GenoSeligPrieb

"Only in Geno's world are Ender and I buddies and pointing out his taking something entirely out of context a personal attack " Nah, for years now, it's just been my imagination. When have you 2 ever disagreed on ANYTHING? Hell, you're probably the same person. And when was the last time I commented to one of you, without the other jumping in and making it 2-on-1? I wrote that you made it personal. But I never said it was a full-blown attack, ferchrissakes. Now who's being sensitive? Re-read the thread. As I said, I was able to debate with others who disagreed, and we were cool. All I'm sayin'...

"Slugging is great, but you don't accomplish anything as a team unless you get on base (other than a few solo homers)." Perhaps, Mother, but how many times, back in the dark days of 2002 or so, did the Brewers get clowns like Brady Clark on base, and stranded him there, because there wasn't enough slugging to cash him in? Give me 2 guys hitting doubles, and you get a run scored. But if you have 2 hitters drawing walks...hell, make it 3 walks, with no additional help to drive them in, and you got nuffin'. It cuts both ways, I guess. "Sure if you completely ignore the context of his post." Amazing how Brawndo, Logan and Mother may not have agreed with me, but they're capable of debating me politely. But when I dared to copy-n-paste an excerpt from endaround, *boom!* here comes his buddy, Ennnnnder to get all worked up, and make it personal. *sigh*

"OPS is a really good stat, but if 2 players are close I would chose the player with the higher OBP. " Depends on the 2 players, I guess, Logan. But don't you consider the offensive roles the 2 players fall into? Say a leadoff type guy has a .400-ish OBP, with a .400 slugging %, and his teammate's a cleanup hitter has a .300-ish OBP with a .500 SLG %. Sure, they both have .800 OPS's, but if your team has a bunch of Ryan Theriots, and not enough Carlos Lees, wouldn't you strive for a better balance? That's why I look at the makeup of the lineup first, before just going for the higher OBP guy, automatically. Just my 2 centavos...

In the 80's, when I was in college, after a morning class, my friends and I would walk up Sheffield to Addison, stand in line early (but not TOO early), and literally be able to get 1st row seats in front of the basket in left field 2 hours or so before the game, and still be able to afford to eat the rest of the week. Nowadays, if you don't line up in the snow to get your lottery wrist band months before the season starts, you're at the whim of brokers, possibly some in league with the Cubs. If you'd ever dare to be spontaneous and just go to Wrigley that day, your most realistic chance of getting a seat is to wait until the bottom of the 1st, hoping for a desperate scalper outside the park willing to take whatever he can get, for his tickets. In more than a few cases, after scalpers demand ridiculous money for their seats, we just wind up hitting Murphy's Bleachers, or the Sports Corner, and watch the game there...which is pretty fun, too.

" So would a team of Johnny Damon's do better than a team of Ryan Braun's from an offensive perspective?" - Tuesdays "Yes, if you mean this year. Damon's RC/27: 7.39. Braun/s RC/27: 6.57" - endaround If baseball were played in a computer simulation, yes. But since it's not, I think 99% of the players, coaches, executives, writers and fans would take a team of Ryan Brauns over a team of Johnny Damons. This is a classic example of a hole we non-Sabremetric types can drive a Hum-Vee through, in the counter argument. Thanks for inadvertently helping us out! http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif The rest of the year, I'd bet real kaysh money that a team of guys who hit like Ryan does would be better suited to keep up the hitting pace, and win a lot more games, than Damon, who is off to a great start, and less likely to sustain this pace of his. Focusing on Ryan Braun's OBP, while he's excelling at his primary offensive duties, is like looking at ESPN's Erin Andrews when she's on camera, and complaining about her voice when she does a sideline report.

Jumping in a bit late here, but... "If there's something I've learned over the past 100 years, it's that the Cubs find have a knack for choking. I know, different personnel mean different teams, but if I'm a Cub fan, I guess I'd feel a bit nervous about printing playoff tickets until at least the end of July. " Thing is, Brian, these aren't the same ol' tough-luck, poor ol' Cubbies anymore. They're like the Red Sox and Yankees now. Throw wads of cash at the top free agent on the market? Soriano and Fukudome...check and check. Lure the most expensive managerial candidates in the game? Baker and Piniella...check and check. Absorb major salary by trading crap to a poor team for a superstar? Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez...check and check. Retain their own free agents with exorbitant contracts? Zambrano, Lee, Ramirez...check, check and check. Lots of media love, and starting All-Stars at pretty much every position? Yep. Years and years of sellout crowds? Of course. Whiny sense of entitlement by most of its fanbase and local media? Lately, yeah. Some guys are predicting a key Gallardo-esque injury to a pivotal Cub could change things. Wanna bet they just go out and raid a poor team for a replacement? Seriously, all these years, if it wasn't the Brewers, I was OK with the Cubs winning, but the Fukudome signing probably put it over the top for me. They're way ahead in first place with a great, VERY expensive manager...a real leader, not a clown like Ned. They'll be in the playoffs pretty much indefinitely, like Boston and New York have been in the AL East. Jack Brickhouse wouldn't recognize the team these days. Our ONLY hope against the Cubs is that Sam Zell sells them off to an enterprise that decides to cut expenses. That was the only thing that stopped the Braves. Otherwise, it's Wild Card time for a while.

I'm actually kind of optimistic tonight. The Rockies are proving last year was a fluke, we still have a chance, and Fukudome just hit into a DP which prevented a tying RBI.....oops! Oh crap. Well, at least the Cubs are losing.

"I have said along that firing the manager is not the answer to the team's problems. Is firing Yost going to get Gagne pitching like a closer? Or Raise Weeks' OBP above .380? No. Thats ridiculous." Of course firing Yost won't automatically fix Weeks, Bush, Suppan, Hall, Villanueva, Hardy, Parra and Gagne. Hell, they probably LIKE the fact that they can fail night after night, and their supervisor publicly makes excuses for them. It's cozy and comfy playing in Ned's Moronic Dustbin. It's like being a 42-year-old Piggly Wiggly bagger who lives at home with his parents. There's no pressure to go out and look for a better job, or a wife, because your failures are mitigated and your undies are folded and placed in your bureau for you by your loving mom. What was it that woke Weeks out of his sleepwalk last summer? A trip to Nashville. What would serve as the proverbial swift-kick-to-the-ass for Gagne this year? Removing him from his closer's role...for MORE than 2 damned games. That would seriously damage the future earnings potential of Gagne AND Scott Boras. Hall? He'll be platooning with Branyan until he hits and catches the ball. If you don't want all these demotions, then firing Yost can send a similar message. It can serve as a jolt to the senses. Their protective smothering parental figure will be gone, and someone who's NOT a "player's manager" can come in and want to EARN an extension. Why should Ned try extra hard to win the NL Central? He can screw the pooch in the 2005 season, and it was because "the team was inexperienced." He presided over a 2nd historic collapse last season, and what's the upshot? He quietly gets a contract extension! This year, with a much higher payroll, solid young talent, and big home crowds, and his laissez-faire attitude filtering down to everyone but Ryan Braun? He'll probably get a huge raise and a 3-year deal. Settling for Yost's parade of losing sends the wrong message.

Where have you gone, Wayne Franklin and Leo Estrella? OK, Charlie Newhouse ain't THAT bad yet. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

Boston had an unfair payroll advantage, but that's about all. Their managerial advantage was clear, but that's on Doug and Mark for keeping Ned around despite so many failures. At least their GM is not worried about spending a call-up, out of fear that a parade of MLB teams will be fist-fighting over claiming The Great Russell Branyan off waivers. Doug assembled a team full of righty bats, and when a temporary fix in Branyan is made available as a lefty solution, he doesn't pull the trigger. If we even go 3-4 against Washington and Pittsburgh, Ned better be gone. What does Yost have to do to get whacked? Shoot someone? This is embarrassing already...

Let's see if Gagne implodes in a mop-up situation like Turnbow, or if he truly IS still a legit MLB reliever. First Bush, then Gagne...wow.

You take a guy with an ERA near 7, have him face the other team's (default) ace whose ERA is less than 1/3rd what Bush's was, entering the contest, and what happens? Guess that's why they play the games on the field, instead of on computers.

Hell, Russ, at that pace, Ned just may have Bush bat again! http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

"We're up by 6 in the 5th and with the inevitable implosion by Bush in the 6th, we should still be able to hold the lead being up by this much." Cross: I'm trying a different tactic tonight with Bush. Over the last few years, I've always predicted the inevitable barbecuing he'd sustain in the 5th or 6th inning, and sure enough, most of the time, it happened. Not this time, though. Dave Bush will pitch at least 7, maybe 8, and when he leaves the game, we'll still be up at least 5. DaveBushwillpitchgoodDaveBushwillpitchgoodDaveBushwillpitchgoodDaveBushwillpitchgoodDaveBushwillpitchgood...

I love how Ryan was the only one who took issue with the whole "everything's gonna be alright" vibe after all the losing. It's as if he's saying to himself, "To hell with this then. I'm going to get aggressive...right now!" NL Player of the Week? Ryan's got my vote... Team MVP?

Eric Gagne: "I stink, I don't deserve to be this team's closer." Scott Boras: "You dope! NOW how am I supposed to get you a 4-year deal for $50,000,000 with a big market team? You go back to the media tomorrow and you take it all back! Say you're fine now!" Gagne: ""I had my mental break. I'm good to go now. I know I'm a great closer." Boras: "Yeah, that's what I thought you said!"

"The condescending attitude you take in this post pretty much sums up the problem in my mind" The fact that you consider the posts from a doofus like me you've never met, a genuine "problem" is...problematic. "But like I said it is futile to try to discuss anything with you so I'm not getting into it again...... ... not sure where you get that I'm angry in my posts.." Must be my imagination. "Your jokes generally aren't meant to be funny, they are meant to be insulting." Also angry, but... Feel free to take my jokes as insulting, but I try to lighten things up. If you WANT to feel miserable and take offense, it's gonna happen. Your choice. "When I point to career ERA of 4 year pitcher and mention other things as well and you come back and crack a joke about Hideo Nomo's career ERA it isn't trying to be funny. It is belittling the argument and ignoring part of it. That isnt' healthy." It's not belittling. I used a dead-on example of a pitcher with a better career ERA who's no longer that good. You just couldn't counter it. Accepting minor setbacks like that is healthy. "And I've never had a problem with any other poster on this board either." If that's so, then why were you given a warning by the mods for baiting Dave xis? Nice try.

"No you generally pick one small part of the post out, crack a joke about it and move on while ignoring the meat of the argument." The meat of the argument has been and will continue to be, whether Dave Bush is a good starting pitcher. I get that. Always have, never ignored it. And if he's bad, I'd prefer someone else start in place of Gallardo. You'd rather find ways to excuse Bush's bad performances, but that's up to you. And by the way, what's healthier? Cracking a joke about a subject to lighten the mood, and moving on before it gets acrimonious, or entrenching for an aneurysm-inducing cage match pretty much every time? "But like I said it is futile to try to discuss anything with you so I'm not getting into it again." And like I said, I'm able to address opposing viewpoints with many others around here without all the anger I get from you. I've even received friendly PM's from my other debating opponents, so if it's not me, then that leaves one person... As always, you're a delight!

" I didn't just use his career numbers " But if you didn't just use career numbers (which, again, don't tell how Bush is doing this year, this month, this week), and if you didn't use his current numbers, that leaves statistical cherry-picking, right? "but I'm not going to try to convince you of anything because I know it is futile." How come I can debate with Russ Luzinski, Al (Dad of Andrew), TooLiveBrew and a few others on the other side of the ideological aisle, and it never gets as heated as it always does with you? We engage in a thoughtful debate, we go up and back, and if we don't come to share the other's viewpoint, at least we respect it. Hell, I've even admitted I've learned a thing or 2 from them, so it's not like I'm digging in and readying for battle all the time. If you're trying to convince us that Dave Bush is still a good pitcher whom we should trust out there, then yeah, I'll just keep believing my lying eyes. He starts, he puts us in a hole, we lose. The results reflect this. I've already admitted Bush has value in the long-man role, so it's not an absolutist stance on my part. I see a post I disagree with, and I try to challenge it, without all the vitriol, but...

"Mid to high 4 ERA would mean something around 4.50-4.90 for an ERA over a season for Bush. That is projecting him highly? He has a career ERA of 4.64 and one season where it was higher than that range." How 'bout this year? That would be 2. OK, the 2008 season's not over (although it sure feels like it), but Bush is not even close to a "mid to high 4 ERA" guy these days. This is where I have a problem with quoting career numbers. You say it's to get a larger sampling, but it's how they're pitching in the present, is what better determines how they'll pitch next time out. Hideo Nomo's career ERA is 4.24, but that doesn't portray him accurately in 2008. Jason Isringhausen, Barry Zito, Matt Morris, Eric Gagne, ...all have much better career numbers than this season, but all of them have been demoted because they can't be trusted right now....which is all that matters. Hell, if you're going to use career numbers as your guide, then maybe we can replace Gallardo in the rotation with Mike Caldwell, who's coaching in the minors, and whose career we can resurrect as we did with Gabe Kapler!

"There is no reason to expect Bush and Capuano to be anything worse than #4 type starters going into this year. That has nothing to do with Melvin being a bad GM. Sorry but I'm a stickler for statistics, Bush should be a mid to high 4 ERA type and Capuano should be a mid low to mid 4 ERA type given how they pitched last year. Any GM with a brain realizes this and projected them as such." May I ask, without being confrontational, why there is NO reason to not agree with you and project Bush and Capuano that highly? That sounds so absolutist...as if any opposing viewpoint is downright impossible. "Any GM with a brain"? C'mon! Capuano, DID have some success in 2005 & 2006 starting at the major league level (I go by full seasons, as most do). But Bush pitched decently up here for the occasional one-month stretch, followed by 2-3 bad months, then another return to temporary lucidity for, say, 2 weeks, followed by his usual cycle of crap. Bush pitched decently (.299 OBP-against, and a solid 1.14 WHIP, offset to a large degree by an unimpressive 4.41 ERA) in 2006. But every other sampling as a Brewer has been awful for Bush. This suggests that 2006 was the statistical outlier. Point to 2006 all you like, but he just can't be trusted. I see Cappy, with 2 solid years in a row, followed by all that losing in 2007, and I figured it's plausible to believe he had a chance to turn it around this season. But Bush wasn't capable of putting it all together in back-to-back seasons, and that tells me his one decent season may have been a fluke...and so far, that seems true. Hell, as bad as he was in 2006 & '07, compared to sending Bush out there in place of YoGa, I'd at least give Jeff Weaver a try. Couldn't be any worse than Bush. And Weaver's experienced success in the majors. And if he's as bad? Well, at least we'll know, and he can go away.

"f we believed that there were an 87 win team before Yo's injury, they are probably around an 84 win team without." Up the thread here, Russ, you surmised that the YoGa injury drops us only 3 games in the grand scheme of things. Is that the result of a Sabremetric formula, or is it a feeling you have? I'm not jumping on you, because I obviously respect you, but wouldn't you think, just watching them start games, that the difference between a shut-em-down SP like a Gallardo, one who gives us a great chance to win, say, 2/3rd's of the time or better, down to a AAA starter like Dave Bush is more profound than that? Annualize YoGa to 33 starts this season, and account for a rough guesstimate as to how many of those quality starts the pen would blow for Yovanni, and I could legitimately see us going 19-14 in games he starts. But what if it's now Dave Bush instead making those starts? Would you lay cash that simply replacing YoGa with Bush can get us as high as 16-17? More like 12-21, I'd guess. If Bush was only 3 games worse than Yovanni Gallardo, he never would have been demoted. "And if you thought they were a 90 win team before the season started, why would the loss of Gallardo make them even average or below?" Because he puts less stress on our pen, for one. And because his potential ERA under 4 (under 3? http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif ) has a domino effect on the offense, the defense, even on Ned. Replace a Gallardo with a guy who was so bad as a starting pitcher that he was sent to the minors pretty late in his career, and who burns through the bullpen even in his best starts, taxes a team in a big way. WITH a 100% healthy YoGa, even with Hardy, Weeks and less production from Prince and Ryan, we could have still finished 87-75. But now that he's replaced with a Dave Bush for the rest of his 2008 starts? I expect 80-82. THAT'S why I'd love to pull off a trade for a "seller" team as soon as possible, and at least get a .500-ish pitcher to stanch the bleeding...

"It's been 24 hours since Yo's awful injury news, and I'm feeling even more despondent for the season. That news is like a big kick in the groin, but only worse. I'm not confident the Brewers can make the playoffs now. " Honesttogod, tiger, that's exactly where I am right now. After the successful Cub series, with a bad Houston staff guys like Prince, Rickie and even JJ could recover against this weekend, I was starting to feel good about the Brewers. Maybe even slightly cocky. Nothing like the Brewers Homegrown Starting Pitcher Curse to wipe that smile off your face. I had no interest in last night's game. It felt as if it was a done deal we'd lose, and when I saw the paper, there it was. "If one injury is all it takes to knock this team from playoff consideration, then they aren't built for the playoffs." I hear ya, Moof, but look at WHO was injured. ONE injury is not a season killer, if it's Hardy, Weeks, a bench player, one of our many relievers, or a 5th starter. But the swap of Gallardo down to Bush is devastating. It qualifies as a season killer, because we go from having a pitcher capable of shutting down an opponent, to a guy who'll pitch 5 innings, giving up 3 to 5+ earned runs, making it tough to win, especially since JJ, Rickie and a few others forgot how to hit. When YoGa was out there, I felt almost as confident as when we had Ben starting for us. But now, I cover my eyes. By the way, anytime Villanueva and Parra feel like stepping up and pitching like true pennant contenders, if not average major league starters, is fine with me. We went from weeding out the few bad pitchers we had, and streamlining the pitching staff, to having to swallow our pride and bring one of them back. What's next? Gagne's goggles fog up, and he walks into a plate glass door, knocking him out for months? That means our closer is now...Derrick Turnbow! *sigh* Cub fans can moan all they like about curses, and goats and Steve Bartman, but at least they can outbid dozens of teams each winter for top talent, to cover for their injuries and mismanagement. On this team, we have so little room for error, that one injury CAN derail our playoff chances.

"You don't just look for weird splits after one month of the season and start making changes to personnel." I hear ya, Russ, and believe me, I'm down with the sample-sizing for the most part. However, I'm of the mindset that an extremely right-handed lineup (especially if you're going to be foolish enough to carry about 27 pitchers) limits your options in a profound way. I'd love to have an offense where opponents can't stack righties (or lefties) against us, as the Cubs did for crucial series. As you wrote, yes I agree that the Brewers won't continue to be so weak on offense this season. But this winter, I would have brought in a lefty or 2 to the bench, at the very least. Choosing to add Cameron, Kendall and Kapler to an already overwhelmingly right-handed team, and limiting yourself to only 2-3 pinch hitters is playing right into your opponents' hands. At the risk of igniting a Branyan thread, yeah I'd recall him. He can spell Prince at 1B, or play some 3B, allowing Billy to take over SS or 2B for a game or 2 when JJ and Rickie are struggling (and they're usually struggling).

"There is very little difference between Bush, Suppan and Villaneuva. (You can throw Capuano in here too)." Maybe you can draft Bush for your AAA fantasy league...