igor67

Ok so there was something of a minor storm of positive feeling heading into the home opener, but it didn't seem to greatly impact attendance. At what point do people start to get a little bit more interested? We've got a long home stand (11 games-4 series) coming up after Houston. Is taking 3 of 4 fom Houston enough to get people interested in the 2 games above .500 Brewers? I wouldn't expect a bandwagon or anything, but maybe some people deciding it might be worth it to see a game in April?

Nice shot Chris, going straight for the gut. Forrest Martin two 7K outings. Looks like an early candidate for a breakout. Nice to see Sweet Lou continuing with the bat.

Well Wes is getting a bigtime assist between Barry's day off and leading off with Neifi Perez??? The Giants seem indifferent to winning today.

How on earth can you rate Bailey ahead of Adenhart if their stuff is that close, but Adenhart has substantially better command? The difference between a 95 and a 96 mph fastball is nothing compared to being able to set-up hitters and hit your spots consistently.

Well Enrique's defense is a bit disappointing, but it's nice to see that he has some life in that stick. Does Brad feel compelled to outslug Prince? Man wouldn't that be fun to watch. Last year Hart was responsible for a lot of early errors, but did manage to get better, if Enrique and Weeks can duplicate that sort of improvement I think everyone will be quite pleased.

Well I took a peak at some of those stats. It maybe too early to identify long term trends and projections, but it certainly isn't too early to let the stats confirm or deny our early impressions of what has happened. 1) The Crew slugging over .500 as a team. I don't think that surprises too many people we've seen quite a few HR and doubles so far plus Geoff's 2 triple masterpiece. 2) Brewers are posting a team .370 OBP. Again we've seen men on base constantly. 3) Team OPS with men on base is over .100 points higher than overall. Huh?? but they've stranded so many.... 4) Team OPS with runners in scoring position is over .100 points lower than overall total. There we go. Except the OPS total is still well over .750 So what does this really mean has happened? In general the offense is playing significantly over it's head. If we Slg .500 or better I'm sure we'll hit 81 wins, but that's just not going to happen. .450 sure, but unless I'm mistaken Jenkins is the only guy who has ever Sluged better than .500 for an entire season so. Similarily a .370 OBP seems awfully high for a team total. Maybe with everyone workign the count and such it's more realistic, but I'd expect atleast some regression towards say .350? As for the scoring position issue. This is a Clear indication of human misperception. 1st off the difference between OPS' with men on and in scoring position indicates we've hit a disproportionate number of HRs with men on 1st only and also generally hit well with a man on first. We do appear to have tailed off though when it comes to sealing the deal. But that ignores the fact that even including yesterday's bad performance we've done a solid overall job offensively as indicated by the actual OPS in that situation. More importantly it's only 80ABs! Seriously we talk about 60 being the minimum cut-off for an almost meaningful sample size for individual players with an entire team a couple of walks to load the bases twice today and a couple of grand slams and the number shoots up a 100 points or something. Overall there hasn't been anything that really has changed the season long projection for the offense. We expected a high OBP team without the dramatic finishing HR. And therein lies a huge perception problem when the team loses. If your up against a team with a pretty good pitcher and you scratch out 2 runs on 3 hits he pitched well! But with the Brewers it's more likely that you eek out 4 hits but add a couple of more walks to the total. Suddenly it seems like they had an opportunity almost every inning! And that's really the key by generating more "opportunities" even if the succeed at the same rate as a higher power team they will still "fail" more. Something to keep in mind. Personally I like the excitement with guys on base all the time, especially with someone like Brooks waiting around to pinch hit, if he duplicates last years performance he could win 5-6 games himself!

I don't think there's any shame in having been skeptical of Ben. Lot's of pitcher's never reach their potential, and Ben is getting to a now or never point. The fact he got focused and mad about his past performance is fine, that he did something about it is even better. Maybe he's got enough in his repitoire now between the 2 and 4 seamer, curve, and change-up that he can have atleast two working OK for him every start. Maybe he's finally gotten to the point that he knows what works for him. We can only hope, and anticipate his next start. How many victories were people predicting for April? Looking slightly ahead those Giant pitching match-ups don't frighten me at all. And now Worrell or Nen in the bullpen. Sure Bonds might take over a game, but regardless of how the last Astros game goes I feel good about that series.

Is Jeff Housman's secret some sort of Jamie Moyer yougner twin thing? I can't help but be skeptical. Still if he succeeds with an infield of Weeks, Barnwell, and Prince he's doing something right.

I wouldn't give up hope just yet on beloit Lend. I see a fair number of similarities to last years team very strong pitching and ?'s on offense. Last year they did nothing until Gwynn showed up and magically catalyzed things (considering what he hit that's pretty strange). I think there's more balance on this year's team and a number of guys that can hit fairly well like Palmisano, Ramirez, maybe Heether and Rottino could be interesting. Plus I think Trofholtz is way better as a lead-off man than Crabbe or Bibbs were. Murray might equal Terni's blackhole, but I don't think we've seen enough to have any idea what he can and can't do.

Nice to see Kade getting off to a good start. We mgiht justifiably still be skeptical of him, but between injuries, original potential, and being a catcher him developing into atleast a decent back-up catcher wouldn't be a total shock. Loved Ford's line. I think today earns an offical Brewerfan warm fuzzy.

Wow do the Cards look like they are in serious trouble or what? It's hardly time to panic or anything, but you just got your but handed to you and your dicey pitching looks absolutely diced with no hope for rest on the horizon until the next off day. I guess they can take solace in the fact that none of the top division talent has started off quickly, but I can only imagine some serious consideration is being made on roster moves already isn't it? I feel much less confident about the Astros series, since with their pitchers it feels like you have less of a fighting chance.

The first link report of the year, oh yeah just like crack baby.

I think a lot of the advanced metrics are pretty good, especially since they provide numers in runs. I liked defensive efficiency until a wise individual pointed out that all it really measures is the flyball tendency of the staff. Basically the difference in hit rate for fly balls vs. ground balls (flies ebing hits less frequently) tends to swamp out the effects of actual team defense.

It's hard to comprehend Magic number's this far out because there are a lot of "built" in losses since teams have to play each other and such. Simplistically it goes down 1 everytime we win, and one more whenever we pick up ground on the current second place team.

Well I could call it the Nick rule, but i used Griffin because he was the perfect example of a player who'd rate nearly a zero on Command, but would get about a 70 on his fastball. Guys like Wood and such may have been wild but had enough command to work with to improve. I like to envision success for a pitcher as Stuff * Command. A pitcher with Phenomenol stuff can be average with less command, while a guy with great command is "maximizing his stuff". I think thinking about it this way properly emphasizes all the aspects of pitching into a nice simple broad picture. For the record the Brewers need guys who can score potentially at 80% and above on my equation. That is high end starters. I think Weaver has enough Command to convert solid stuff into a high score. But in general we'll be looking for hihg stuff modest command guys that could improve.

Range Factor is fairly straight forward Geno. Just assissts + Putouts/ games. It is simply how often the guy makes a play. A variety of things can make it less than accurate in terms of true ability (namely how many chances he gets), but it has it's uses. Zone Rating unfortunately requires The BatComputer. I believe it's STATS Inc that collects the data. They divide up the field into zones and then assign each zone to particular fielders and count chances vs. success. It's problems include interpreting Astroturf data, unusual positioning (Bonds shift), and players making plays out of their assigned zones (the rangy SS who crosses over into third base territory and fires a Laser to first wouldn't recieve credit for making an outstanding play). A variety of more complicated methods are being used by various places, and they tend to agree on general player quality, but can find some interesting disagreements.

I'll back Colby on something more like a 50-50 split. It's the Colt Griffin rule. Command encompases control, but includes things like understanding how to pitch effectively. A guy with lvery little stuff or very little in the way of command is a longshot prospect no matter what, the difference being that if by some miracle one learns something he could be very good. To dump on Weaver for only having 3 major leauge average pitches isn't all that great of a critique. Most pitchers are lucky if they have one plus pitch (Jerred's fastball is a plus pitch) and an average one. Weaver has another average pitch to mix in there and with his command does so to great effect.

Well I can certainly imagine him getting another shot somewhere else with his defense, and if he's paying attention get a coaching job somewhere. Maybe work up to bullpen catcher?

OK some quick comments while enjoying the fact that the Brewers are alone in first for the the first time since my birthday in 1996. The bullpen results have been solid so far, but not dominating. The pitching overall has been league average, which isn't all that great considering the number of pen innings and we've only thrown are two best starters. I get away with saying League average because it's reasonable to project the Cards to score about 900 runs, or 5.5 per game. That said our offense clearly isn't going to keep going like this, and I agree that the pitching match-up clearly favors the Cards today.

I was kind of hoping we'd knock Morris out and have Larussa burn his pen early and help set us up for a nice advantage in the final game ofthe series, but having him keep Morris in to get shelled was plenty rewarding. 1st place is very nice if only for a day. Grieve saving the superflous spring training HRs for opening day was quality. Now we've got Williams vs. Davis which is an advantage to them, but after that it's their garbage vs. our garbage so who knows.

Nice of Tony to give us a little sporting chance by leading off with Womack! Maybe he'll bat the pitcher second followed by Matheny in Tomorrow's game.

Weaver might not be the second coming of Prior, but I have to wonder how you can turn down a player who's a near surefire lock to be an excellent #2 in the majors? His pitches might not be awesome, but there's a ton of guys with good fastballs, most of whom couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. Guys with plus-plus command at that age are very rare, And I'd much rather take that type of sterling command than a somewhat better raw fastball or breaking ball. Who knows he might even be capable of finding another pitch he could master?

Well in a small bit of good news I'm going to be able to make the Snappers game, guess I won't get to see everyone, but I am bringing 6 people! EDIT: Hey come on folks less than a month away sign up there's so many reasons to actually see both teams this year and you get to enjoy all our wacky company

I'm guessing they felt that they had an abundance of speedy CF types in the low minors and it was time to thin things out a bit and Melo lost out.

It would appear that Theordorkas and Cannon are this year's Eveland and Barnes the bigger names to follow. Cannon really sounds like he could be another big bat, or perhaps Bill Scott. Interesting that despite your positivity a couple of the players already are showing signs they might not be ready for prime time. Still nothing like seeing a lot of pitchers with good frames in that DFE list! Anybody know when BA is going start talking about potential DFE guys?