gregmag

He did, in fact, pitch an inning for Boston in 2010. He didn't allow a baserunner. It is actually possible that we could somehow do worse.

I didn't realize ESPN calculated their own numbers. Yeah, use Fangraphs WAR. I learned that the hard way, relying on Baseball Reference WAR for a pitcher comparison last year. I'm not buying Ennder's blanket criticism of park factors without a lot more evidence, though I certainly agree that using more and better information to make those calculations is always preferable. But that's the same reason I believe in park factors to begin with: context matters, and unless the context in question completely eludes capture, you should take it into account. That said, 'stache, I really like the way you made your argument above. You're doing exactly what I think all statheads at their best try to do: gathering relevant information, sifting through it, and trying to find meaningful facts. You're also right to add the qualification that dimensions aren't everything when looking at parks.

Sorry if someone already linked to this. TH says the Brewers would have to be "bowled over" to trade Ramirez (or Hart): http://www.jsonline.com/sports/brewers/listening-to-pitches-g168h3f-163805246.html Now, we're talking about TH, which means somebody competent and hardworking had to transcribe this article from his original crayon scribblings. Still, I trust he isn't completely making this stuff up. Well, okay, "trust" is too strong; let's say it's just more interesting to assume he isn't making this stuff up. In which case, WTH? (Mods: The "H" is for "heck." I know my responsibilities.) I deeply hope that this is just typical DM posturing, or that he'd be sufficiently "bowled over" if some team offered to pay Ramirez's whole contract and send back a halfway decent prospect. The argument for keeping Ramirez around just isn't very strong. He's getting older and more expensive. Even if we're contending by 2014 and he's still an .800 OPS guy, he'll probably need to be at 1b, and we'd be paying a premium for very ordinary production at a position where several of our in-house guys project to be competitive by then. If we manage to put together a run next year, the argument for him gets marginally stronger, but trading him will become harder with every passing day, and I think it's highly unlikely that his projected production at his salary is a good enough deal for us next year to be worth his albatross contract in 2014.

What's interesting to me is the degree of consensus I'm seeing in our various comments. We all understand that you trade anybody if someone is willing to overpay, but the question is (see xisxisxis above) whom you're actively trying to cash in. If I read everyone right, the major points of disagreement are: (1) Hart. Trade now, trade in the offseason, trade at the 2013 deadline if we're out of the race, or extend? That's a big question, but most people seem to agree that he's a worthwhile player, and the question is whether paying FMV for his production makes sense to this team at this time. (2) Ramirez. A few people say keep him, or at least keep one of him and Hart. But most of us, even those (like me) who approved of signing him, say trade him now if you can. (3) Gamel. I'm just throwing this one in gratuitously; his name hasn't come up much lately. But nobody ever agrees about Gamel, so I'm presuming that some still want him to start at 1b while others want to dump him in a ditch somewhere. That's just how it goes with him. (4) Gomez. I'm not actually sure about this one; people haven't brought him up much. But I'm guessing some would DFA him before paying him, while others would pay FMV for his production. But that's about all I can see for big disagreements, and even those aren't huge. No one's saying Hart or Ramirez sucks, and by the same token no one's arguing that Ramirez will likely be worth the third year of his contract. Most people seem to want to extend Marcum on the cheap if possible, hold onto Weeks and Axford to see whether they'll rebound, dump the rest of the bullpen, dump the veteran bench guys (including Morgan, I'm guessing, although we haven't talked a lot about him here), give some of the young guys (Thornburg, Green, Schafer) a real chance to earn PT. I've just never seen this much agreement on the board about what the team needs to do.

DM says on the record that Greinke WILL be traded before the deadline: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/dailypitch/post/2012/07/brewers-zack-greinke-trade/1#.UBGHGqBRqlB It isn't like we didn't know this, but when has DM ever said anything this blunt in the press? Usually he'll deny a trade until right before the ink dries. It makes me think a deal is all but done. Also -- "He's been like a son to me." That is an interesting interview.

In thinking about Andrus' only having two years left, we should also consider that he's a guy we could realistically hope to resign. He isn't Prince Fielder or Zack Greinke. He could turn into Jose Reyes, I suppose, but even then we'd have some chance. I have no idea how much stock to put in this, but I agree with TLB that the blog post seems very prudent and cautious. It's a fun possibility to think about, anyway, and it would make some sense for both teams. We probably should have thought of it earlier!

That's dismissive of Profar to the point of it being a fault. The world isn't "littered" with 19 year olds who are able to do what he's done at AA, and find me a single scouting report on him that doesn't gush about him. You know who was 19 once & awesome at baseball? Every great player who's ever played. I understand it's easier to just dismiss "prospects", but the reality is that they're all just baseball players. And Profar is a damn good one. Great post. You put the point very, very well. All this talk about "prospects" and whether they "pan out" presumes that those terms have concrete meanings, and they don't. Prospect lists are just attempts to predict which players will likely succeed in MLB. Some players on those lists fail, some end up as role-players, some as regulars, and some as stars. Why should that surprise us? Look at the number of MLB veterans, at different age levels, who break out, or drop off, or get hurt. Baseball performance is just volatile. If you look at what a player does in minor league baseball, measured by stats and scouting reports, and you make appropriate adjustments for level of competition and developmental patterns evident from past players, you can get about as good a sense of how a player will perform going forward as you can get from the same information at the MLB level.

I agree that Izturis should go instead of Bianchi, but I take fondy's point. Maybe they want to observe some protocol about not dumping FA vets if other things are equal, and they see other things as equal in this case. I would rather take a longer look at Bianchi, based on the small chance that he could show something and stick, but I can't say it looks like a big opportunity squandered. It's no more stupid than signing Izturis was to begin with. I always had a soft spot for Kottaras, but I'm very happy that whoever made this decision saw that Maldonado has more value going forward. Or, who knows, maybe they were just thinking about money. Whatever; it's the right decision. Also, as yoyo pointed out, the move doesn't diminish our ability to get something for Kottaras before the deadline.

OPS+ also considers park factors, I believe. Willingham is at 158, and Braun is at 161. That still has Braun up, but it closes almost all of the differential in raw OPS. Obviously stats like runs and RBI aren't going to figure into a WAR calculation, any more than they figure into OPS. If you believe runs and RBI provide highly significant information for evaluating a player's performance, then you have a good underlying reason not to put any stock in WAR. That's just a basic philosophical difference. By most meaningful measures they're very close, as your original post shows. Their offensive WAR numbers are also very close, 3.4 and 3.7. I think most people who put substantial stock in WAR would tell you that a .3 WAR difference shouldn't end any discussion about which player is more valuable. I would certainly tell you that. With any stat, you need to know what assumptions it makes, what information it takes into account, and how it weighs different factors; but every stat will suffer from some degree of imprecision, even if you buy its premises. For me, seeing Braun at 161 OPS+ and 3.4 WAR against Willingham at 158 OPS+ and 3.7 WAR suggests that both stats are telling roughly the same story. The variation just doesn't seem like a big deal.

Good first step in the new rebuilding era.

I just said this in another thread, but I'm not sure I see the percentage in moving Maldonado, or Aoki since you brought him up. Of course if somebody offers the moon, you trade anyone, and I'm not saying these guys are world-beaters. But they're young (well, in Aoki's case at least "not old"), cost-controlled players who put wins on the board. Those are exactly the kinds of players we'll need to be collecting over the coming rebuilding phase. I think we should treat guys like that as presumptive (not conclusive) keepers. To say it another way: despite our experience as Brewers fans, rebuilding doesn't necessarily take 20 years. This is the NL Central in the two-Wild Card era. We may realistically be ready to contend in 2014. Heck, if we get a bunch of lucky breaks, we might even find ourselves in the hunt next year, although I doubt it. Guys like Aoki and Maldonado could very easily play meaningful roles on the next good Brewers team.

I think now would be a terrible time to move Weeks or Axford, because I believe both will bounce back (not to say they'll never crater again). I would keep Braun and Yo, of course, because they're our cornerstones. I would also keep Lucroy, Aoki, Fiers, Estrada, and Maldonado because they're all cheap and do important jobs well, and that's exactly the kind of player a rebuilding team needs. I also think some of our youngish guys who are still transitioning to the majors -- Thornburg, Gamel (DL, so not an issue now), Green -- are almost certainly worth more right now, for the Brewers, as bets to develop and contribute than as trade chips. That's twelve guys who probably should be on the MLB roster next year. In addition, having Marcum back on a reasonable extension or a one-year arby salary wouldn't be a bad thing; and I could see keeping Gomez around if he doesn't break the bank in arby, because he's still young and he's so good at the things he isn't terrible at. Everybody else should go. I love Greinke, but he's obviously history. Hart and Ramirez are good players who deserve their salaries, but paying market value for second-tier stars on the wrong side of 30 makes little sense for a rebuilding mid-market team.

So you're saying what? That we shouldn't worry about filling out the rotation? That the bullpen is more important than the rotation? Or that the rotation won't in fact be a problem, which frees us up to worry about the bullpen? The third option at least makes sense on its own terms, though I can't see how it's true just yet. The other two make no sense. Our bullpen this year has been world-historically awful. But if any part of your team is that bad, it will sink you. It's not like swapping the relative success rates of our rotation and bullpen this year would make us good. That would just mean that the collapse came from somewhere else, and I bet the collapse would have been worse -- because the rotation is, in fact, more important than the bullpen. I love the idea of trading most of our current pen and bringing up young guys to see what they can do in relief. But the reality is that relief performance is extremely hard to predict. Our pen, at the beginning of the year, looked decent on paper. I don't really see how you can say we neglected the pen. Axford and Rodriguez were lights out last year. Loe, Estrada, Parra, and even Dillard all seemed to be in the right roles. Swapping out Hawkins / Saito for Veras looked like a falloff, but Veras had some positives in his record, and Hawkins / Saito only threw 75 innings combined in 2011 anyway. Nobody credibly predicted they would all crater at once (all but Estrada, who only hurt the pen because he had to leave it), just like nobody had credibly predicted how good the pen was going to be in 2011. The last thing I want to see us do is panic and overspend on relievers this offseason. No Linebrink trades, no Riske signings. Axford, I think, will learn from this year and come back strong. For the rest, we should look at our own young guys, collect castoff arms in the offseason, and decide who looks good, maintaining depth in AAA so that we can adjust on the fly. I also wonder about our coaching, but I don't know enough about that to make any claims.

IIRC, Rodriguez's velocity is up a tick from last year. Last year he had tremendous success as a setup man for us, in the heat of a pennant race. Relievers' performances notoriously fluctuate a lot. The Brewers' whole bullpen has collapsed in unison this year, to an extent that seems too extreme for simple regression to the mean and maybe even too extreme for simple bad luck -- which means one might fairly put some of the blame on the Brewers' distinctive coaching and/or defense. With all of that in mind, wouldn't it make sense for some contender to take a cheap flyer on him?

I never said Green couldn't play, I have been saying alls eason that he needs more playing time to see what we have. Odds are, if we move Ramirez, we'll play some kind of a platoon at 3B, or play some over the hill FA guy that serves no purpose. It feels like the brewers are not very committed to Green, so to think he would start the season as our 3B seems like something this team won't be willing to do. You may be right that the team wouldn't give Green a real shot, but I'm not so sure. The team is just (apparently) entering a rebuilding phase, and we have reason to hope that the shift from immediate contention to aggressive rebuilding will lead the team to give young marginal prospects more PT. Plus, RR has now seen unheralded rookies succeed (Fiers, Maldonado, Aoki though I understand he's a bit different), so maybe he'll become more willing to risk more PT on younger players. Or (Can of Worms Alert!) maybe, given that this year's team has failed despite considerable talent on the roster, he won't be around a whole lot longer to play guys like Izturis and Ishikawa. On the big question, I'm all the way down with cutting bait on Ramirez. I think the signing made sense when we did it, but we can be pretty sure now that he won't be part of the next contending Brewers team. A lot can change in a few months, and it has.

What a terrible deal this would be and way to sell low on Rickie. I'd be furious if this deal was what we got for Greinke. Second. Floyd is a league average SP at best, which has value, but he's fairly expensive and may have entered his decline phase already. He's exactly the kind of guy the Brewers don't need. Beckham has been horrible in over 1800 MLB PAs. He's only 25, so he still has time to develop, but he hasn't given any indication that he will. Meanwhile, we'd be trading way low on Weeks, at a time when we can well afford to keep running him out there and see if he can sort himself out. He's already bounced back quite a bit from his epically terrible start, and he has a long history of ups and downs. Oh, and as the price of making those three bad moves, we would also sacrifice our huge trade chip? No way.

Your logic here doesn't work, IMHO. You seem to be arguing that, because a couple of particular teams in 2012 are, or are rumored to be, trading good, young pitchers in a couple of particular deals, we should assume as fact that Doug Melvin at particular points in the past had the option to acquire comparably good, young pitchers for particular players. That argument has several big holes in it. First, we're talking about different time frames. General trading practices and particular trade scenarios both change over time. If you could point to "good, young" pitchers that were traded around the same times as the Melvin deals you're thinking of, you would have more of a leg to stand on. But, second, we'd still be talking about different deals. The fact that Ryan Dempster -- a good, veteran pitcher -- can bring back a good, young pitcher in trade doesn't tell us a whole lot about whether, say, Carlos Lee or Matt LaPorta / Michael Brantley could have brought back that kind of pitcher. Third, "good, young pitcher" may be too broad a frame of reference. Let's say LaPorta / Brantley could have brought back a Delgado type in July 2008. Do you make that trade -- add nothing much to the present team when you're contending for a playoff spot? This is the kind of question that ties me in knots, but there's at least a strong argument that you shouldn't make that deal. So then you aren't going to settle for a Delgado. Instead, you want a young, cost-controlled pitcher who can improve your rotation right away, which is a lot more expensive commodity. It's Zach Greinke in the 2010 offseason, basically. You're right that no one should claim that Melvin absolutely could not have substituted good, young pitchers for some of the guys he acquired in trades, or acquired such players in different trades. We don't know. The best we can do is look at the available evidence to make comparisons. I think the weight of the evidence suggests that trades for good, young pitchers (and other good, young players) are hard to make, and I don't think your argument does anything to advance the opposite view. BTW, it's been a while, but remember when DM traded Richie Sexson for a package built around Chris Capuano and Jorge De la Rosa? Most people who criticized that trade said that it was a quantity over quality trade. But it included two starting pitchers who had their rookie seasons as Brewers and ended up having significant MLB success as mid-rotation types, though with a lot of injuries for both and, in JDLR's case, not at all with the Brewers. I don't know what, if anything, that proves . . . maybe that (a) DM at least once managed to trade a vet for good, young pitchers, and (b) getting good, young pitchers in trades can have its ups and downs.

JohnBriggs -- I love "Jesus (Saves) Sanchez." When I read it, I mentally pronounce the nickname like "sah-vez." If he sticks as a closer, it becomes one of the best nicknames of all time. DHonks -- I am not sure of many things in this life, but one of them is that -- barring a radical transformation -- Manny Parra shouldn't be a starter. His numbers as a reliever vs. starting are stark, and he was terrible after his first time through the lineup, IIRC. But as a reliever, he's certainly the one guy I'd be somewhat tempted to keep and pay, out of the names we're tossing around. I like the idea of trading bullpen guys if we can get something useful back, but I have one note of caution. If you completely gut the bullpen, you still have to finish the season. You don't want to rush guys to the majors, and somebody has to pitch the innings. You just need to have a coherent plan if you're going to go that route. But I doubt we could get a worthwhile return for all four of Rodriguez, Parra, Loe, and Veras anyway.

Matt Cain: 220 starts, 78-76, 1438 innings, 1.18 WHIP, 0.8 HR/9, 3.1 BB/9, 7.5 k/9, 125 ERA+ Zack Greinke: 217 starts, 85-76, 1396 innings, 1.26 WHIP, 0.9 HR/9, 2.3 BB/9, 8.1 K/9, 115 ERA+ I can see the argument that Cain is worth more. I don't think it's easy to decide which guy is more attractive going forward. Greinke has better command, and his higher K rate gives him more room for error as he ages. He's generally had poor defenses behind him. But the differences in ERA and WHIP, while hardly massive, aren't trivial. I agree that, with more and more innings, the gulf between Greinke's 3TO numbers and his bottom line starts to look more legit. OTOH, I think the hypothesis that it's legit requires a concrete explanation, given the generally powerful correllation between 3TO numbers and results. The gulf could reasonably still come down to luck / noise, even over 1400 innings. On the critiques of the Sabathia trade, I'd like to know who this stellar, cost-controlled player is that we could have gotten for LaPorta and Brantley. I can't see any reason to believe that such a trade was possible. Those guys were among our best young, cost-controlled players. If we hadn't wanted to acquire a high-leverage veteran, wouldn't the logical strategy have been just to keep them (and watch them develop into mediocre MLB players)?

Braun, right now, is probably worth $25 million based on his productivity. (See igor's excellent post above on Ramirez for context.) We've signed him to a long-term deal that will pay him less than $20 million in his mid-30s. He certainly should decline during that period. Then again, he has a ridiculously broad skill set -- he does everything well offensively -- so he's about as good a bet at that age as a player can possibly be. In addition, salaries will inflate between now and then. On top of all the good baseball logic, he's now looking like a probable HOFer and franchise icon who will appeal to fans even if / when he and / or the team underperform. I think his extensions were both good moves.

What good is a top-notch arm and strikeouts if you can't get the ERA down? I'm not anti-sabermetrics in the least, but if I'm making a decision worth hundreds of millions of dollars, I'm paying a guy based on results. I get your basic point, but I think the only thing that really matters in paying a player is your best sense of what he'll do in the future. You don't really want to pay for past results, do you? The reason this whole ERA vs. advanced metrics debate is so hard with Greinke is that the split between his peripherals and his ERA makes projecting his future performance unusually difficult.

Source, please.

Earl Weaver did okay breaking pitchers in as relievers. (Yeah, I'm old. What about it?)

Good hitters hit because of their ability. Extrinsic factors aren't going to make much difference. The "protection" myth doesn't even pass the straight face test. Let's say a truly bad hitter was hitting behind Braun. Presumably Braun would get more IBBs, and pitchers would try to pitch around him more, resulting in a few more unintentional walks. As Russ said, the studies bear out that effect. But putting runners on base is costly, so pitchers won't do that too much, and if you're pitching around a good hitter without committing to a walk, you're playing with fire, because you're giving up control of the count. A good hitter like Braun won't just start swinging at garbage.

Agree 100%. We're scraping the bottom of the ss barrel with Izturis. There's really no downside to playing rookies who present any shred of hope. The upside isn't huge, but so what? One is greater than zero. I can't fathom what RR is thinking.