Never Outhustled

The hypothetical only makes sense if we already traded him away. If we didn't have him at all, who played 1B this last year? How'd we score these runs without him?

My plan included adding a major FA bat, so why would the offense be expected to fall off? If we add Werth, who actually has a higher OPS than Fielder and has seen his OPS increase in each of his 3 seasons as a starter, the offense wil remain strong. Hart regressing to his previous form is no more likely than Braun improving to his previous form. Also, I think everyone expects Escobar, Lucroy and Cain to be better than Escobar, Lucoy, and Gomez were this year. The Brewers could add Werth and still be way under budget, and would have an improved defense at 2 positions.

An extension would have him the same or less than his arby number. In this hypothetical, we'd still be trading away Fielder for a pitcher. Then lets say we deals McGehee and parts for a pitcher. Suddenly we have enough pitching, and we still have oodles of money available. 7/8 of the lineup is accounted for longterm. Dealing excess minors leaguers now makes sense. So lets say, hypothetically, the team we dealt Fielder to suddenly has money problems and puts him back on the market. It would make sense to take a look.

Prado to Farris is a terrible comparison. Prado was in the majors as a 22 year old, while Farris was in the Midwest League, and Prado still had a higher OPS. As 24 year olds, Prado had a 838 OPS, while Farris was just 659 in AAA. Prado is a very good hitter, Farris struggles at the plate. Farris will get his shot in the AFL, but I doubt he'll hit well enough there to earn a 40 man roster spot.

Prado to Farris is a terrible comparison. Prado was in the majors as a 22 year old, while Farris was in the Midwest League, and Prado still had a higher OPS. As 24 year olds, Prado had a 838 OPS, while Farris was just 659 in AAA. Prado is a very good hitter, Farris struggles at the plate. Farris will get his shot in the AFL, but I doubt he'll hit well enough there to earn a 40 man roster spot.

I did. How would that increase next years payroll? If anything, it would lower it. $9.5 million, just like this year. $4 million to be exact. His $4 million salary was already factored in, as he is not an expiring contract. If we include Fielder at $15 million, pay arby raises to Weeks, Parra, and Coffey, and fill in the rest of the roster with the entry level guys we already have, it totals to just $63 million. Since we're assuming Fieldet gets dealt, the $35 million I mentioned was accurate.

Can you explain the payroll isues to me? The only payroll issue I see for next year is finding enough players to spend all the money the Brewers will have available to spend despite only having a few openings on the roster. Few teams will be able to outspend the Brewers this offseason, because $35 million worth of Melvin's mistakes finally come off the books.

The deal that I think will happen is Fieldet to Texas for CJ Wilson. Wilson, like Fielder, is a FA aftert next season, which matches up their value perfectly. Texas gets to keep the young pitching they have, and we get an Ace caliber pitcher. Combine that with dealing McGehee for a 2nd pitcher and signing a major FA bat, and The Brewers would be contenders.

Awesome. Will Rogers get a few starts? He's been sharp late in the season outside of the blister issue. His velocity in his last start tells us he isn't wearing down. Either go with a 6 man rotation, or push Bush aside.

I like this, but I might try to sign someone to play RF. I would do this 2b-Weeks CF-Cain LF-Braun 3B-Gamel 1B-Hart RF- FA guy u SS-Escobar C-Lucroy Bench: Dickerson,Katin, Inglett, Counsell, & Kotaras URotation: Gallardo, Garza, Wolf, Nolasco, Rogers Bullpen: Parra, Axford, McClendon, Braddock, Stetter (LOOGY), Loe, Jeffress How about Jason Werth? He has a higher OPS than any Brewer or Phillie. We can easily afford him. He'd improve the defense.

We see high batting average outlier years all the time, but a plate discipline outlier? I don't think thats too common, is it? I agree with that.

Just like they did with Manny Ramirez. No, they were outbid by their hated division rival. Like they did for Carlos Beltran? No, they were outbid by their cross town rival. As for CC, the Brewers could easily being paying more for him right now than what the Yankees gave him. I didn't want top retain him at the time, but in hindsite it was a mistake.

Rogers really did not get hit hard most of the year. Only 89 hits in 119 innings. IF he can keep the walks down while throwing that heat, watch out! And he only gave up 3 homers all season. He won't fit in with the Brewers staff.

It doesn't. That MLE was Al using Katin's career AAA numbers, I'm guessing because he lives in the past. Katin's MLE's based on the most relevent data projects a greatly improved OBA. Al has never understood that players can improve, which Katin clearly has. Using a players pre-prime numbers to predict their stats in their peak years is a good way to be consistently wrong. This reminds of a long discussion here a few years ago after Fangraphs tried to convince everyone that Gavin Floyds 1st good season was a lucky fluke because of his earlier career periferils, not factoring in that his periferils would improve if he simply pitched better, which players do as they reach their prime. No one is saying Katin is a budding superstar, but he is far more qualified for a big league job than a guy like Carlos Gomez.

It was great watching Jeffress be everything that was advertised last night. He hit 98 with the fastball a couple times, and his curve was solid. He seemed to command both pitches well, impressive for a debut. Great to see another draft pick succeed. (That was for TooLiveBrew, who accuses me of always being negative http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif ) Of the 14-1st round picks made after Jeffress, only Yankee selection Ian Kennedy, a well over slot signing, is in the majors.

That is some serious, serious heat for a starting pitcher.

Oh, so your saying it might be a good idea to scout them then, so you can tell So Taguchi from Takashi Saito? Since we're looking for pitching, I'd think most scouts could see that Taguchi is an OF. The Dodgers originally signed Saito for $500 K, and he finished that year as their closer. He has a career 2.17 ERA with 361 K's in 294 innings. Who wouldn't want that?

KC and Cleveland each had Japanese players last year. The super-stars might care where they play, but the rest just want an MLB paycheck.

Isn't that more of a case of a lack of resources, due to the exorbitant fees that Japanese teams have been demanding? Only 2 (Ichiro and Dice K) of the 11 Japanese players presently in America required posting fees. Mets starter Hisanori Takahashi is playing on a 1 yr/$1 million deal. Okajima and Saito were steals. Kuroda and Uehara have outperformed there contract. Kawakami would be our 2nd best starter. There's bargains to be had there.

I think Gamel's swing fits better versus LaPorta's versus MLB pitching. LaPorta's is real stiff. I think the Brewers knew this when they traded him. The Indians didn't, because they don't really know anything.

I understand what your saying, but at the same time, do you think its important to slash payroll by $30 million? Isn't that a little extreme? Well, the pitchers we acquire will probably be cheap. But you figure that if we keep Weeks a good chunk of money will go to him. Then everyone will get increases in arby, and depending on what offensive positions are left open, I could see us going after a bat in free agency. Attanasio's comments just make it seem to me that he isn't willing to go after pitcher's in free agency anymore. Weeks and the other arby raises are already factored in, and I factored one of the pitchers we acquire to have a mid-sized salary too. We could sign a bat, but that won't eat up $30 million.

I understand what your saying, but at the same time, do you think its important to slash payroll by $30 million? Isn't that a little extreme?

Your flawed in your offensive numbers because you aren't correctly calculating stolen bases. Escobar doesn't have 6 net steals he has 2. 4 CS cancells out 8 steals. Then you give the stolen bases .66 value of batted ball bases. Thats inaccurate too. How many runs does a steal drive in? The difference between these 2 players is not all defense as you suggest. Hardy has been 10 runs better than Escobar, not 12 bases better. Thats a significant difference.

Then you're still paying less than you were to Hoffman, Suppan, Hawkins, Davis and Hall this year. You can throw Riske into that group too. That runs the combined salary of those players to $39.25 million. That makes it easy to see how some of us would have no problem spending a mere $25 million on a great player. Maybe true, but the same was said a few years ago about the Yankees bringing home NY native Manny Ramirez, and he ended up with their biggest rival.

Escobar has 428 PA vs. Hardy's 270 PA's this season. Someone would have to make up the Hardy missed games and it would have been Escobar getting called up. Thier OBP's are pretty much identical. The only difference is in slugging. Hardy has 104 total bases in 270 PA's and Escobar has 147 TB in 428 PAs. So if you rate Escobar down to Hardy's lower PA's he would have 12 few bases than Hardy in 270 PAs or if Hardy had the same PA's as Escobar and kept his slugging up that would be 17 more bases than Escobar. Of course Hardy is as slow as can be and wasn't the greatest base runner so I would also remember an earlier post someone referenced Escobar scoring from 1st or 2nd when you know Hardy wouldn't have. Escobar also has 10 steals with 4 caught for a net of 6. Hardy is at 0 with one CS and 1 steal. Even giving Escobar something like .66 of a base for his net steals subtracts about 4 bases from that 17 base deficit. All in all given the negligible difference in OBP, basically a 13 base difference in slugging, and better scoring from 1 or 2nd, and just the sheer number of games missed by Hardy I would say their offense is pretty much a wash or even slighly favors Escobar because of the durability and the fact he would have been playing anyway. I don't know why your going through all this work to figure out the value of these players, when all the factors you mention are included in the formula for WAR, except their formula is properly weighted. WAR shows Hardy as more than twice as valuable as Escobar this year. Hardy has been almost 4 times more valuable than Gomez. Gomez is awful. Beyond awful.