gregmag

This and Monty's earlier post make a really good point. We lost a lot in the early going because of injuries and false starts. Even if we open this season with comparable injuries, we don't have the same question marks surrounding CF and late inning relief. That may just be a function of luck, but I think it's also a matter of having made some stabilizing personnel decisions over the past 12 months. As for the original question, MadScientist asked about one interesting point that no one has talked about (unless I missed it): generically, would you rather have your offense spread around or concentrated? In other words, to put it crudely, would you rather have three guys who OPS'd .800, .800, and .700, or three guys who OPS'd 1.000, .700, and .600? Based on intuition and fuzzy memories of past reading, I think I'd prefer the first group, and my preference gets stronger if the alternative is something like 1.100, .650, and .550. My sense is that consistency through a lineup produces more runs than a spot or two of superiority surrounded by mediocrity. But I'd be interested to know if anybody has different thoughts, or substantive info, on this point.

They added a lot more than 1 Win with Prince Fielder in that lineup. I don't care what WAR says, or any other advanced Metric, that's a good team. WAR is meant to compare players and measure their performances, I don't know a whole lot of people who literally take WAR and translate it literally into actual wins and losses. Prince and Cabrera in the middle of that order is devastating, and they already had a great lineup, and they're still trying to acquire Garza for Turner+ whomever. Verlander/Fister/Garza/Porcello and that lineup is as close to a lock to win a division as any team you're going to see going into next year IMO. But you're just translating subjective impressions into actual wins and losses. If we're going to try to project a team's performance, and our choices are (a) to use WAR as a basis for our projection or (b) to talk subjectively about a team's players, I'll take WAR every time. I won't stop with WAR, but it's as good a beginning as we have for organizing the mountain of information we have to evaluate if we're going to make projections. If that's not your idea of a good time, fair enough -- it's actually not mine -- but that doesn't make a more casual analysis more useful than a more structured analysis. I do have a problem with Ennder's point, though. Maybe this move doesn't improve the Tigers much over last year, but the more important measure of what Detroit has gained seems to be where they would be this year with Fielder vs. where they would be without him. If we aren't looking at Fielder vs. V-Mart but rather Fielder vs. replacement level 1b, or whatever the best available alternative is at this point, the gain may be much greater. Even if Fielder adds three wins to the projection (based on whatever system or logic one wants to use), the difference between an 84-win projection and an 87-win projection is massive, if you're talking about the likelihood of contending in the AL Central. On that basis, it may end up being a pretty smart $20 million outlay.

He has such a good swing he spent last September at home. Any hope I had for Gamel being a productive EVERYDAY player went out the window when Don Money completely buried him.Are you saying that Money's burying him proved that he can't be a productive everyday player, or that Money's burying him diminished his capacity to be a productive everyday player? I don't think I would agree with either point, but I don't know which one you mean, and they're very different points. Clearly his MLB stats to date don't tell us much of use. If he had absolutely killed in 173 PA or completely flopped -- 1.000 OPS or .500 -- I'd take that pretty seriously. I might also pay more attention if his OPS was BA-inflated. But a .684 OPS off a .222 BA? Anybody can do that for 173 PA. Plus, as others have said, he has about as long and steady a minor league track record as you could imagine. That doesn't guarantee anything, but as predictive evidence it's very useful.

This is a really weird thread, and I mean that in a generally admiring way, but "Houston Briskets" is the comedy highlight for me so far. Brilliant. The Rockets thing reminds me of the 90s techno group called Utah Saints, whose name managed to riff on the New Orleans Jazz move and Mormon theology in one stroke. Plus they were British. I'm still awestruck.

Yeah, this is what I'm wondering about too. Where is the money coming from? It isn't an enormous media market. That is really going to be an albatross contract, maybe when they're only halfway through it. Good for Prince, and best wishes to him. Watching him grow up as a player has been a lot of fun, and he'll always be a big part of the Brewers' legacy (such as it is).

I've given Briggs a lot of grief over his undervaluing of Greinke and Marcum, and I still don't agree with his conclusion here, but I think he's right about some important things. Most important, we will need serious production from our pool of pitching prospects if we're going to stay relevant. Short of the odd Doug Davis pickup (the first one), the only way you get cheap, good SPs is to acquire them via draft or trade and develop them. With our payroll structure, we're pretty much doomed if one of our pitching prospects doesn't emerge as at least a midrotation guy in the next two years, and we probably won't contend without two. But yes, we should extend Greinke. He has a good health record. He has filthy stuff. Power pitchers generally age well. Right, he's only won one Cy Young (slacker!), but even when he isn't pitching up to his potential, he's really good. Even with young guys emerging, you need rotation anchors. We can't just trade for another guy like him, because (a) there aren't many guys like him, and (b) our only really prime trade chips are -- wait for it -- our pitching prospects. Besides, if we somehow get a comparable veteran, we're going to face the same set of questions. If the choice is between Greinke and the wages of time and luck, I'll take Greinke.

That is the conversational equivalent of taking one for the team. Thanks for being willing to share a personal fact that sheds some light on our discussion. Also, I hope that your medical issue isn't serious and/or the treatment is effective.

Thank you -- I agree 100% about the whole "earning" thing. You get a job based on the best available evidence that you can do it well. There's just a disagreement about how useful minor league performance is as evidence. People who think it isn't often argue that only major league vets have "earned" anything. I disagree with that position on the merits, but I really wish people wouldn't dress it up in the language of entitlement. On the Hart thing, I don't read it as DM saying that a healthy Gamel needs 30 games off. That may be what he meant, but I think it's likelier that he was making a predictive judgment that incorporated the possibility of injury. Just seems likely to me, but who knows.

Excellent.

One of the lowest-character people in recent baseball history. Pathetic. I hope he's sad and alone for a very long time.

I'm really happy about this. He's a smart guy who got a lot of mileage out of limited physical gifts. People seem to have spoken very well of him wherever he went. Who really knows about these things, but my gut tells me he could do some real good in the organization.

The problem with your analysis is that there's no basis for the birthers' claim. Many conservatives despised Bill Clinton to his very core, but nobody ever questioned whether Clinton was actually American. The two situations are identical, as far as the relevant facts are concerned. No one has ever presented a single, credible shred of evidence to suggest that either man was born outside the United States. But a certain number of people are willing to buy and/or exploit the specious claim about Obama because he, in their perception, does not fit the American norm. I suspect that you, like a lot of people, are just too rational and fair-minded to understand that twisted thought process, but I don't see any other explanation for the birther lunacy. Al's comparison to the McCain situation is, of course, entirely specious. No one disagrees about where McCain was born -- in the Panama Canal Zone. A question came up about the legal significance of where he was born -- not an unreasonable question, given that the issue hadn't come up before in a presidential election, but an easy enough question to answer. Constitutional law experts (I have to put in a plug for my profession here) took about five minutes to explain that being born in a U.S. territory to U.S. citizens constituted natural born citizenship. We moved on, and the issue was barely mentioned again. How that has anything to do with the birther movement I cannot imagine. Also, Al, "[t]he claims of racism made every time someone has a legit criticism"? What claims are we talking about? What "legit criticisms" are we talking about? That's a sloppy, lazy generalization even by your notoriously lax standards. Please show me where this phenomenon happens, outside your fantasy bubble.

This is really where OPS+ can play a useful role. As others have pointed out, Larkin played in a better offensive environment than Trammell. By OPS+, it's Larkin 116 for his career, Trammell 110. That's a meaningful difference, but it's a lot less than 50 points of raw OPS because of when and where they played. The argument that Trammell shouldn't get in because of his inconsistency is interesting, but I'm not inclined to buy it. Larkin had a 13-year run when his OPS+ never dipped below 100, but for three of those years it was 107 or lower. Trammell had an 11-year period when he was under 100 three times, but his other seasons were consistently excellent, plus he had another good year before that run. Their careers have slightly different shapes, and I can see the argument that value is worth a bit more when it's spread out, but they're really pretty close. Trammell was probably a better defender by a meaningful margin. It seems pretty close to me. My gut says yes -- if Alan Trammell is in the HoF, it still seems to me like the HoF is doing what it's supposed to do. He's quite similar to Larkin, maybe a half step behind him, and I think Larkin is deserving. But Trammell isn't the best guy who isn't in; I'll be a lot more annoyed if Raines never makes it.

I don't think there's a bright-line difference. I think ideas about appropriate and inappropriate, or normal and abnormal, body modification change over time. I cringe when I see so many kids with tattoos and piercings, but that's a norm that has changed a lot since I was their age. I'm not suggesting it's illegitimate to make negative judgments about players for steroid use -- I make those judgments myself. But I think the surgery question brings up a useful reminder that we really are talking about norms that society creates, not absolute laws of nature.

No. I'm sorry, but you don't call a dark-skinned Latino "an animal" and "a savage" and throw plantain chips at him. I know some people think racism doesn't exist any more, but IMHO it does, and that's a pretty blatant example. I don't care if Scott has black teammates who speak well of him; they're entitled to their judgment, and I'm entitled to mine. Do I "know him based on a quote or two"? Of course not; maybe he's a very kind racist who loves children and small animals. Who knows? But like Baldkin said, he's either a racist, or he's so unforgivably clueless about the history he claims to understand so well that he's forfeited the benefit of the doubt. Another thing, as long as we're on this: the whole birther thing is itself racist, and Scott's embrace of it just confirms what his other comments make painfully obvious. Of course he doesn't have to like Obama. Most people seem not to. You can hate the President's character, despise his policies, wish fervently for his imminent demise, whatever, and I'm not going to say you're racist just because the man happens to be black. But to question Obama's very American-ness, based on rank paranoia and a grand total of zero pieces of salient evidence, comes back to the fact that his skin is darker than yours and his name sounds alien. It's a lunatic, nativist fantasy that no white person would ever have to deal with. (BTW, my use of the second person here isn't directed at any poster; I don't see anyone here defending the birther smear, and I respect Cheez and monty's point that people are allowed to say what they want to say. They are indeed, and I'm just saying that when Luke Scott or anybody else says the things we're talking about, to me that's racism 101.) The interesting question here is what do you do if your team picks up a player whose ideas you find deeply appalling. I'm a big believer that we shouldn't expect baseball players to be role models; I think, on balance, I would probably like major league ballplayers as a group a lot less than I like the people I know. Whatever Luke Scott may be, he's probably a better human being than Ty Cobb, Cap Anson, and lots of other jerks who were also great ballplayers. So in principle, if the Brewers thought they could win more games with Luke Scott on the roster, picking him up would be the right thing to do. But that's principle; I'd certainly enjoy rooting for the team less.

I don't get the same sense as other folks from Melvin's comments. I don't get any sense at all. Melvin is notoriously cagey in his comments to the media about personnel matters. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they didn't make him a serious offer, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if they went after him reasonably hard.

I'm hypersensitive to what I consider signs of racial bias, maybe to a fault. I've posted here on multiple occasions when I've perceived bias against African-American and Latino players. So I may just be missing something, but I feel like I'm on pretty solid ground when I say that this is the single most baseless post I've ever read on Brewerfan. It especially annoys me because thoughtless, indefensible accusations of racial bias just make it easier for people to deny racial bias when it actually happens. It feels silly to have to point any of this out, but Clint Barmes pretty much is Alex Gonzalez, and comments here have (rightfully) portrayed both as mediocre players who represent substantial upgrades over the awful Yuni Betancourt. As for Hardy and Escobar, people had more faith in Hardy's offense because he hit better in the minors than Escobar did, and we were in a rebuilding mode where we were pretty jazzed about all of our young players. I'm one who has been dubious about Escobar, because of his lack of secondary offensive skills even in his better seasons, and so far he has shown no signs of developing into an MLB hitter. OTOH, people around here, myself included, can get overexcited about players who hit in the minors and don't develop. What was that one fan favorite's name . . . oh, yeah: Hernan Irribarren. I get that you've chosen to define yourself as a martyr for the honor of Yuni Betancourt, and that you feel that choice entitles you to question the integrity and character of anyone who dares to criticize him, as you have done over and over again. But this one really crosses the line.

I think there's a little bit of revisionist history going on in this discussion of Pierre. As Brettac said, part of the criticism of Pierre was backlash against his being overpaid and overrated. It's definitely appropriate to step back from that and say, yes indeed, he had value when he was at his best. Hitting over .300 and playing CF, from 2001 through 2004, he had a lot of value. Of course, the first two of those years were in Colorado, so you have to discount for that some. The problem is when people start saying things like "if he gets 200 hits, then he must be good," or "if he gets 50 steals, then he must be good." In 2006, Juan Pierre had 204 hits and 58 steals, which sounds great. But he didn't do anything else even passably well offensively. He led the league in ABs with 699, which means he took 495 outs to get his 204 hits -- I'd be stunned if that 495 didn't lead the league. So he hit only .292, which is good, of course, but not good enough to be useful if a guy does nothing else. Pierre led the league in CS, with 20, which wiped out the most of the value of his 58 steals. He walked only 32 times, which is plain pathetic, so his OBP was only .330. He had one of his best power years, but his ISO was still under .100. So all he did, offensively, was hit .292 with virtually no secondary value while using up a huge percentage of his team's offensive opportunities. Pierre in 2006 did not help his team put runs on the board. Then by 2008 he was starting to play LF, and he was getting hurt. The last two years he's been healthy, but he's hit in the .270s while playing LF full-time. But some people still say "look at all those hits and steals!" That's why Pierre gets a "bad rap" -- because at his best he was a borderline all-star, but that ended in after a few years, in 2004, and since then he's been horrendously overrated and overpaid.

Really? From everything I've heard outside of the few blocks of government buildings DC is a ghetto.It's getting a lot better. I'm not saying there aren't bad parts, but most of NW DC and Downtown is all gentrified. Chinatown has tons of high-rise luxury apartments and that's where a lot of the younger Nats/Capitals players live. Even down by the new ballpark a bunch of new apartments and condos are being built. The bad areas are getting pushed further and further east of the Anacostia river. I don't think I'm contradicting anyone with what I'm going to say, because I know we're talking about where a wealthy athlete might choose to live. There are many fantastic neighborhoods in D.C., including some of the older parts of town populated by families with deeper local roots, which tend to be more heavily African-American than the gentrified areas. Any suggestion that D.C. is primarily "a ghetto" is way off base, in my view. There are certainly some very poor areas of town with higher crime rates, like in any city. But like any city, D.C. has a lot of variety, along all kinds of lines. I lived there for six years, back in the 90s, and I loved it.

This is self-parody. I don't even know where to start. For a guy who accuses other people of "fuzzy thinking" because they don't understand how Corey Hart will magically decline with Prince Fielder gone . . . I don't know, what's south of "fuzzy"? Plush? No, we like that word here. Bushy? No, that could be seen as a political jab. Dense? Tangled? Mossy?

Turd. I am glad he didn't take the offer. Enjoy growing old with the rest of the Phillies roster.Agreed; that quote puts Rollins on my list. It's one thing to decide you don't want to play in Milwaukee, or anywhere else; that's why they call it free agency. It's one thing to reveal that you turned down somebody's offer; nobody (presumably) signed a confidentiality agreement. But it's another thing entirely to boast about a generous offer and then say you couldn't have seen yourself playing for the team. It's basically, "Yeah, she asked me out, but she's ugly." I guess all that money does its work on a guy's ego. But when your skills are declining, and you were just lucky enough to have your number come up at the right time, you might be better off just expressing your gratitude and then shutting up.

Several people have talked about playing Aoki in (I'm paraphrasing) "one of the corner OF spots." If he supposedly doesn't have the arm for CF (which I agree shouldn't necessarily preclude playing him there), he certainly doesn't have the arm for RF, right? His only possible positions are LF and CF. At those projected numbers, I love him as a 4th of / challenger to Plush. I'd trade Plush for a good return of something we needed, because the sell-high thing has a lot of merit if you can pull it off. But from a pure baseball standpoint, I'm happy to have him. I would love to have that array of OFs. Bench power doesn't worry me; I'd rather have bench guys who don't make lots of outs, and with a little luck Green and Gindl will bring more power off the bench than we had last year.

Maybe this is wrong, but I don't expect Hart to age particularly well in his 30s. He has already lost his speed, he has been hurt quite a bit, and pretty soon he's likely to need a move to 1b. At this point he's a real "old player skills" guy. For what we're paying him now, and given the team's needs, I love having him. I wouldn't be shopping him now, although of course I'd pay attention if someone came around with an indecent proposal. But I suspect that, unless he somehow stinks up the joint the next two years (which I don't expect), his next contract won't be a good deal.

You've said this a few times. You may be right, but you have to remember that he hurt his wrist. What he did last year fits the pattern of a lot of hitters who have that injury, as I understand it. They struggle to hit for any power for a couple of years, then they come back strong. I think that fact has to figure prominently in any analysis of what Green has done since 2008. Then again, I said the same thing about Brad Nelson, so what do I know?

I like it. McGehee was completely superfluous for us with the Ramirez acquisition. We need some supporting players -- a couple of bullpen arms, backup IF, backup OF. Veras fits nicely in the middle of the pen. He definitely seems to have thrived from the switch in leagues after 2009. Despite feeling lukewarm about the Ramirez move, I'm generally happy with the way the infield picture is coming together. Green should still get quite a bit of PT. Gamel looks like our 1b starter. We have a decent defender where it matters most. DM has proved that he was paying attention while Casey and Yuni were stinking up the league. That said, 2012 is a new year, and I would love to see Casey come back strong. He had a couple of nice years and then a really tough ride last year. Best of luck to him.