gregmag

I'm going to provide my ritual defense of Cards fans here. They really are friendly, engaged, and knowledgeable. I'm sure they say stupid things on sports talk radio, but everybody does; it's one of the reasons I never listen to sports talk radio anywhere. The St. Louis media types seem pretty thick and entitled, LaRussa's a world-class tool, and I'm no big fan of Albert personally, but I lived in Philly for almost a decade, and these are some great fans in St. Louis. Of course they love Albert -- what, you wouldn't love him if he played for the Brewers? St. Louis reminds me more than any other place I've lived of Milwaukee. People here are pretty down to earth, and they work hard. I'll be bummed for them when they lose their star player to New York or Chicago, just like I was bummed for us when we lost Molitor.

Great news. This is a highly rational deal -- I can't imagine how the years, dollars, and conditions could make a lot more sense. Congratulations to Rickie Weeks and the Brewers.

Briggs has the circumstances exactly right. I too miss the AL. I like the DH. Baseball has specialized over time; I can't fathom the interest in watching pitchers hit, or the endless parade of pinch-hitters. Anyway, the other thing that annoyed me about the move was something Invader3k said: the AL Central is a much easier division because it's smaller. Putting an additional team in a competitive division seriously undercuts any given team's chances at the postseason. I have no doubt the Brewers would have been better off staying in the AL, notwithstanding my feelings about the DH. Of course I live in St. Louis now and get to see the Brewers a lot, so I take back everything I just said.

Briggs, you may be right, but when the Cardinals won without Pujols, they won with Stan Musial or Steve Carlton or . . . okay, occasionally you can do it with Willie McGee, but you get my point. Just because a team has had great success in the past is no reason to think it will in the future (cf. Baltimore, and KC), and when you get one of those guys you don't usually replace him easily. Pujols is the best player in baseball. He has an incredibly broad and deep skill set, and he's insanely consistent. I don't think you can soft-sell the downside of losing him. On the other hand, I agree with you that a point comes when you strangle yourself financially by giving a player what he's worth. The point about Pujols' earlier hometown discount strikes me as very sound. Players always get paid less than market value early in their careers (well, unless they truly stink) and more than market value later. That's how the CBA structures leverage. I don't think Pujols' demand is unreasonable within the structure of baseball economics. The Cardinals just need to decide whether they can build around him at that price. BTW, Cardinals fans really are pretty great. I've learned to hate LaRussa, Pujols, and some of the media crew, but people at Busch, in general, are friendly and seriously into baseball. It has been a nice change from Philly.

FWIW, here's why I don't like stats like that: (1) Small sample. (2) Stats skewed by age. All players are declining at age 35, most of them very rapidly, lots of them falling off the table every year. I don't mean to insult Kotsay; that he's even playing at 35 says a lot for him. But a stat that he built up as a younger man has little relevance for a 35 year-old. (3) Hitter vs. team stats are shaky because the pitchers change up so much that the matchups, over several years, verge on random. Every once in a while a hitter really seems to "get" a particular park. That's a hard phenomenon to prove statistically, but it's meaningful if you can figure it out. So no, I don't think those stats are at all useful. I don't see how anybody who wants the Brewers to win could prefer Mark Kotsay on the 25-man roster over Mat Gamel, or even over Chris Dickerson if it comes to that. But obviously a lot of smart people think otherwise, so maybe I'm missing something. I'm willing to bet that, if the Brewers do end up winning anything, one (or both) of those two guys will end up making a bigger contribution than Kotsay. It would be a different question if Kotsay could still play a strong CF, or could play any other skill position, but I don't see any evidence that he can. This is another one of those signings that seems to be about the mythical value of veteran experience, with absolutely nothing real to back it up.

Okay, MN Brew -- I disagree. Always respectfully, but strongly in this case. Just because something doesn't happen often, that doesn't make a small sample size bigger. 50 or 70 is a statistically small number, whether it represents a week's worth of events or two years' worth. As for treating a walk as a failure in an RBI situation . . . I just don't know what to say. Getting on base is better than not getting on base. Walks are good. Briggs, and you, can cite whatever stats you want to; nobody can tell you what to say or not say. But these particular stats, in my humble opinion, have serious problems as evidence of what you're trying to argue. Beyond that, and I'm not directing this at you, I'll just say that I have tremendous respect for people with a lot of baseball knowledge and the talent to express that knowledge well, but after a while I lose patience with anyone who consistently refuses to listen to, or engage with, other knowledgeable folks' differing viewpoints.

This is exactly the point I wanted to bring up. For purposes of Weeks' next contract, his injury history matters if (a) it gives us reason to think he's going to get hurt in the future, and/or (b) it has sufficiently cut his playing time that we don't really have a basis for deciding how good he is when healthy. I personally don't think (b) is a problem; he hasn't exactly been consistent, but he generally has put wins on the board when healthy, and he appears to have improved various elements of his game over time, which comports with his work ethic. I think the real issue is (a). I'm not very confident about predicting future health based on past injuries, and I'm not sure anybody is. That may be what's making this negotiation so difficult: Weeks' camp is probably saying "he's healthy now"; the Brewers are probably saying "he's likely to get hurt at the same rate he has in the past"; and nobody has a fully credible way to resolve the disagreement.

Apples and oranges. Pitchers throw fewer CGs now because managers have refined bullpen roles (maybe too much, but that's another discussion). Getting on base has always been critical to winning baseball games. It's a necessary skill, not a strategic choice. There has never been a time when getting on base wasn't the most important element in a baseball offense. History bears this out to a greater extent than you acknowledge; there are plenty of "OBP stars" from earlier eras. So I don't see how you can call the value of OBP a recent discovery, but even if it is -- so what? We know more now than we did 30 years ago, and I hope that people in 30 years will know more than we do. I don't think we should discount our assessment of the past based on what people (allegedly) didn't know at the time.

Standards change and -- we have to hope -- improve as people have more time to figure things out. We have now figured out that OBP is the single most important component of a player's offensive contribution. I would think, then, that OBP would be the first stat we look at now when evaluating a hitter's HoF qualifications (really second, after plate appearances). It certainly should be, IMHO. As for the DH issue, I have never understood the assertion that "resting" between ABs makes a player a better hitter. If that were true, then hitters would routinely get better when they DH, but that doesn't happen. A lot of guys, of course, get hurt less after moving to DH, but I don't think that's a mark against them. The real reason to downgrade DHs is that they don't help their teams win on defense. But that's a factor we can measure and assess. A hitter as good as Edgar Martinez can win a lot of games for his team without playing in the field. Would he really have been worth more if he had spent ten years playing a mediocre left field? I don't see how.

Rock Co -- please forgive me for being contrary . . . I agree that Bagwell and Allen have some important similarities. They both played at a high level for 15 seasons. They both won rookie of the year and MVP awards. I also agree that Allen was a slightly better hitter, in context, than Bagwell. Even so, I think the comparison only underscores why Bagwell should be a shoo-in. First of all, I think there's a pretty strong consensus that Allen's numbers are good enough to put him in the Hall, or at least to put him in the discussion. The reason he isn't in is that, by most accounts, he was one of the most notorious clubhouse cancers in baseball history, a guy who actually cost his team wins because of his attitude and behavior. I'm very sensitive to the hazards of making amorphous claims like that, especially about black players who played in an age of rampant racism, but what I've read (see the Allen entry in Bill James' Historical Abstract) persuades me that his lack of character should count against him. Second, while Allen was a better hitter than Bagwell, it wasn't a huge gap (156 OPS+ to 149), and there are some important factors that cut in Bagwell's favor: (1) More of Bagwell's value came through OBP (Bagwell: .408 OBP / .540 SLG; Allen, .378 / .534), and OPS undervalues the relative importance of OBP. (2) While both guys played 15 seasons, Bagwell played 401 more games than Allen (2150 to 1749) -- 27 games per season. That's enormous. I'd much rather have 149 OPS+ guy for 144 games a year than 156 OPS+ guy for 117, which is how their totals average out. (3) Assuming Bagwell didn't use steroids, he put up great numbers clean during an era when a lot of his rivals were using. That means that, to the extent we consider steroids an illegitimate factor in the game of that era, the league OPS was artificially inflated, and thus Bagwell's OPS+ understates his value by "clean" standards. If we're going to penalize the juicers in HoF voting, shouldn't we elevate the clean players who prevailed against them? Third (not really related to Allen), I just don't see how Bagwell's raw numbers don't scream "shoo-in." .297/.408/.540? 449 home runs? I absolutely agree with your premise that we should view players' achievements in context, but to the extent we just eyeball numbers, Bagwell clearly (IMHO) weighs in as a HoF quality player. But to put it in better context, let's focus on OPS+. I agree with you that Dawson shouldn't be in, and I'm also not a fan of Perez and Rice as HoFers. On the other hand, I certainly think Dave Winfield, Reggie Jackson, and Eddie Murray belong in the Hall. I just tossed off those names without looking them up; let's see how I did. Winfield: 2973 games, 130 OPS+. Jackson: 2820 games, 139 OPS+. Murray: 3026 games, 129 OPS+. That's sort of what I expected. Those guys had substantially longer careers than Bagwell, but they were substantially inferior hitters. Of course a longer career means that less of it is peak, which mitigates the difference somewhat. To address that problem, let's look at top 3 full seasons; again, I haven't peeked. Bagwell: 213 (strike season), 178, 168. Winfield: 166, 159, 154. Jackson: 189, 172, 166. Murray: 158, 156, 156 (he actually put up four straight 156s). I'm not saying any of this is conclusive. You could very well argue that Bagwell's career was simply too short to warrant comparison with the deserving recent HoF sluggers I'm citing. But Bagwell played as many games as, or more than, Orlando Cepeda, Larry Doby (lost time to segregation, but was still only 23 as a rookie), Ralph Kiner, Kirby Puckett, or Ryne Sandberg (Sandberg actually played 14 more games than Bagwell), and he had a substantially better OPS+ than any of those guys except Kiner (tied at 149), who played the fewest games of the group (1472). Granted, Doby, Puckett, and Sandberg close some of the gap with defensive value, but Bagwell was no slouch as a 1b. To my eyes, Bagwell was a better hitter over his career and a better hitter at his peak than the recent crop of elite corner-position sluggers, and his career was as long as, and better than, a bunch of other worthy HoFers. I think Bagwell has a very good case.

I can see it. Hart, McGehee, and Weeks all just had their best years to date. In each case there's a decent reason to believe the improvement is legit, but a projection system generally won't bet on a player in his late 20s to replicate a career year. Fielder and Weeks have both now had two years out of three that aren't great by their high standards, which makes it hard to project that they'll bounce back to top form. Lucroy should improve, and Betancourt probably should hit more than Escobar did last year, but those improvements figure to be modest. CF . . . who knows.

This is absolutely right, as far as it goes, but I think it misses an essential point. Doug Melvin can't do anything about whether or not Fielder bounces back. Fielder is our first baseman, and he's going to do what he's going to do. Improving at shortstop, or at least making a concrete effort to do so, is within Melvin's power (assuming Attanasio hasn't locked the checkbook, which he may well have). The two factors are apples and oranges. Also, as logan just pointed out, nobody is saying Betancourt makes the Brewers "dead in the water." I think what those of us who strongly disapprove of Betancourt are saying, for the most part, is: Here's a guy who appears likely to be quite bad; replacing him offers possibly the best and easiest opportunity we have to improve the team further; therefore, DM should do whatever he can to upgrade.

A poster (I can't recall who at this moment) earlier on argued that we should ignore defensive stats, and he didn't really provide a justification for the position (which, of course, doesn't mean he's wrong). That was the basis for my "just because" remark. John Briggs said in an earlier post that the general hostility against Betancourt, which he considered an overreaction, made him more inclined to defend Betancourt. That was the basis for my "admitting you're just being contrary" crack. As to spinning the numbers, I'm pretty sure you and I just disagree deeply and honestly about both the facts and how people are deploying them, so I'm going to leave it alone. The point about Betancourt's aging has to do with defense. As I read the numbers -- and I'm no certainly expert on defense, just a casual observer -- Betancourt appears to have lost substantial range after his first couple of years in the majors. For players to lose speed and/or defensive range in their late (sometimes even mid-) 20s isn't unusual. At least a couple of people have raised his better defensive performance earlier in his career as a reason to have some faith in him, and IMHO that argument mistakenly ignores the likelihood that aging accounts for the difference.

I make no presumption when it comes to Bagwell and steroids, but if I'm reading the arguments right, the folks who think Bagwell was juiced are making an especially strong claim. The claim is that (a) Bagwell had no real power before steroids, (b) steroids caused his power to spike, and © (this is implicit) the spike lasted his whole career. That would be unprecedented, wouldn't it? As far as we know, what generally happened with steroids was either that the user was already a great power hitter and then juiced anyway for God only knows what reason (Bonds) or that the user wasn't a power hitter, juiced, and experienced a temporary power spike (Caminiti). I haven't focused on this, but I can't recall any case where a guy is thought to have owed his whole career as a power hitter to steroids. Maybe that's what happened with Bagwell. Or maybe he juiced early in his career, got the power spike from the juice, and then went on to develop more "natural" power that sustained his power later (with or without a chemical boost). But I think the unusual character of the claim about Bagwell should at least lead us to think a bit more about what we have reason to believe happened to him. BTW, I'm really not trying to argue "for" Bagwell. If he juiced, he should be treated the same as others who did, barring some extenuating circumstance or explanation. What worries me, obviously, is how we (and more importantly the HoF voters) should approach the question whether a given player used steroids. I also think that, if a guy who hasn't been publicly accused of steroid use is being denied because the voters believe he used steroids, then somebody owes us an explanation. Yes, such an explanation could trigger a defamation suit, but for that reason the BBWA institutionally should issue the explanation and defend the suit. IMHO it's cowardly to make a very public, very consequential decision based on nonpublic information and then keep quiet about the cause and effect.

I didn't get in on this thread before, but Robert R obviously gets the prize for prediction, and he pretty much nailed what I think. I'm thrilled for Blyleven after too long a wait. Raines should be in. Larkin and Trammell should be in. I also think McGriff, Bagwell, and probably Martinez should be in. Nobody talks about McGriff, but he played well into the 'roids era and hit 493 home runs. Three things, I think, are working against him. First, he was a lot like Eddie Murray -- insanely consistent over a long career, but never having that one breakout season that would put him at the top of the heap. I don't think that should be a negative for him; year after year, he kept putting runs on the board. But I think it makes his accomplishments less vivid in people's memories. Second, he moved around a lot and played for a bunch of nondescript teams. Third, and most interesting, I think he's caught in a 'roid era double bind. Five hundred homers used to be an automatic ticket to the Hall; 493 would have been close enough to force a guy into the discussion. But now a bunch of guys have hit 500 homers with chemical assistance, so that benchmark is (temporarily or permanently) dead. What should be happening is that McGriff should be getting credit as one of the best clean sluggers of his era (unless somebody knows something about him that I don't, but he was thin for a slugger his whole career). Instead, he has lost the benefit of a standard that he honored while others were trashing it. Bagwell . . . is there any credible evidence that he used steroids? If not, he's a no-brainer. Martinez is a little tougher because he spent so much time as a DH. But his raw numbers certainly put him in the discussion -- he was every bit the hitter Bagwell was. Given that he's at least very close, I'm inclined to put a thumb on the scale because the Mariners jerked him around until he was 27. I'm not going to put a guy in for things he didn't do, but Martinez was so good for so long that I think losing his early years (when he also had defensive value) helps to push me in his favor. Personally, I would take all three of those guys over Dawson, Rice, or Perez (or Parker), and I don't think it's especially close. Bagwell and Martinez were far superior hitters, and McGriff was somewhat superior. I don't think Dawson's defensive value, let alone Rice's, boosts them enough to close the gap.

As I read this discussion, the most forceful arguments in favor of giving Betancourt a shot boil down to (a) refusing to believe evidence because . . . well, just because; (b) admitting you're just being contrary; © isolating every spinnably good number over the course of his career and ignoring everything else; and/or (d) pretending he hasn't aged. I'm not knocking anybody's rhetorical skills here -- Betancourt should be paying anybody who can do that well by him. IMHO, if you don't believe Betancourt is bad, then you have a level of faith in the inherent goodness of all things that I admire but don't share. I remember Bill James once wrote about Charlie Moore as a RF, "So he can throw; big deal. Everybody does something well." That's how I feel about the fact that Betancourt has above-average power for a middle infielder. If the Brewers want to win, they need a real shortstop.

I hate that he went to my least favorite team, but I wish him the best. He always seemed like a great guy -- smart, funny, happy to be in Milwaukee -- and he showed a lot of character coming back from a second catastrophic injury. As others have pointed out from the Brewers' side, coming back here made no sense from Cappy's side either. He wants a rotation spot, and he deserves his shot at it. He doesn't want to be a sixth starter.

Al, I'm curious why you say that Schafer looks far better to you than Komatsu. I'm not asking because I necessarily disagree with you -- I'm not sure -- but you seem to think the difference is large, and I'd like to know your thinking. I'd be interested in others' views on this question as well, because it's obviously a pretty important issue moving forward. Schafer is a year older than Komatsu; they both played their age 22 seasons, their most recent full seasons, at Brevard. Schafer hit .313/.369/.446 in 2009 (and then basically lost last year to injury); Komatsu hit .321/.411/.440 in 2010. Komatsu had a fairly substantial edge in plate discipline and base stealing; Schafer had a clear but not huge edge in power. Komatsu had a slightly higher BABIP, .356 to .341. I don't know much about either player's defense; I know I've heard more over time about Schafer's tools generally. Both guys had more PAs in those age-22 seasons than in the rest of their minor league careers put together, Schafer by quite a bit, so we don't have much other performance data to work from. The numbers actually make Komatsu look pretty good in the comparison; I would have expected greater gaps in power and age/performance, before I checked, but overall the two seem pretty close, with Komatsu seeming to merit a slight edge. Now, it's just one year's worth of data for each guy; it's a nice comparison -- same age, same level, a year apart -- but scouting insights certainly could outweigh these numbers. So what do people think?

I'm sorry, but just to clarify, you aren't suggesting that this is some novel concern that only you and a few others understand, are you? Because LH/RH balance gets discussed a lot . . . people may sometimes disagree about relative prioritization of, say, handedness balance and OBP/SLG balance, but I'm pretty sure handedness balance is one of the most prominent topics in most discussions of lineup construction, here and everywhere else.

That isn't fair, IMHO, and Russ's analysis strikes me as sound. First of all, focusing on OBP always makes a good bit of sense, because OBP is the single most important component of a player's offensive contribution. Second, focusing on Betancourt's (or any lineup addition's) OBP in the context of the Brewers seems to me to make even more sense than usual, because I would say the team as currently constructed needs OBP at the margin more than it needs SLG (the other major component of a player's offensive contribution). Finally, there's nothing at all wrong or sneaky about using the strongest available piece of evidence to illustrate a point that the evidence in general bears out. Russ's characterization of Betancourt's offense may or may not have been a mere "preconceived notion" (who knows), but objectively it's a characterization with a lot to back it up. Betancourt's OBP has been very poor, and -- as Russ pointed out in the same post you're quoting to criticize -- his modicum of power isn't enough to project (per ZIPS) even a league-average OPS. Should a shortstop who, based on the best available evidence, (a) is below-average offensively, (b) is below-average defensively, and © is past the age when most players get better be starting for anybody? I can't see why he should be.

I apologize if I missed a link to this earlier in the thread, but here's a commentary from Fangraphs: http://www.fangraphs.com/...ung-players-for-greinke/ The writer, and some seemingly informed commenters, are a lot less high on Cain than a lot of us here are.

Greinke is in the conversation for best pitcher in baseball. Yo isn't. Yo's a level-headed, bright guy, but even if he weren't, he'd know Greinke is now the team's best pitcher.

One reason may be that in football, players come through college programs that give you a pretty good sense of who the players are going to be. In baseball, the quality of information about young players isn't as great. To put a less sunny face on the same point, in baseball, pro teams have to invest in players before they know for sure what they're getting. Nobody likes to cut bait on a big investment. I don't really know anything about football, so I can't assess your premise fully. I would say, though, that the baseball side of your premise seems a bit slanted to me. After all, sometimes baseball players make good on their later chances, and sometimes baseball players never or only belatedly get the chances they deserve. I don't see baseball as sending out an endless parade of retreads who don't deserve to be playing.

This is really interesting, because we must now have the worst system in baseball, or close to it. As Igor said, that's fine; we got there in the best of all possible ways, by graduating some guys and trading some for impact talent. So now we can invert our usual priorities: the big league team should be terrific, and the farm system should go through an interesting rebuilding process. If the system ccan get back to, say, top 20 status a year from now, I'd say that's a huge accomplishment. Probably unrealistic, but something to shoot for. I agree with Paul about Genett and Davis, and I would add something else -- prospects become major league contributors through a combination of talent and opportunity. Talent is a challenge to judge; opportunity just happens. A lot of guys in our system are going to have opportunities now, and I bet at least a few of them will make us think better of their talents in the near future.

There is absolutely no tangible reason to believe that he'll be an adequate piece of what this team is now trying to be -- a championship-caliber team. We're already going with a young catcher who may or may not hit much and a marginal CF platoon. Now, I'm okay with both of those things, and the second one could change; and sure, Betancourt could have everything break right for him and be nearly average. But there are probably ten guys spinning their wheels in the high minors who could be had for not much and who would project to do what Betancourt will probably do (and no, I don't know who they are, because I'm not informed enough; but that's why they call Betancourt's likely contribution "replacement level"). If at all possible, he needs to be relegated to plan B status. BTW, I think DM took him because the Royals wanted to dump his salary and he's technically a major-league shortstop. At least this way, when DM goes shopping for a better option, teams won't try to mug him on the ground that he has nobody.