gregmag

I don't like some of RR's strategic decisions at the margin. He seems, maybe just out of necessity, to have gotten more comfortable playing young players, and guys this year seem to have earned their PT more, so that's to his credit. He seems to have a very stable, upbeat demeanor, which is probably a good thing. This isn't a commentary on RR, but I'm not going to give a manager credit for his players' not quitting on him. These are competitive athletes who also happen to make millions of dollars. If some combination of pride, competitive fire, shame, and greed can't keep them from quitting, then I think you have to question whether the manager is even remotely competent. I think not having the players quit is the bare minimum standard for a MLB manager.

Or if Narveson and Marcum hadn't gotten hurt, Estrada would have spent the year in the pen and Fiers would be getting mop up innings after spending all of the year at Nashville and if Grienke hadn't been traded and Wolf finally released, we'd have no idea that both Rogers and Peralta would have inside tracks to rotation spots in 2013. Or if Mrs. Lucroy hadn't dropped something under the bed in a hotel, Maldonado would have honed his craft at Nashville in hopes he'd get a look in spring for a backup job. Or if the D-Backs didn't think highly enough of Cody Ransom to claim him back, Jeff Bianchi would not have an inside track on at worst a utility job for next year. Finally if the bullpen implosion wouldn't have been so pervasive, perhaps Brandon Kintzler would have just been forgotten about and Jim Henderson would have just been that veteran minor league reliever who had a nice season. The list goes on and on doesn't it? Playoffs or no, 2012 will go down as the year the Brewers were exposed as underestimating their own talent and by the same token overestimating some of the veteran talent that was here. Wait a minute. If Lucroy hadn't gotten hurt, Maldonado might not have gotten an opportunity; but Lucroy is better than Maldonado. If Greinke hadn't gotten traded, Fiers or Rogers might not have gotten an opportunity; but Greinke is better than Fiers and Rogers. If Marcum hadn't gotten hurt, then Estrada might not have gotten an opportunity; but Marcum is better than Estrada. Gonzalez is probably better right now than either Segura or Bianchi, although they're certainly the future and he isn't. Kintzler and Henderson haven't proved much, and in any event relief pitching is notoriously hard to gauge. I agree with you about Wolf, and Narveson would have had to take a big step forward to exceed what the replacement SPs have done. But in general, I think your harsh judgment about the organization's talent evaluation has little basis in fact. I do think you're right to emphasize how much talent we had on hand just beneath the surface. I think that's a great credit to the organization. They also look smart for turning to that on-hand talent when the holes opened up, although I bet they wouldn't have done that if they thought in June and July that the team could contend.

I agree with the idea of getting a midrotation starter through free agency if we can get a good guy at a good price, because you need pitching depth. But I don't think it's an absolute necessity. The idea of trading some of our young pitching to get veteran pitching seems especially strange to me, as does the idea that we should simply assume some of our rookie pitchers will fail because lots of rookie pitchers fail. Yo is an established frontline guy. Estrada at this point I think you insult by calling him an established back-of-the-rotation guy. Fiers is no longer a rookie, and I'd say he's an established midrotation guy on the assumption that he's just been gassed his last several starts (but people who have actually gotten to see him can correct me if I'm wrong). Rogers and Peralta will be rookies, but they'll be rookies with a bit of MLB under their belts. Rogers has looked very good in seven starts; Peralta has looked pretty good in three. By the end of the season, we'll know something meaningful about both guys. Right now they look like legit rotation candidates for anybody. Why, exactly, is it so obvious that we'll be a better team with, say, Joe Saunders in our rotation than with Wily Peralta? I'm not at all sure that we can get an affordable guy in FA who will be a better bet to succeed next year than Peralta. The real question is whether we're comfortable with Thornburg and Burgos as our insurance against injury or ineffectiveness among the top five. That's why I'm down with the idea of a free agent.

The big question is what's up with Marcum right now. Last year in the playoffs he was pretty clearly gassed. If right now he's still working off rust, then he could be revved up and fresh for the playoffs. But if he's fatigued from the injury recovery, then we have a problem. If we knew at the end of July that we'd be where we are right now -- at the fringe of the playoff race -- would we have traded Greinke? (I don't think anyone but maybe JohnBriggs thinks we got better because we traded Greinke.) I think I would, as of today, but it's a closer call than I ever could have imagined.

First of all, I personally think that, as of right now, Posey should win. Putting up the numbers he has as a catcher is remarkable. Although I don't think the MVP has to come from a winner, I think Posey looks to have made a remarkable contribution to the success of his team, which has happened to mean a likely pennant. But I think the award is going to be illegitimate, and I'm gearing up for a personal mental boycott. The anti-Braun bias is unjustified and petty. These are the same writers who cheered on the steroid era uncritically -- who actually share complicity for PEDs' denigration of the sport -- and now they want to cover their moral butts by getting righteously indignant over an alleged violation for which there is no support. They want to get righteous about justice? How about due process, then? Anyone who leaves Braun off his ballot, or downgrades Braun because of the invalid test, is a morally and intellectually vacuous fraud.

The Witrado article very misleadingly suggests that Braun admitted to misconduct in the PED case, choosing only to challenge the chain of custody. In fact, as we all know, Braun professed his innocence consistently and argued that the chain of custody may have been the cause of what he argued was a false positive. Witrado remains a truly bad, not very bright writer.

This season hasn't made me believe relief pitching, in general, is more important than I thought it was before. What we've seen is a swing from outstanding relief pitching to world-historically bad relief pitching. Obviously no part of a team commonly goes from the top of the charts to the bottom, and when that happens, you feel it. I don't think corner infield defense is very important relative to other parts of the team, but if you went from, I don't know, prime Keith Hernandez and Brooks Robinson at the corners to, say, Prince Fielder and Casey McGehee, you'd see that in the loss column. Actually, one of my big concerns going into this offseason is that the FO will overreact to this year's bullpen meltdown and spend a bunch of money on "proven relievers." Off the top of my head, I'd say relief pitching is about twelve percent of the game. (Run prevention is half total; pitching is maybe seventy percent of run prevention, or 35% total; relief pitching is maybe just over a third of pitching.) We can argue about that -- maybe it's 15%; I have a hard time imagining it's 20%. But I'm more confident in saying that relief pitching is the hardest part of a team to manage or to project. The Brewers made seemingly reasonable bullpen decisions over the last offseason. Every decision went horribly wrong. I haven't heard any credible ideas about how you avoid a repeat of that, except to make similarly reasonable decisions (which isn't to say the same particular decisions) and pray for better luck, which shouldn't be hard to come by.

My wife, who hates baseball, surprised me this morning by buying us field box tickets for tonight's game. It's way more money than I ever spend, but she knew I'd been working like a madman and hadn't gotten to a game all season. Perfect night at the ballpark, fun game with a near-playoff vibe -- the place really rocked when they announced Beltran -- and a big win amidst the friendliest road fans I've seen. (Plus there's a slider stand now, where they send you away with a truly epic amount of very fine ballpark food. I got chipotle chicken, pulled pork with fried onions, and garlic fries on the side. But I digress.) I can't tell you much that you don't already know. Bianchi looked safe to me and Gomez looked out, but I was behind 3b. Weeks' HR was classic Weeks; actually on both HRs, Holliday barely even moved. Fiers looks gassed, but it's pretty impressive to see a rookie who guts it out so hard and keeps going after the hitters. Veras seemed to be warming at a point before they brought in Rodriguez, and Nyjer was getting ready to hit when they blew, I think, the second bases-loaded, nobody-out opportunity. Man, I wanted the chance to see him feed off the Cards fans' booing. I haven't gotten to see Carlos Gomez in person much, but even when he isn't making spectacular plays, he covers an unbelievable amount of ground. Lucroy always impresses me with his take-charge demeanor: it seemed like every couple of innings he was giving his pitchers some extra encouragement, and he appeared to be helping position the infielders (but it may have been something else).

He has made two thirds of his career starts this year -- 18 out of 27. I can't find a starting / relieving breakdown for him, but my rough memory is that he's been better as a starter even before this season. His peripherals, as people have said, are outstanding, with even the HRs slowing down. He's certainly a strong 4 right now, and if he can go a little deeper into games, he'll be a very viable 3. Given that this is his first year as a regular rotation guy, I would think he has at least a reasonable chance to improve. We're very fortunate to have him.

The problem comes with the weight a claim is asked to bear. Weeks should be dumped for a bag of balls because he isn't clutch. Counsell should be paid because he is clutch. Part of this is my fault, because -- as a couple of people have quite properly pointed out -- I was quite wrong and sloppy to say clutch doesn't exist. I don't know that it doesn't. "Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence" -- that's absolutely right. Clutch may exist. God may also exist, and alien life may exist, and ghosts may exist. I make those statements not to ridicule anyone who believes in any of those things (I believe in one of them myself) but to swing a fairly frivolous debate back to a substantial place. Some of the posts above are just rehashing the old canard that "clutch exists because I say it does, and I don't need proof." That's what bugs me. When you say "clutch exists," you're making a claim, as surely as the oh-so-convenient stathead foil you're ridiculing (because that's never been done before) makes claims with numbers. The only question worth asking, of you or the stathead, is whether, and why, a reasonable, intelligent, disinterested observer should believe the claim on offer. If you can't prove to some degree of satisfaction that a thing exists, then people should not treat that thing, in material ways, as if it exists. You should not trade a guy because he "isn't clutch" or pay a guy because he "is clutch" if you can't provide some basis, better than "because I said so," to believe clutch exists. Because money and roster spots do exist, and nobody should ever trade a cow for a handful of magic beans.

So you're saying the statement is wrong? Okay: at what position are you arguing it's easier to find hitters?

Why in the world would you trade Gamel, coming off an injury, in a year where the Brewers probably don't expect to compete, for a bullpen arm? That only makes sense if you're sure -- sure -- he's a bust, in which case you still have to find a GM who knows less about baseball than you do. The few people here who have argued that Gamel's a certain bust have made very poor arguments, which isn't their fault, because there's no meaningful evidence to support the conclusion. He could fail to develop, sure. But if he even has a chance to be a bench bat with pop, he's worth more at his salary than the next Jose Veras. I'm glad nobody's bashing Corey Hart anymore. A few years ago, about half this board seemed to think Corey Hart was . . . well, Mat Gamel or something. I respectfully suggest that people who are urging that we keep Hart aren't thinking enough about three things (beyond the factors others have mentioned). First, 1b is the easiest place to find hitters, and while Hart is plenty productive enough to start for a contender, he's not special. Second, 30 is not young, especially for a one-dimensional power hitter, which is basically what Corey is fast becoming. Third, the Brewers don't just have Mat Gamel as a hedge against dealing Hart. They also have Khris Davis, Hunter Morris, Taylor Green, Caleb Gindl . . . if they had no brighter idea than "let's throw some cheap guys with varying degrees of promise at the wall and see who sticks," they could make a good go of that strategy. I'll be sad if we trade Corey, because he's a homegrown success story, and I've been following him his whole career. But if you have the players the Brewers have, and you're at the point in the competitive curve they're at, and Corey's at the point in his contract he's at -- if none of those things changes much, I think a smart organization trades him in the offseason ten times out of ten.

I think you've unwittingly come up with the one argument in favor of bringing Yuni back. Of course we wouldn't bring him back if we wanted to chase 75 wins instead of 73. First of all, as you're suggesting, chasing 75 wins instead of 73 is stupid. Second, signing Yuni in pursuit of marginal wins is even more stupid. But if you wanted to chase 71 wins instead of 73? Yuni's your guy. Maybe he could extend his career as a kind of situational specialist, signing on every August with some team that's angling for good draft position.

Escobar's good year has been seriously BABIP inflated. Last year: .285. This year: .358. He's always had some pretty wide BABIP swings, and since his secondary offense in the minors was nearly nonexistent, those swings have told his story. He has a consistent walk rate just over 4%, which is terrible. His ISO this year has increased from about .090 the past couple of years to about .110, which I would guess is decent for a ss if he can sustain it. If things go well for him, he could settle in at around .280/.320/.400. With his defense, that's a good player. Can Segura hit better than that? I would hope so. I think he'll walk more, and I think he has a better chance than Escobar of settling in at a .120 ISO or beyond. Reports on his defense, of course, are all over the place. He may be less speed-dependent than Escobar, which could mean he'll hold more of his value, but who knows. It will be interesting to watch the two of them develop. I'm glad the team brought Segura up now. Most players need some adjustment time in the majors, so if we're planning to compete in 2014, it won't hurt for him to have a full year under his belt. He's a good age for a rookie, and he doesn't seem to have work left to do in the minors, unless his defense ends up looking rough. I do hope they'll give Bianchi a look as a backup option.

Nice mound work tonight from Gagnon, Pena, and Miller. When I looked at the Huntsville box score, I caught myself feeling a little disappointed to see that in four PAs, all Segura did was hit two singles.

I'm becoming convinced that we should trade Hart in the offseason, and the biggest reason is that we have a bunch of guys with a reasonable chance to fill his spot capably who are ready or nearly ready to play. I like Hart. He's productive, and he's reasonably paid, and he seems like a great citizen. I have no affirmative desire to get rid of him for the sake of getting rid of him. But he has trade value, with several years of strong production and another year of reasonable salary, and if he produces next year he'll probably do well in FA. Meanwhile, we have all these corner types knocking on the door (in my approximate order of likelihood to contribute next year): Gamel Khris Davis Green Gindl Morris The individual odds for any one of those guys to step in and provide, say, 80% of Corey Hart's value next year can't be very good. But the aggregate odds that one or more of them can do it? Those have to be good odds. We probably won't compete next year. But even if we do, we're bringing back Braun, Ramirez, Aoki, Lucroy, Weeks at what we hope will be full power, and maybe Gomez who will maybe hit. We can afford a small gamble at 1b even if we're thinking about contending. Plus, whichever of the young guys don't start will probably help to improve the bench from its current Morgan-Ransom-Ishikawa level, especially when you also throw Logan Schafer into the mix, filling innings in cf. Part of the beauty of trading Hart to open up space is that we can shift the young guys around as needed. If one doesn't hit and has no options, reduce his PT. If one doesn't hit and has options, send him down. Morris isn't ready in April? Maybe he'll be ready in July. Again, I think that strategy will yield decent production at 1b while showing us what we really have in some of these guys. Also -- this is a strange thread for asking this question, but it's part of the mosaic -- how sure are we that Aoki can't play cf? Is there any chance of a soft platoon with Aoki and Schafer? If so, an argument starts to build for possibly letting Gomez walk (I'm assuming Morgan is gone). But that's another, very complicated discussion.

Weeks consistent? He's on pace to hit under .240 for the 4th time in 8 seasons as a starter. Yes BA is an old school stat, and he does get on base at a decent clip, but I wouldn't call him consistently "top level". He gets plenty of rope because at least $21 million owed him in the next 2 season. With 2015 dependent on him getting 1,200 total plate appearances in 13 and 14, it will be interesting to see if he gets benched more often if he goes into another prolonged slump next year. He's had a nice run lately and we see what effect him hitting does to the lineup. Then again, what pressure was left on this team disappeared after they got swept in Cincinnati. So it's definitely "grain of salt" time. No, it isn't. Because your premise is false. You fabricate this stuff about some players being "clutch" and others being "not clutch" because it allows you to argue whatever you want, whenever you want, in support of biases that you can't back up with facts. "Clutch" doesn't exist, and I know that because people have been documenting its nonexistence for almost 30 years -- and it doesn't take rocket science to get there. "Clutch" is a myth that lazy analysts lean on instead of actual knowledge or insight, and despite the fact that you have knowledge and insight in spades, you seem to lean on that myth almost daily. What demands a grain of salt is anything you post about a player as to whom you have an established bias, pro or con, which seems to be three quarters of the Brewers' roster and anybody who ever set foot in Chicago. Also, the effect that Weeks has on the lineup when he hits is that Weeks hits, and everybody else does what they would have done anyway, except that he gets to move around the bases on some of their hits and they get to move around the bases on some of his. You can't catch hitting from another player. That's another lazy myth. Oh, and Russ already covered this, but Weeks isn't making money because Doug Melvin and Mark Attanasio are morons. He's making money based on the market for his production. Likewise, he doesn't get to play because the morons who paid him are afraid of looking like the morons they are. He gets to play because he's been productive enough in his career to make him a better bet to produce tomorrow than all but a tiny handful of other major league 2b's. I agree that he's somewhat inconsistent, but if one guy hits an inconsistent .250/.350/.430 and another guy hits a consistent .250/.350/.430, I don't see how you can value either one more than the other. Finally, bringing up batting average as the sole support for your point, and then saying "Yes, BA is an old-school stat" as if to say "I know you punk kids don't understand the timeless verities (sigh)" is a rhetorical cop-out. BA is a stat. It measures what it measures. Say what you think it proves; don't hide behind the unstated nobility of the ancient. Because the nobility of the ancient is just another lazy myth.

I don't know about TLB, but the Little Mermaid thing occurred to me right away too, because I have a five year-old daughter. I'm sure somebody else here can back me up on this: It's amazing how little my principled hatred for Disney princesses, fairies, My Little Pony, etc. matters when set against the realities of my day-to-day life. It's her world; I just work in it. For free.

That McCalvy piece has probably the best discussion of Segura's future at ss that I've seen. He manages to summarize all the important factors, pro and con. People have probably said this already, but "Johnny Hellweg" is an awesome name. Add to that the fact that the other guys in the trade are named Ariel and Jean, which are cool and unusual first names, and I think this may be the best name return in any Brewers trade I can remember.

Farris has indeed been doing great all July. In fact, if he keeps this run of his life going, he may even get his AAA OPS (now .685) up to the OPS Rickie Weeks has put up this year (now .706) -- in MLB, in his worst season as a pro. That could work out great for Farris, because of course you've been calling for Rickie Weeks to be traded for a bag of balls since April -- so if that happened, Farris would have a clear path to establishing himself as a candidate for worst starting position player in the majors.

I'd like to hear more about why, exactly, people think we should or should not target a veteran SP in the offseason. What factors should influence that decision, how much, and why? Let's say we'll need six guys on the roster that we can rely on as SPs (because one will invariably get hurt at some point), plus at least one plausible emergency option beyond that in AA/AAA. Other things equal (no surprise injuries, meltdowns, or unexpected trades), pretty much everybody sees Gallardo and Fiers as locks. I would say most of us see Estrada as a lock for the back of the rotation. That's three spots set. (IMHO, as I was just saying above, Narveson doesn't belong in the discussion.) Then you come to Rogers, Peralta, and Thornburg. I think everybody figures one of them will make the rotation, many are willing to bet on two of them, and a few would be willing to put all three in the top six spots of the depth chart. In that scenario, one of those guys would start the season at AAA or in the Milwaukee pen; Estrada could do that as well, start out as a swingman in the pen. Burgos in this scenario could be the seventh man. If you're willing to count on all of those guys, then you don't need to get a veteran SP. (You'd want some kind of deep backup injury insurance even beyond your top seven, but that could be a Claudio Vargas AAAA type.) Let's add that, if Marcum shows he's healthy, he's the veteran SP, pushing another of the rookies (or maybe Estrada, depending on how you've got guys ranked) into the pen. The depth chart looks something like this: Gallardo (Marcum) Fiers Rogers / Estrada Estrada /Rogers Peralta / Thornburg Thornburg / Peralta Burgos Theoretically, there are two categories of veteran starters we could sign: (1) guys whom we can confidently project to be better than Rogers looks right now; (2) guys with a track record but whom we can't confidently project to be better than Rogers looks right now. Category (1) guys will presumably cost real money on a three or four-year contract -- Edwin Jackson, say. Why would we sign a category (1) guy? Maybe we think we can contend next year with our current lineup and a few tweaks. Or maybe we think the rest of the team will be ready to contend by 2014 but we don't have confidence in our SP prospects to fill out a strong rotation by then, and we want to get a guy in place early. Neither of those seems to me like a compelling argument, but maybe I'm missing something. The more pressing question for 2013, to me, seems to be whether we sign a category (2) guy. Reasons we might do that: -- We're worried about getting the necessary number of innings out of the young guys without putting too much strain on their arms. -- We're not confident enough about the young guys' ability to believe that enough of them will put up the necessary quality of performance to fill out their roles. -- We want an experienced guy who knows how to pitch to stabilize the rotation and help acclimate the young guys. -- We don't think a rotation full of young guys will have, in the aggregate, the necessary mental toughness / intangibles. For me, those reasons are listed in descending order of force. The first two seem like good reasons if their factual premises are right, but I don't know if they're right. The other two reasons seem to me more like baseball cliches that don't really hold water, but I know other people disagree. I'd just like to know how various posters are thinking about this issue. My view right now is that, if Marcum looks like he'll be ready by opening day, I'm not inclined to sign a vet starter. If he's not going to be ready, I'm on the fence, and a lot will depend how the young guys, from Rogers on down, pitch the rest of the way, in the majors and AAA. In that non-Marcum scenario, what Rogers does the rest of the way is the biggest factor.

Actually, some of the moderators have recently made posts to this effect. It's usually easy to see when someone obviously has an opinion on something. But the way you post, you post as if it is a fact. Not only is it misleading but it can also be seen as antagonistic since you're shooting down other people's opinions (i.e. Narveson has a shot to compete next year) with your opinion, which is stated as a fact. You're right. But. I would say it's actually more misleading (not deliberately, but in effect) to list Narveson among guys who one presumes will be competing for a rotation spot next season. As I understand his injury and his contract situation, Narveson is extremely unlikely to be in a position to compete for a rotation spot next year. So if you're going to call someone out for stating that "Narveson won't be able to compete for a rotation spot," you should just as surely be calling out the people who state that "Narveson will be (able to compete for / competing for) a rotation spot."

The minor leaguers they got back appear to have some value, although I haven't seen scouting reports. Schierholtz, of course, is just a guy, presumably included because the Phillies need somebody to play in their outfield. But Joseph is a 20 year-old catcher who's holding his own in AA, and Rosin has great peripherals. Trading Hart for that package would make no sense for the Brewers, but I don't think the Phillies made out badly given their needs.

I'm not sure that's right. Getting on base is a skill, just like hitting for power is a skill. Gomez seems to have some power and no batting eye. I know some guys improve their OBP as they develop, and Gomez probably isn't done developing. You may be right that he could improve his OBP if he decided to work on it. But I'm more inclined to think this is just what he is: a weird combination of useful but mismatched skills with a core of awfulness where his most important skill should be. The second coming of Laynce Nix.

I'm mainly responding to this because IMHO it deserves to be put out there again. This strikes me as a very, very smart assessment of the situation. The players play the games. I think the influence of managers and coaches on wins and losses must seem kind of amorphous even to people on the inside. Sometimes I think you just move guys in and out to give the players a different look at things. I hope it's that, rather than trying to impress fans by "holding someone accountable."