DuWayne Steurer

I like Sellers, and was just coming in here to bring up his name. Yes, he put up some power numbers in a league in which they don't really mean a whole lot, but he takes a fair share of walks, and I liked the little bit I've read about his glove. An average fielding ss who could put up a .330 OBP with even a hint of power would be a nice upgrade over Betencourt for next year.

If he actually benches Yuni B and gives Hairston a shot at playing short for the rest of the year, I'll take back some of the bad things I've ever said about him.

My issue is less anxiety, and more of a slow simmering anger that we continue to see McGehee/Betancourt in the 5/6 spots every day. We bunt/waste an out, with Braun and Fielder coming up. Betencourt hitting into a double play last night first pitch swinging on an almost unhittable pitch with the bases loaded and one out. But what really makes me angry is something I brought up in the in game thread. We all have friends and family and co workers who are at best, casual baseball fans. And right now, the 'same old Brewers/chokers' line is getting over used, and this team isn't giving me any ground to stand on right now to argue the point. Yes, they *should* still hold onto the division with a 6 game lead with 15 to go, but it's NOT over, and it's not a given. The Cards are hot right now, and the Brewers are not. To put it another way, if the Brewers continue to stink, and let's say go 5 - 10 the rest of the way, the Cards can go 12 - 5, and tie it up. That's not at all 'impossible'. Is it improbable? Yeah, but not impossible. And it's hard to ignore, given the way the two teams are playing right now.

I was sick of people saying it was 'over'. I"m not predicting 'doomsday', I said I still don't see them losing the division, but I'm tired of people saying there's nothing to worry about, and that it's over. The Cardinals are hot, and the Brewers flat out suck right now, and 6 games is NOT insurmountable in 2 1/2 weeks worth of games.

Why is it that since 2007, the Brewers continuously choose to play their very worst baseball in September? I HATE HATE HATE my friends and co-workers who say crap like "Yup, same old Brewers", but by God, this IS the same old Brewers. I really hope the 'it's over', and the 'there is NO reason to panic' crowd will let people panic now. The Crew is on the verge of getting swept at home by a team that's not using 3 of their top offensive players, and it's the team we'll almost certainly be facing in the first round, IF they manage to hang on to a playoff spot. I still think it will be difficult to blow the 6 game lead, but they've managed to give 4 1/2 games back in the space of 5 days. It's certainly feasible to give the remaining 6 back over the next 17 days. And Bill James can shove his stupid 'clinch' calculator where the sun don't shine.

Nice to see the ol' classic Narvy meltdown against a team missing 3 of it's 4 best hitters in their starting lineup. Poor defense or not, Narveson couldn't make a pitch to save his life in that inning once he got 2 outs.

That Phillies lineup looks like one of our "Sunday Specials". C'mon Narveson, you can get through 6 and allow 1 run here, we can take this.

That's actually debatable, given some of Roenicke's comments on Yuni B. And no, I don't expect RRR to throw Yuni "under the bus" but at the same time, there's comments (and the fact he continually has batted him 6th) that would at least make it arguable that Roenicke knows that Yuni is a terrible hitter.

SO Carpenter said "F U" first. So what? Morgan's reaction was completely unnecessary. Yes, Pujols should have stayed out of it. Yes, Carpenter should keep his mouth shut. But let's be honest here: Morgan never shuts up. He's constantly talking/running his mouth. And that's fine. He just shouldn't be surprised when someone reacts like Carpenter supposedly did after the strikeout. Does anyone think Carpenter reacts that way if he strikes out Braun? Hart? Or anyone else NOT named Nyjer Morgan at that juncture?

It's a small enough sample that I'd have to say it's a ..........small sample problem. At least at this point. There's nothing to suggest he should do so poorly against lefties, so I'd guess it's just bad luck to some degree.

Morgan was barking the second he struck out. I think his version of events is a little colored by his own perception.

Or unless Doug Melvin puts a guy on the roster. Honestly, I just can't buy that comment. You only get to be a Brewer if they let you? Unless you have some insight into the clubhouse that no one else here has, I think this is just a baseless statement that's far more of a guess than it is a factual statement, which it's presented as.

You fully admit you can't really say everything stays the same except for Marcum, but you're saying it anyway and making a declaration about the result in a false scenario. In your false scenario, where you're just substituting numbers and there's no ramifications, yes, you're perfectly right. In any scenario that considers the ramifications (because you would have to), you might be right, but you're likely not as comfortably right. I think Marcum's biggest value was the first month and a half of the season, when Greinke was hurt and Gallardo was getting knocked around, Marcum felt like our stopper. Without him we likely had an even worse start and then who knows what happens after that. Yes, Lawrie looks like a player as exciting as Braun was/is. But we're seeing the effect good pitching has now. I'll take the trade off of at least 2 years of good pitching, versus having Lawrie come up and give us another bat, but no pitching. I don't know how any more plainly I can say that there's no way to measure the trickle down from not having Marcum, but I don't believe that it's a net loss of a full 10 wins. I'm not even saying I don't like Marcum, or that I disapprove of the trade, or that we're not a better team with him than we'd be with Lawrie. I'm ONLY saying that I don't believe the difference between Marcum and pitcher(s) X is 10 wins.

With guys like Yuni, it's "he has been hitting the ball hard" (which is complete and utter bullcrap) and with Taylor Green it's 'luck' when he gets a hit. It ***almost*** makes me think RRR doesn't want these kids to do well, so people can't second guess the decision to not bring them up sooner. I doubt RRR wants the kids to fail, but it takes a lot to dissuade him from his confirmation bias negatively toward rookies, as well as positively toward veterans. I agree, that's why I said *almost*. There's plenty of managers and GM's out there that have that 'vet' bias, but it's pretty up front and blatant with RRR.

With guys like Yuni, it's "he has been hitting the ball hard" (which is complete and utter bullcrap) and with Taylor Green it's 'luck' when he gets a hit. It ***almost*** makes me think RRR doesn't want these kids to do well, so people can't second guess the decision to not bring them up sooner.

And going to Philly to get curb stomped in the playoffs with Wolf as our #3 and a burnt out bullpen. Wolf hasn't exactly been terrible this year, by any means. And the bullpen being 'burnt out' if we had a guy routinely going 5 -6 instead of Marcum's 6 or 7 is debatable. Asking the bullpen to pick up another 35 innings shouldn't be 'burnout' inducing.

During the first inning when Yuni B came up with bases loaded 2 outs, I said to my wife and neighbor, "10 bucks says he pops out to the infield on the first or 2nd pitch". Nobody paid me though. They said it was too predictable.

The Brewers are 10 games up. Someone said without Marcum we'd not be headed for the playoffs. I replaced Marcum's innings with a 5.25 ERA, and that's 40 more runs allowed. I'm not going to try to figure out who replaces who, what, where, why, when and how. There's no way you can measure the Brewers expected W/L based on that, seeing as we're already pretty far ahead of the pythagorean. I'm simply replacing Marcum's innings with 170 replacement innings, regardless if it's 130 from Dave Bush and 40 from a replacement level reliever, doesn't matter. ALL ELSE being equal, if you replace Marcum with crap, the Brewers would still be 6 games up. Of course the problem would be that it would be impossible to say "All else remaing equal" because not having Marcum would have other unknown ramifications on the team (Bullpen usage, salary used elsewhere, etc). I feel comfortable that without Marcum that we would still be in the race; I just have no idea how close the race would be. The offseason could have progressed so much differently it really doesn't pay to speculate where the Brewers would be if they had never completed that trade. In hindsight if they could have found a different starter similar to Marcum that didn't require giving up Lawrie that would have been the best of both worlds; not sure that was possible though. Plugging in Lawrie at 3rd instead of McGehee would be amazing. This is precisely why I have to make the argument "all else being equal". It's impossible to measure the effect of not having Marcum *except* to give a number to the runs allowed in the innings he pitched that others would replace. Would it have a trickle down effect on the bullpen? Maybe, maybe not. Would it have affected getting Greinke? Maybe, maybe not. The only thing that we can for sure measure is the amount of runs X pitcher(s) would surrender in Marcum's innings, and how many wins (pythagorean) we'd have less because of it. I'm not at all discounting the other factors, but trying to measure them is an exercise in futility. Even so, I strongly disagree with the notion that without Marcum, this team is not playoff bound. Marcum's been very good, but he's not a 10 game difference maker by himself.

The difference between Marcum and Estrada is almost assuredly not 9 1/2 wins. EDIT: Because I didn't want to figure out what the difference would be between Estrada and some other random pitcher. So I decided instead to just replace Marcum with a Dave Bush type. A 5.25 ERA in those 176.1 innings results in 40 more runs allowed, or, 4 less wins, on average. We'd still be standing, in theory, 6 games ahead of the Cards. Well yes, except the Brewers on a talent basis aren't 10 wins better than the Cardinals right now. There is almost no difference between the Cardinals and Brewers except luck and perhaps Axford.The Brewers are 10 games up. Someone said without Marcum we'd not be headed for the playoffs. I replaced Marcum's innings with a 5.25 ERA, and that's 40 more runs allowed. I'm not going to try to figure out who replaces who, what, where, why, when and how. There's no way you can measure the Brewers expected W/L based on that, seeing as we're already pretty far ahead of the pythagorean. I'm simply replacing Marcum's innings with 170 replacement innings, regardless if it's 130 from Dave Bush and 40 from a replacement level reliever, doesn't matter. ALL ELSE being equal, if you replace Marcum with crap, the Brewers would still be 6 games up.

The difference between Marcum and Estrada is almost assuredly not 9 1/2 wins. EDIT: Because I didn't want to figure out what the difference would be between Estrada and some other random pitcher. So I decided instead to just replace Marcum with a Dave Bush type. A 5.25 ERA in those 176.1 innings results in 40 more runs allowed, or, 4 less wins, on average. We'd still be standing, in theory, 6 games ahead of the Cards.

I'll never question Bill James' baseball genius, but it seems like he's not quite clear on the definition of the word 'clinch'. How can you go from 'clinched', meaning 'to settle a matter decisively' to not clinched? To me, 'clinched' means there's absolutely zero mathematical chance that the outcome will now change. I'm not even asking if it's ever happened before. There doesn't have to be a precedent for something to be possible.

I'm not sure either. You'd think until it's actually clinched, it would be like 99.9% or something. The 1995 Angels were standing at 99.9% on August 24th, went 11 and 24 the rest of the way, and didn't make the playoffs. That's the only 99.9% playoff odds team that didn't make the playoffs, at least at coolstandings.com. However, even just recently, the 2009 Tigers, 2007 Mets, and 2003 Mariners were all at one point, over 95%, and failed to reach the playoffs. That's why last week when the lead dropped to 7 1/2 after the St. Louis sweep, I wanted people to stop saying 'it's over' with absolute definition there. It's almost assuredly over, but nothing's over until it's clinched.

http://sports-boards.net/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=7453&d=1315264154 When are the Cardinals going to make up that 1/3rd of a game?

So I'm looking at this in closer detail, and as a disclaimer, I like WAR a lot, and I use it often. But the Braun/Kemp comparison shows me one of the problems with it. Kemp gets a positional boost because he plays CF, but he plays it poorly. Braun plays LF, and plays it at a mediocre level. I have no doubt that Braun could play CF as well as Kemp. Kemp shouldn't get a boost just because he plays in CF, and produces like a LF, rather he should be downgraded for playing poorly at a premium defensive position. Now I also realize that Kemp's +10 runs this year defensively, but I think we all know that he's no +10 center fielder out there.

It'll be interesting to see if Braun can hang onto the SLG crown. He's certainly not what you'd call a 'traditional' power hitter. He's not at all what you'd classify as a big guy, not to mention that his SLG% this year is driven heavily by his batting average and his doubles. He's 'only' homering about 5.5% of his at bats, or once every 18 at bats.