gregmag

As a reflexive Broxton defender / apologist, I think this is very reasonable. I would only emphasize that the goal here is getting these decisions right. There's no formula or timetable rule for how you do that. If the team gets to the end of May, Broxton is hitting .180, but scouts' eyes and/or analysts' numbers say he's breaking out of it even if his slash stats don't, then maybe you stick with him longer. By the same token, if you con yourself into thinking that Broxton or Santana can put it all together, and that ends up blocking or stunting the younger guys, that's a failure too. What matters is getting it right.

Most of the league isn't 'saying ' it. Nobody besides Lackey and Bosio are saying it. I expect that a lot of people might think it. I also would expect that players and coaches in a sport with countless dumb unwritten rules would understand the very common life process of thinking something but not saying it out loud because you're a decent human being with some common sense and a filter. When my wife asks if I think one of her girlfriends is attractive, I say 'she's okay I guess' and drop it. I don't yammer on about how gorgeous she is and what I'd like to do with her. It's ironic when someone uses "everyone else is doing it" to justify baseless, slanderous accusations of PED use, given that "everyone else is doing it" seems to be how players often rationalize using PEDs. I don't care what anyone is saying behind closed doors, because I don't know about it. Lackey got beat; he whined; and he chose to take out his inadequacies on another player's reputation and character with absolute zero justification. He's scum, and so is Chris Bosio. I hope very bad things happen to both of them.

It was a great idea -- not just well reasoned but creative. Too bad your egotism here isn't matched by the integrity to acknowledge the many, many more instances when you've been dead wrong.

No one here *needs* any kind of "perspective" that you have to offer, although you're entitled to your opinion. You, OTOH, need to discuss things in good faith rather than inventing and cherry-picking information to support your numbingly repetitive biases. Your "swing for the fences" knock on Villar is a perfect example. Villar has plenty of actual flaws, but you're trying to turn his power, actually a strength, into another flaw because that would make your preference for Gennett over Villar marginally less absurd.

Neuhaus needs a nickname after a game like that. I propose "Casanova."

It's early, but if Gatewood keeps walking, that's a big deal. That noted winner of competitions Tyler Cravy coughs up the game, yet gets a W next to his game. When was the last time the org went 5-0?

Pretty good first 5. Burnes hasn't been bad either, and Lopez is off to a solid start. The kid we shelled at Frederick is Baltimore's second-rounder from last year, preseason #6 prospect for them.

I've been pretty down on Gennett for his whole career, but I think he was a decent starter last year. If his improvements against LHP and his defensive stabilization stick, then he can be a passable starter. If what you need is a warm body to play every day at 2b, I could see the case for preferring Gennett to Franklin. However, if you need absolutely anything else, there is no case. Let's go down the list: Franklin plays seven positions passably. Gennett plays one. Franklin switch-hits. Franklin is a year younger. Franklin had a better prospect pedigree with scouts and has hit better in the minors. The only thing you can say for Gennett is that he has hit better in the majors than Franklin has. That would be a big deal, but it comes with big caveats. Franklin has never had regular playing time. Franklin over nearly 200 PAs outhit Scooter last year; in fact, last year Franklin topped every Scooter season offensively, except that great half-season at age 23 in 2013 that juices Scooter's numbers and that he has never come close to matching. I was a little bummed when we didn't get anything for Scooter. Now we essentially got a guy back in trade, and I like the trade for us.

Really? He personally kind of seems like a piece of trash. I mean I like Braun and all with him being a Brewer but I'm not blind to the fact that I would probably despise him if he spent the last 10 years with another organization. I can second the testimony that people here in StL absolutely love the guy. Love him. I don't get the impression that it's based much on an assessment of his personal qualities one way or the other. People here seem to sentimentalize and adore the Cardinals, and the glow just reflects on everybody. Molina has been the most consistent cog in a winning era of Cardinals baseball; thus, St. Louis loves Molina. Plus his profile as a very baseball-smart catcher who contributes to winning beyond his frontline stats probably resonates with their whole "best (smartest) fans in baseball" delusion.

In other news, Scooter had 2 run HR in his first game as Red. The team moved Villar to 2B and acquired Shaw because in their minds that made them better right now. If they are trying to lose, why do that. They let Scooter go because they didn't want to pay a measly $2.5 million for a bench bat despite one of the lowest payrolls in the game. Or maybe they made those moves because they wanted to optimize Villar's value on the defensive spectrum while playing him at his best position, they thought Shaw was undervalued and anyway they needed at least a placeholder at 3b, and they just didn't think Gennett was very good. I use the word "maybe" because I'm not omniscient, which is actually a real thing. Also, Khris Davis went three for four with two homers on opening day. You're welcome. (That plus Gennett's dinger provides conclusive proof that Stearns is a hack. Plus he's too young to be smart, and he may have given Tyler Cravy a sad. Fire him!)

Scooter was pretty good last year. He hit lefties ok, he played better defense, his overall offensive numbers weren't bad. The Brewers don't do anything randomly or carelessly anymore (as Outlander's excellent point above re: Diaz bears out). This says to me that they didn't buy him as a multiposition guy, didn't see the improvement vs. lefties as legit, and didn't think he would continue to field as he ages. In addition, of course, we now have a ton of talent. I'm sorry we couldn't get something for him, but I'm glad this worked out. He gets a clean shot with another team rather than rotting at Colorado Springs. We lose a player who doesn't fit the new, better kind of team and organization we're becoming. The idea that we'll regret cashing in Scooter at 2b for Villar . . . well, crazier things have happened. But looking at the two players, and even assuming Villar regresses considerably: Scooter strikes out less. Villar has more power, more speed, more defensive talent, more defensive versatility, walks more, is a year younger, and will be cheaper for a while. Also, Villar is trending up while Scooter has never matched his partial rookie season. His OBP and SLG have been under his career numbers for two straight years -- at ages 25 and 26. At this moment, preferring Scooter to Villar would be a firing offense. Scooter never did anything wrong. I hope he succeeds in Cincinnati.

Couldn't agree more with this. The reality is the Brewers are likely going to fully open their window sometime in 2019 and Guerra will be 34 years old at that point. Granted Guerra will be a young 34 given the limited # of innings on his arm, but 34 nonetheless. If they can acquire something of value that can be ready in 2019, I am more than willing to throw Davies, Nelson, Peralta, Garza and Anderson in the rotation to begin 2017. I trust Stearns will make the move if his asking price is met. Guerra is going to have to pitch well again this season for at least a few months before any team is going to give up something of real value for him. So far Guerra has a very tiny track record vs big league hitters. If i'm a team looking for a starter, i'd want to see Guerra prove again that he can be productive. Taylor Jungmann had a 2.87 ERA after 18 starts in 2018. Guerra only made 20 starts last year. Hopefully he pitches well until around the trade deadline and if so, he might fetch a quality return given he also gets paid spare change currently and for years to come. I think this is right. I'm glad DS didn't rush to trade Guerra in the offseason. I think taking him into this season and waiting for the deadline is a good bet: Best-case scenario: Guerra puts up similar numbers to what he put up last year. At that point he's close to an established ace, probably a #2 on a contender. His value grows a lot. Medium-case scenario: Guerra puts up something like a 3.60 ERA with corresponding peripherals. This is what I think danzig is right about -- I think under this scenario he's still worth more at the 2017 deadline than he was in the offseason, because he's proved that he's a healthy, quality rotation guy, capable of peaking like he did last year and sustaining at a lower but still useful level. Worst-case scenario: He gets hurt or craters, putting up an ERA north of 4 with corresponding peripherals. If this happens then you wish you took the best offer in the offseason. He made good adjustments last year, and he has a quality arsenal of pitches. Worst-case scenario could still happen, but I think Stearns was smart to bet against it.

Spring training stats mean absolutely nothing. Hell, Jimmy Nelson's last start they wouldn't shut up about how he was trying a new pitch while he was getting shelled. The Red Sox had one of the worst offenses in spring training last year and led the league in AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS and runs scored. The Mets led spring training in offense in 2015 and finished 17th in runs scored, 28th in AVG, 21st in OBP, 17th in SLG and 20th in OPS. Or look at the Brewers from the same year. 6th in spring training OPS and they finished the regular season 22nd in runs scored and 25th in OBP, SLG and OPS. If you want to think that spring training stats mean anything, that's fine, but they don't. So your argument is that, because you can find examples of negative correlation between ST offense and full regular-season offense, ST offensive stats have no value for predicting regular season offense? (You actually say that ST offensive stats don't "mean anything," but that's wrong by definition, so I'm assuming you're just denying the predictive value.) That doesn't follow logically. I'd love to see a study of ST stats and correlation. Knock out the guys who end up not playing for the MLB team and then analyze the "mlb team" ST stats against the full regular-season stats. I assume the correlation would be weak, but I'm curious how much of the weakness would just come down to sample size. In other words, how much less predictably valuable are 500 ST PAs than any given chunk 500 regular season PAs? My guess is that the ST PAs would have a much lesser correlation than the regular season PAs but still a nonzero correlation.

I've been thinking Davis for a while as a high-end Broxton comp. Davis was a better contact guy, but I'll gladly trade that for Keon's managing to stay on the field from here on.

The point was, as already stated, they asked him to make the change in season. Maddon's players learn positions in Spring Training, get trained and developed and are ready to go on Opening Day. Huge difference. If you think someone can go from being a college outfielder to eleven years later learning MLB on the fly, without a day of playing OF in between, you are severely underestimating the difficulty of playing MLB OF. They just shoved Perez out there in the middle of the season with only a smattering of winter league inning in the OF. Kris Bryant never played a position outside of 3B as a professional yet as a rookie he played all 3 OF spots and 1B. One thing that has always bothered me about MLB is players who refuse to TRY another position or management that refuses to TRY someone at a new position. Rickie Weeks refuses to try the OF, well that's ok because it would be too hard. Scooter Gennett wants to try other positions, he's terrible and wasting everyone's time. This isn't football where trying a DT at WR would be a failure. Catchers and some first basemen are the only ones who really have any business refusing to at least TRY another position. Again, you keep ignoring the crucial in-season / offseason distinction -- except for Perez, who is a fair guy to bring up. I thought about him. Maybe everybody could be Hernan Perez if they only had the strength of character, but I doubt it. Perez is a savant; his versatility is a skill. If it was a common skill, then every 80-90 OPS+ guy in the league would do it; but only a few actually can.

Leaving aside opportunity cost, because who knows, our return for Lawrie looks pretty good. We got one good and one passable year of Marcum (5.2 fWAR over the two seasons) and got to the playoffs. Meanwhile Lawrie put up 4.9 fWAR over those same two seasons -- so basically a wash -- and then the thing we were really giving up, his future value, turned into a poor 4.8 fWAR over 2013-2016. You can say "who knew he would get hurt," but then maybe our scouts saw something.

If we're going to make anything of small samples, he improved his OPS from .565 in 104 August PA to .691 in 112 Sept/Oct PA. I think that's consistent with my eye test (FWIW) and IIRC what most people were saying, which was that he looked lost at first but looked much better once he got his feet under him. If we put any stock in that improvement, it's very encouraging. Another modest step forward and he's at .725. Another substantial step forward and he's at .750-.775, which I wouldn't sneeze at for say his age-26 season. He has a ton of time and a decent foundation to build on.

I don't mean to pick on you or on anyone else in particular, but because this "Weeks wasn't willing to help the team by playing outfield" meme has come up again, I want to note my respectful disagreement again. The team asked Weeks *during the season* (it was May 10, 2014) to play outfield for the first time in his professional career. That is a very, very different thing than asking a player to try to learn the position in the offseason and spring training. Asking a career 2b to just slap on an outfielder's glove during the season is idiotic -- how often does it happen? -- and I think Weeks was exactly right to say no. (The stupidity is compounded, especially in retrospect, by the fact that the team's reason for asking Weeks to play lf was that Khris Davis was struggling. "Hmmm. Our 26 year-old, high-strikeout, high-power left fielder with the great minor league batting resume is struggling a month into his first full season. What to do? I know! Let's ask our declining 2b to play a position tomorrow or next week that he's never played as a pro. That way we can tank both guys' confidence, stunt the young player's development, and get a bat that doesn't play at 2b into an offense-first lineup slot." Genius.) Maybe I'm wrong, and Weeks wasn't justified in refusing a flash audition in the outfield. Even so, (a) it would at least be a much easier transition to make in the offseason, making the two situations meaningfully different and thus making accusations of inconsistency suspect, and (b) I think a lot of players get more flexible once they've had to face the reality that they aren't starters anymore, and I don't think that's a blot on their character.

I don't even know how to explain that world to people who grew up with the Internet. "We got daily newspaper summaries of games, and a half hour show that sounded analytically sophisticated if it mentioned RBIs, and two games a week plus Brewers road games on the UHF station. What was a UHF station? I'm not even going to try. Oh, and TVs weighed 100 pounds and took up half a room, and they had antennas. Plus fantasy baseball hadn't been invented yet, or at least we didn't know about it, and we got our statistical knowledge from baseball cards, which didn't even list walks or caught stealing." Who would even believe any of that now? I'm not sure I believe it.

A few questions: Is the runner placed at 2b the next guy up in the lineup? If so, maybe it's your number 6 hitter with power, so he doesn't get a chance to hit a home run while your light-hitting 7-9 guys try to small-ball him in. Or does the team get to put a bench player in as the 2b runner? How do you account for the runner at 2b in the box score and stats? I assume it's nothing -- no PA, no result. But then if he scores, he scored without officially reaching base. You could treat him like a pinch-runner for nobody, but that doesn't work if (see above) he's in the lineup. I like the point above about the pitchers' stats. What makes more sense in the scenario where a new pitcher comes in to start the inning with the 2b runner: to "credit" the 2b runner to the new pitcher, thus putting a weird kind of pressure on him; or to "credit" the 2b runner to the pitcher who ended the previous inning, on the theory that -- well, he didn't do anything wrong, but at least he was in the game when his team failed to win it?

I've been in a fog and just saw this. I'm very happy about Raines. This is a good group. The PED issue . . . I don't have a confident answer. Ignoring it seems like the most straightforward option. Bonds' home runs counted.

It's been a long time, but wasn't Hendrickson kind of a soft tosser? If the Woodruff-Hendrickson comparison is purely statistical, then we may have exactly the kind of information (about how the talent that creates the stats is likely to translate to MLB) most likely to cast doubt on the projection. BTW, I love projections. We just need to know what they are and aren't, and accordingly how to use, question, and supplement them.

I almost forgot for a bit there why I hate Garza so much. Thanks for the reminder, DS! Can Kacee Sogard pitch?

You seem absolutely certain that all your views are right, so why did you start a thread built on questions? It sounds like you already have all the answers.