cwolf2012

I know this has been repeated ad nauseum, but Hardy is not going to move to 3rd base. His bat is top 5 at SS, and mediocre at 3B. He has no incentive to play 3rd.

We need an SP worse than anything right now. We also need a CF for the future. If we could get one of the top pitching prospects in the game + a young, viable CF for what would cost maybe 400k a piece next year, instead of 14 million for a 35 year old and an SS who is very good, but is replaceable from within the system, we damn well better take it. Gallardo, Parra, Jeffress, Buchholz through 2010-2013 has a chance be the best top 4 in the game.

Is a lighthouse involved?

I would take Ellsbury+Buchholz for Hardy+Cameron in an instant. If the Brewers offered this, Epstein would laugh Melvin off the phone.

Most states will issue you a ticket for refusing to give a sample, which usually carries a 6 month suspension of license plus fine. I'm unsure what the fine is.

I think this was in reference to myself and TooLiveBrew, and to that I say that he was far more effective last year than he's been in his career. I remember seeing a fangraphs chart about him, and when he was starting his release point was far more consistent when he wasn't trying to crank the ball. If the pitching coach is aware of stuff like that, then he should be able to get Seth to continue to pitch decent. If that's the case, then I could easily see him holding a 4 ERA as a reliever. Is that great? No, but it isn't awful.

The real question is if they're going to bring back all the awesome stereotyping.

That doesn't surprise me. He really seemed to relish the starting he did last year. I would also expect pretty much any pitcher would rather be a starter, but I think Seth fits a reliever role better for us during the season.

It is confusing, though... OOZ/ZR/RZR seems to be infallbile, but certainly... defensive shifting isn't taken into account in those metrics... I think they actually can be inferred from the stats. If a team does a lot of shifts, then the RZR will be lower and the OOZ will be higher. If you see someone with not too many OOZ and a high RZR, you can be pretty sure that he's got a good glove and not much range. You can also infer that there aren't many shifts in place, either. But I may be mistaken about how RZR is calculated. I believe the zone is 100% consistent on every play, regardless of defensive placement. EDIT: I think JJ will never have a higher value than right now. If we're not signing a good pitcher this year in order to compete, JJ should be traded. If we're going to compete this year, then we should trade him next offseason and hope he has another good season this year (assuming Escobar is good with the bat again).

I can't believe no one talks about how DiFelice will be a legitimate reliever next year. The guy doesn't walk ANYONE and has had decent success when finally brought up to the Majors. I will be extremely disappointed in the team if they don't use this guy next year. Here's my bullpen analysis: Torres was not as good as people think. Honestly, I'm not sure how he ended up with such a low ERA (still only 3.49) considering his K and BB rates. He had a 1.35 WHIP, which is not all that impressive either. I personally think DiFelice will be close to his production level this season if he continues on the trends of the last couple seasons. CV is our best reliever right now, and it would kill me to see him be the closer. A guy like that is way too good to be stuck in a closer role. Riske can't be any worse this season than last season. McClung will probably be a little below his level last year, but there certainly is upside to him. If he doesn't overthrow, he could fill any role we need him to in the pitching staff. Shouse is a loss. I think he's a better LOOGY option than Stetter, simply because while Stetter has better stuff, he's also going to walk people. If your job is one guy and one guy only, you don't walk to be walking him. I also see Stetter as better against RH hitting than Shouse, but that's probably unfounded. Coffey/Julio: These guys could definitely be as good as Mota and Gagne. While Mota and Gagne had good 2nd halves, they were not as good as they seem. I see Gagne's 2nd half as regression to the mean. He had horrid luck in the first half to go with not very good stuff, and then he had slightly improved stuff in the 2nd half to go with much better luck. Mota is pretty much the same story. Eduardo Morlan: I honestly could see this guy contributing this season. He's been effective to great at every level he's pitched at, and he definitely should get a chance to show what he can do. As far as roles go, if we can sign another SP, McClung fits best into a closer role of all our options. He should definitely function better coming in with no one on than with inherited runners. CV should be in for the highest leverage situations, with Stetter making appearances against LH hitters. Set up (I hate typing these terms) should be Riske or Julio. If Macha knows how to utilize the talents he has, this bullpen will be just fine. One more good LHP to bolster the BP would help, but it shouldn't be even a consideration until we sign another SP.

Amazing. According to this metric, Brad Hawpe had negative value last year with an .869 OPS because he was -37 runs in the field. Awesome.

If your offense is very good, this strategy works. If your punter is bad, this strategy is pretty good. If your defense is awful, this is definitely a good strat. If your offense is mediocre, and your defense is really good, then it may be a wash. I would expect more high schools and more colleges to start adapting this before the pros. The only offenses I've seen in the pros good enough to try this are the Rams circa late 1990s-early 2000s and New England last year. In fact, you could see it in action last year when NE went for a much larger % of fourth downs than other teams.

Yeah, I'm dumb enough to take Bedard straight up for Sizemore. Wait...

Nope. When A-Rod opted out, he resigned a new contract that is all Yankee money. EDIT: I guess I should have read the rest of the thread. Anyhow, I can't stand the Yankees and I wish them horrible deaths. How hard can it be to GM for them? "Who do you want?" "You got it."

I thought those were symptoms of a fracture, but I could easily be mistaken. I would definitely find a clinic and get an xray/examination soon.

I think Braun will be at worst serviceable in RF. I doubt he'll be much below average in the field, and his bat gains a little value since the position is slightly more premium. I see the difference between RF and LF as in the arm, and I think Braun showed that his arm was fine last year, but his routes needed work. But that's only a guess based upon observation, and that can absolutely be wrong. Sadly, THT doesn't have his arm ratings for 08 up, so I can't really verify the claim with any metrics.

According to Baseball Prospectus (take it with a grain of salt), Dunn was worth -1 runs above average in LF last year. At the same time, he was listed as 29 runs above average with the bat. I have a hard time thinking that assuming if we sign Dunn at 12 mil a year for 3 years, we couldn't orchestrate a trade of Hart+a good to great prospect + filler for an MLB ready pitcher such as Grienke that it wouldn't be worth it. According to those numbers, Dunn would be worth about 3 wins above average, and adding something similar to Grienke would be worth a couple wins as well. That's the difference between an 83 win season and an 89 win season. On top of that, Dunn's skillset doesn't lend itself to getting worse at the plate. He would most certainly get worse in the field, but by then the 1B spot should be open, and he can move there, hopefully with Gamel in the wings to replace him in LF. I don't see a downside to signing him at 3/36. We get another lefty bat with OBP, don't lose so much on the defensive end, and we have a legitimate replacement for Fielder if and when he gets traded. I think it's our best chance to compete in '09, and it won't cripple us in 2010 and 11. EDIT: I think Sheets would be the next best option to compete in '09, but I have questions about his durability coming off an arm injury.

Glad to be of service.

Here's the idea of how it works: There's usually 2-3 tiers of data in a security setup for a company. 1st tier is your sensitive data storage. This usually has its own firewall seperating it from the next tier because if a hacker had access to that data, he could cause a LOT of damage with that. The 2nd tier holds mostly anything hosted internally that should only be accessible to people who are directly in the building and have authenticated to the network. Exchange servers, file servers, ocs, workstations, etc are usually in this area. For example, the site that Hawing uses to log hours is most likely in this area. This has a seperate firewall that is between it and the final tier, which is usually referred to as the DMZ. In the DMZ you keep stuff that is accessible to external clients such as web servers (what you connect to when you go to a website), VPN servers, and anything else you want people to be able to connect to. Finally, there's another firewall between the DMZ and the internet itself. If the web server is infected, then anyone who connects to it using IE could have the virus execute malicious code on their computers, which could cause any number of problems from deleting important files to anything else. EDIT: If anyone with more security expertise than myself would like to elaborate, clarify, or correct my description, please do. I'm only about 6 months into IT work, so I'm still working on my initial security certifications. IT security is the field I'd like to go into eventually, so any corrections would be appreciated.

Nope, it's free. Here's the link. Anything that's hosted on an internal server should be fine because of your company's firewall. It's external web servers that can be affected.

"Also my computer has been running a lot slower since then, like right now, as I'm typing this a new window popped up and a video started playing about new tech items...completely random." --------------- Download "Malwarebytes Anti-Malware" (google it) and give that a scan. It tends to find a lot of issues and clear them out real quick. After that, I would maybe run Spybot or Adaware just to be safe.

Morlan has great numbers thus far in his career. 2.94 ERA, over 3-1 K/BB ratio, 1.15 WHIP. I think this guy definitely has a chance to stick. I'm actually looking forward to seeing him pitch. EDIT: http://minors.baseball-re...com/players.cgi?pid=25053

My love for the Brewers was sparked by my increased knowledge of the statistical side of baseball. As a kid I played baseball, but I never really enjoyed it. I was always a hockey fan. I stopped playing in 7th grade and I didn't even think about the sport until a couple years into college. I had a couple roommates who were big into baseball, and they loved to argue. I also enjoyed arguing, and I found that my mathematical mind applied very well to the sport of baseball. I didn't really have a team at that point, but Milwaukee was the obvious choice since I was born and raised in Wisconsin (plus I hate every Chicago team and pretty much every Minnesota team in every sport). Since then, I've followed everything the Brewers do and pretty much everything happening in the league. Hockey is still #1, but baseball is a very close 2nd, and it's definitely my favorite sport to talk about.

Holy cow is Tyler Flowers going to be good. He took 98 walks in 122 games last year, and only K'd 102 times. I wish we could get a guy like that. .290 hitter with a .427 OBP in minors.

I'm sad. I liked having 3TO. Anyways, I'd take Beltre if Seattle covers some of the salary. For 12 mil, I wouldn't support, though.