handers because he's in the 2 spot? You can't dismiss data simply because you want to believe something that's not true. A player that hits LHP well is going to do it in every spot. There may be some minor differences between spots, but the overall hitting ability of the player doesn't change. Should we have dismissed all of CC's past stats because he pitched in the AL and never pitched in the NL before last year? By the same logic you're applying here, we should not take into account any stats that don't perfectly match a given situation.

If he's on base >40% of the time, yes. Similarly, Counsell has a >40% OBP this year, so he would be on base for Prince a good chunk of the time. Now, if you were to ask me if I thought that Counsell could sustain that, I would say not a chance. But if we go with small sample size, I like this. With Braun having developed some plate discipline this year, I don't mind the way the lineup is constructed as of right now. At least Macha has the common sense to not try to play small ball with this team.

The only reason that manager would get fired is because of bad baseball traditionalism. In my mind, that person would be a revolutionary in the game. The prototypical leadoff hitter carries a very high OBP, but doesn't have a lot of SLG because he will likely be getting up with no one on base. As such, his one and only job is to get on base. Counsell fits that role the best because he has always had a great AVG/OBP split, and not a lot of power. If his OBP dips below .380, we would have to look at other options, though. The odds of this happening are very good. When it does happen, we no longer have a person who gets on base well, but doesn't have excessive amounts of power that would be better utilized in the 2, 4, and 5 roles. I think you and I have VERY different ideas of what "prototypical" means. Corey Hart, since he's shown a bit of plate discipline this year, is close to being a leadoff hitter, but he's shown pretty well that he's just not all that good of a hitter. I like the fact that he's actually taking walks this season. If his AVG got back up into the .280-.300 range, and he continues to walk, he would work just fine at leadoff. It would suck to waste the .230-.250 ISO he carries on situations where no one is on base, but it would be decent. Here's a Bill Jame's-esque lineup that I would love the Brewers to have: 1) Counsell 2) Fielder 3) Hardy 4) Braun 5) Cameron 6) Gamel 7) Hart 8) Pitcher 9) Kendall Now, to address your lineup spot points: I don't agree with much of that at all. A 2 hitter is not someone who moves the guy over for the 3 hitter to knock in. Time and time again sabermetrics have shown that sacrificing an out for a base is bad decision. Your 2 hitter needs to get on base and/or drive in the leadoff hitter via HR. Similarly, pitch fx numbers have also shown almost no coorelation between lineup spot and the pitches you face. I would provide a link to this, but it's been done to death, and I don't feel like I have to defend it. JJ Hardy, when he batted 7th and 2nd in 2008, faced nearly identical % of fastballs in each spot. Protection is a myth. You need to construct your lineup such that you produce the maximum number of runs over the course of the game, and not with the idea of leadoff gets on base, steals 2nd, gets bunted to 3rd, and driven in from there. That scenario can only really happen once in the game (the beginning). After that point, you can have so many different situations that you need your best hitters to be getting the most plate appearances. That's why I want to put Fielder 2nd. We need to get him the most possible situations where he can drive in runs.

Yes, he was hitting .278/.352/.485, with about a .205/.295/.370 split against RHP. It was still plainly obvious that he can't hit RHP. This guy doesn't deserve an everyday job.

No, Prince should bat probably 2nd in an idealized lineup. The closest thing we have to a prototypical leadoff hitter is Counsell, since he gets on base but doesn't have a lot of power. His true skill level is below what we need, though. Bill Hall should definitely hit high in the order against lefties. As soon as he starts seeing RHP, he should be 8th or not in the lineup at all. I would take Kendall over him against a RHP. What spot in the lineup he's hitting from means absolutely nothing to the numbers he's generating. From your posts, I'm guessing you're thinking of protection, but in the 2 spot he would have Braun behind him. If he put up those numbers from the 6 and 7 spots, then the "protection" from Braun should make him even stronger in the 2 spot. I don't see how you can argue that his numbers against lefties aren't fantastic. I definitely don't see how you can argue that he doesn't deserve a higher spot in the lineup when facing a lefty.

"An umpire has never called a ball or strike wrong because whatever the umpire decides is a strike is a strike. " I'd like to elaborate on this real quick. So, if an ump sees 2 identical pitches, and calls one a strike and one a ball, do you see something wrong with that? I can live with the idea that each ump has his own strike zone, in fact, I kind of like it, but if there's two identical pitches that are called differently, that's a problem. Simply saying "that's the nature of the game" is not relevant to me. If a computer system could call those consistently and without delaying the game, what is the harm there? I don't see how you can want human error in a competitive game. Competition is about fairness. The ump would still have the right to overrule a call, and he would still need to make the judgment calls that happen. If you throw out the "it'll slow the game down" argument from this equation, what else do you have to argue with? Tradition? That means nothing to me. Small ball is based on tradition, and it's become more and more abundantly clear in the age of the internet and advanced statistics that small ball scores less runs and wins fewer games. The same goes for the perception that if someone has a low batting average and strikes out a lot, then that player is bad. There is so much more to work with now, why waste it if all it does is improve the competitive fairness of the game with no delay to the game?

Is anyone else here not opposed to a Bill Hall trade? Freeing up 17 million dollars over this year and the next would be awfully nice.

I still don't think I've ever seen a better slider than Turnbow's. If he could just locate his stuff well, he could have been a top-tier closer for years and years. His stuff with DiFelice's control... I think my pants just got shorter thinking about it.

What I love is that he can throw pitches that are off the plate and low and still get the strike call because of reputation. If everyone on our team had the same strike zone as Hoffman, we'd have a team ERA of 3.5.

His stuff is all that "nasty," he simply controls it so well you can't hit it. If a guy is painting the corners and a different one on every pitch, it's really really hard to hit. I don't think I've ever seen a pitcher with more control than DiFelice.

I think it's almost all confirmation bias that leads to this conclusion. If an ace pitches a good game and gets 10 runs, nobody even thinks about it. If he pitches a great game, but loses 2-1, 2-0, etc, it gets noticed. Now, there may be a small psychological thing to have your best pitcher in and think you can take the game off, but I doubt it coorelates to more than a .1 run per game difference.

Only if it picks just one player from each league to play 1 on 1 baseball.

His small sample UZR/150 for this season is 24.6, and has been worth 2.9 runs on defense thus far according to UZR. That is well in line with my perceptions of his defense. His offense has been about the same despite the much higher SLG this year. The 40 points he's losing in OBP are being regained by the .505 SLG, but his total value isn't any higher that it's ever been on offense, it just looks like he's better to the layperson because his AVG is up and he's hitting the ball harder. If he can tack on 20-30 more points of OBP and maintain the power (very tall order, I know), he would be a top 5 2B so far. But right now he's still the same average 2B that he's been for a while.

I recall in the Tour De France within the last couple years, one of the leaders was involved in a massive wreck. The people who were close to him in time all stopped and waited for the wreckage to clear before they continued on. I think that you should maybe take the one extra base. If the guy is clearly hurt badly, you stop after that one extra base. So if you hit a legit single, you take 2nd. If you hit a double, take 3rd. The thing is that it's way harder to tell what's going on with an OF injury than an IF (like the guy Cameron hit). Cam could see very clearly that he was hurt bad. If that play was in the OF, he wouldn't be able to tell what was happening as well, and should probably continue running until the base coach stops him.

How many of those 22 times has he not hit a home run?

I picked him up as well. I wonder if Branyan has ever 4 or more hits in a game and no HR.

Dear me at 16, Shave your head now. It'll save you a lot of trouble. Tim

I think the fact that Bedard has been quite effective for Seattle so far, and that Seattle is leading the AL West right now pretty much ends any possibility of us acquiring Bedard. It's nice to think about, but if we were going to get him, it was in the offseason. Right now it's a pipe dream. EDIT: By "quite effective" I mean lights out and as good as he's ever been. In 19.1 innings, he's got a 1.86 ERA and a 23/3 K/BB ratio. This guy isn't going anywhere unless Seattle falls off the map in a surprisingly weak AL West.

Another note on Gamel's defense at 3B: According to TotalZone ratings for the minors (for what they're worth), Gamel rated out at 2 runs below average. That's a lot better than I'm guessing many of you expected. Source: http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2009/4/3/819366/totalzone-on-third-base-prospects If Gamel ends up as a break-even player defensively in the Majors, he would be EXTREMELY valuable at 3rd base for this team. If anything, the above link at least should give some of you doubters a little bit more confidence in the guy.

What I'm finding interesting is how everyone is now praising Rickie for turning it around at the plate, when his stats suggest that he's LESS productive than his career averages thus far. He's only getting on base at a .321 clip right now, and that's not good. Yes, he's slugging better (ISO of .190), but it's not enough to offset the 30-40 points of OBP he's missing. His defense, on the other hand, has been significantly better thus far this season and he's still getting a lot of flak for it. He's already been worth 1.3 runs with his defense. Obviously I don't think he'll end up with an UZR of 27, but it still shows that he's getting a lot better on the defensive side of the game.