danzig6767

Even though i don't read up much on advanced stats gathering, i understand the basic premise being used when they say so and so position player or starting pitcher was worth X number of wins based on that players stats. When it comes to closers though, does a different criteria need to be used because these guys so often pitch in a situation where their inning pitched will decide which team ends up winning the game or not? Say you have two closers that both had 45 save opportunities and the bulk of their other appearances came in lower leverage situations where both were just in games to get work. Closer A saves 41 of the 45 opportunities and closer B only saves 36 of the 45 save opportunities. Now i understand there are also a fair number of games where closers enter in the 9th of a tie game which could influence quite a bit whether their team win that given night. There are also tougher saves than easier ones, depending on the score. Obviously it's tougher to get that three out save if your team is winning by three runs instead of only one run, i'm sure by fluke that each year some closers face more "tougher saves" than other closers. All that variance stuff said, when comparing closers to others in a season, is there a need to look beyond just stats like ERA/WHIP/K-9 etc and mainly look at the end result, how many games did that team end up winning when their closer entered a game in a save situation in the 9th inning? Let's pretend you're comparing Lidge to Wood, Lidge to Torres, or Torres to Wood. When trying to roughly assess how many more wins one closer was worth vs the other, is anything computed in that say the Phillies never lost a game that Lidge entered with a save opportunity, but the Brewers lost 5-6-7 games that instead of would have been a win had Torres finished it in the 9th like Lidge did for the Phillies? Maybe when computing their respective ERA's to innings pitched, it only equals a 2-3 game advantage, but in actuality, the Brewers lost more than 2-3 games by having Torres compared to Lidge. I'm not exactly sure if i got the point/question out that i was trying to get at. I ask because often on here i'll see when comparing two starting pitchers, a stat guy will say that so and so starter was worth X number of games based on their final stats over many innings. Closers though pitch many less innings, yet, they can have a very dramatic effect on who actually win a game because they so often enter with a small lead and it's the 9th inning. It would seem like a top notch closer who rarely blows a game vs a struggling closer could end up swinging that teams record by 4-5-6 games, maybe even more. Am i wrong? Like many here, i agree that the save stat not only seems kinda silly given the 8th inning guy very often has a nearly equally important job, but it also has so many managers refusing to use their best reliever in other vital late game situations simply because it's not the 9th inning yet. Then again, if one closer blows an extra 5-6-7-8-9 games compared to another one that results in say 3-6 or more losses, those losses count in the standings of playoff races that so often come down to only one or two games. It gets me conflicted on the importance/value of closers.

One of my favorite singers was Layne Staley of Alice in Chain, i just love his voice. He died of a drug overdose years ago and the band fairly recently hired a new singer and did a tour, i couldn't get the desire up to see them without Layne. Anytime a band hires a new lead singer, it's near impossible for me to view that group as whatever their original name is. A good example for me was Van Halen. Once Roth was booted from the band, i never liked anything else they put out with Sammy Hagar, should have renamed the group Van Hagar. In the case of Guns and Roses, it's the reverse, it's just Axl Rose and new band members, it's basically IMO a solo project that's instead being called Guns and Roses. The Zeppelin deal And That brings up i agree with, you can't remove Plant and call anything new made Led Zeppelin to me, he's simply way to influential in their greatness. Same with Black Sabbath. After Ozzy was kicked out, their stuff with Dio was tolerable, but it no longer felt like i was listening to Black Sabbath anymore. I understand why Axl chose to make this CD under the Guns and Roses name vs calling it a solo project, it'll sell better using the Guns name. That said, if you have only the singer left from the original band, how can it be viewed as anything except a solo project?

I went on youtube and gave it a listen. I went in thinking i'd probably think it was terrible, but overall it sounded better than i expected, not enough though that i'd plop down money for it and listen to it multiple times.

Unlike many here, i don't think it's a terrible idea for teams with legit playoff aspirations to pay a top notch closer 10-11-12 million dollars a season, even though the save stat is pretty silly. We've seen with the Brewers the last two years and multiple other teams that make or miss the playoffs by only one or two games. Having a top notch closer instead of just a very mediocre one can easily sway the record of a playoff contender by at least a few games, the difference between watching or being in the playoffs. Put Lidge on the Mets and the Phillies have the say Torres closing games and the Mets make the playoffs and the Phillies miss the playoffs, much less win it all. That all said, it's giving any closer a long term big money deal that would always terrify me. I'd have no problem giving K-Rod say a 2yr/26 million dollar deal if somehow we traded for a starting pitcher also, but no way would i give him four years at over 50 million or any closer four years at big money. Besides the injury factors, relievers are just to erratic for that long of an investment unless i'm running a team like the Mets/Yanks/Red Sox that can print their own money. On top of that, not many closers are the truly special type of closers that almost never blow a save. For me to pay a closer big money, i'd only do it for a Rivera or Joe Nathan types that are flat out dominant and have proven it wasn't just a fluky eason of dominence. No reason to pay 10 plus million for those bigger name/reputation types of closers that save say 88% of games instead of a much cheaper one that saves roughly 85% of games. K-Rod would scare me if i'm even the rich Mets. Between some drop in his velocity and slight frame, no chance i'd hand him 4yrs at around 53-58 million. I'd love to add Fuentes, but not at the number of years and cash he'll likely get, especially the years concerning me most. My hope is with more closers on the market than teams in a big need, Hoffman can be signed at a reasonable price to bridge the gap until we can develop a young closer from our farm system.

I think the union pressuring CC aspect might just be overrated somewhat. If say the Yankees 140 million dollar offer ends up being the highest Sabathia gets, it really doesn't end up doing anything precedent setting. Last year Santana got 137 million over six seasons, so if Sabathia took the 140 million from the Yankees, all he's doing is pretty much taking the same offer Santana got and not raising the bar for elite starting pitcher free agents. If the Yanks had trumped the Santana contract by 10-20 million, then Sabathia would be getting a precedent setting contract that could raise the bar in the future for other free agent starting pitchers. Obviously i'm sure the union would prefer that CC takes whatever the highest offer ends up being, but as of right now, it doesn't look like any contract will be offered to Sabathia that changes the salary structure for potential free agents in the future. My guess though is he'll end up on one of the California teams so long as he gets an offer in the 100 million or higher range and it looks like he will. That i couldn't blame CC one bit for. If i was in his shoes and knowing that regardless of the offer he chooses from, he'll be getting at least 100 million guaranteed dollars, my first priority by far would be to take the offer from the team/city i wanted to play in most because i'd be silly rich either way.

I had no idea that GNR was doing another CD until seeing this thread. I liked then briefly while in high school, haven't listened to them in many years though. Last time i saw Axel Rose on TV, he looked liked a walking dead person and his voice was horrific. Hopefully for his sake, he's cleaned up some.

I like Branyan, but wouldn't be comfortable going into next year counting on him to be the everyday option at third when a righty is on the mound. My main concern would be that he has really struggled to stay healthy in his career from what i remember and he strikes me as being very prone to prolonged slumps. I should add though that i'm basing the slump issues on my perception and maybe there are numbers out there to debunk that perception about Branyan being abnormally prone to deep slumps.

That's pretty much my thinking, plus he seems to like playing where he does. Getting 52 million dollars is a lot of money and sometimes leaving where you're happy, just to maybe get a few more millions elsewhere isn't worth it. The Cubs made a fair contract offer and if Dempster had waited around like say a Boras client to see if anyone else offered more, the Cubs could have moved on to another starting pitcher. At least for the Cubs, Dempster throws hard, gets strikeouts, and limits home runs pretty well. He won't repeat the year he had last season, but i'd take Dempster any day over Suppan. Unlike Suppan, Dempster doesn't give up a ton of hits and his very low homers allowed total of last year wasn't some huge abberation, even though odds are he'll give up a few more in the future.

Yep, what a stellar draft choice and i'm sure glad to be wrong about not being thrilled with the choice when it was made. I loved that he was a good defender in college, but his offensive game is far more advanced than i expected. If the draft was done over, Mbah a Moute likely goes top 10. Plus, even though Alexander only scored 4 points tonight, he's been starting to show glimpses of the skills the Bucks obviously liked in him. Besides the new players, for me at least, the easily most important move made in the offseason was the hiring of Skiles. For multiple years, the Bucks biggest problem has been being so soft, treating defense like it came with a case of herpes, and an overall lack of pride. On nights when the offense wasn't really clicking, the Bucks had very little chance to win because they didn't play any defense, weren't a good rebounding team, and they'd to easily fold when things weren't going well. The last two games though, the Bucks offense struggled badly for long stretches, in past years they'd fold and likely get their ass kicked. Instead of that, this year we won both games by good defense keeping the Bucks in the game until the offense came around. I just see so much more toughness, desire to defend, and playing with heart. I think that starts right with Skiles. Unlike previous coaches who talked tough about demanding everyone on the team play hard defensively, Skiles has actually backed up his words by sitting anyone on the team that he's felt in games weren't playing with the effort he demands. This franchise so badly needed a personality and toughness transplant, soft teams rarely ever amount to much unless blessed with tons of talent. We are finally seeing that transformation starting to take place.

Man, yet another lead in the third period that gets blown. Pretty amazing how many times the Badgers have lead in the third period this year, only to end up with either a tie or a loss. Come time for NCAA Tournament bids and the Badgers likely missing out, they'll have to look back and cringe at all these games early in the season that they simply couldn't close out.

More bad news on the injury front for Marquette Freshman center Chris Otule broke his foot and will be out at least a month. This is on top of 6'7 Juco recruit Joseph Fulce being out until sometime in December with a stress fracture in his kneecap. Both are troubling because going into the season Marquette was already severly lacking in size, now Burke is the only big man on the roster ready to play and he's a very mediocre player. Granted, Otule/Fulce are first year players and wouldn't have been expected to be starters, but Fulce was supposedly a very good rebounder for his size and at least with Otule being 6'10, he could eat up some minutes in the paint. Everyone already knows that Marquette has a very skilled and experienced trio in James/McNeal/Mathews, but the odds are that once Marquette starts facing quality teams in both the non-conference and Big East part of their schedule that have skilled big men, it could cause real problems trying to defend them and on the glass. It's a shame for James/McNeal/Mathews that Crean left the roster so lacking in size because those three are close to being as skilled a PG/SG/SF trio as there is in the country. If Marquette even had a few bigs that just could defend and rebound well, they'd be a legit threat to make a run in the NCAA Tournament. As for Wisconsin, in Bo i trust. The Badgers lost Flowers and a couple of pretty good big men, but like Bo always does, i expect 20 plus wins and a top 3-4 finish in a not very strong Big Ten. I'm sure Buzz Williams at Marquette would love this year to have any of the five guys on the Badgers roster who stand 6'8 or taller, that doesn't even include Landry who plays bigger than his 6'7 height.

There's really no point that i can see in trying all that hard to get Sheets signed right now from a Brewers perspective because they aren't going to give him some type of offers he just can't refuse. So Sheets is going to want to test the market and the Brewers know this. When you look at free agency every offseason, rarely does a player sign in this limited window and not testing the market. Plus, it may not be just all about cash for him, he may be wanting to pitch closer to home if possible. We can only speculate what Sheets is hoping for money wise and/or how much he desires to try and get himself on certain teams if they are interested. Obviously though the injury issues of Ben the last few years have factored in just how aggressive the Brewers will end up trying to sign Sheets. That said, the fact that the team hasn't made him an offer yet doesn't have to mean they don't value Ben or don't want him back. If Melvin knows that he won't be able to make an offer that will make Sheets pass on seeing what's out there in free agency, why bother even wasting time making an offer? I think Melvin has legitimate interest in Sheets coming back if the very likely event happens that Sabathia chooses to sign elsewhere. Doug also knows he won't be making some huge offer to Sheets that's enough to make Ben say to his agent, jump on that offer and lets pass on testing the market. Thus we are where we are right now. Melvin let's Sheets/his agent know that the Brewers are still interested and that if they are also interested in coming back to Milwaukee after they've seen what's out there on the market, then get back to Melvin. I suspect Sheets wouldn't mind coming back, but there are also a couple of places around the league that he's interested in possibly playing for. This is his first time being free to sign anywhere. He and his agent will see what's out there. Maybe after CC signs elsewhere, we make Ben an offer. If someone offers Sheets 4yrs at good money, odds are high he takes it. If offers are only in the 2-3 year range wth an option year, i could see Melvin trying to jump in the mix. For now though, the only common sense thing i can see was what Melvin did, sit back and wait to see what the market for Sheets shapes up to be.

The fact that Hoffman doesn't rely on velocity eases most concerns about his age for me. He's thrown a only mid-80's fastball for years, but his change and command is so good, he gets hitters out.

I'd assume the Padres wouldn't take that Cubs offer, but it sure sounds like they are now dead set on trading Peavy, they aren't just fishing around to see what's being offered. Since Peavy has given the Padres a fairly limited number of teams he'll accept a trade to, they may not end up getting near what they hoped for in return. If the Braves won't budge on their vow to keep their most talented kids, the noose tightens on the Padres if they've now decided that keeping Peavy is no longer an option. Houston has no farm system. The Padres don't want to trade Peavy in the division to the Dodgers. I haven't heard of the Cardinals even making an offer. The Yankees don't seem inclined to trade Hughes or Joba, they'd rather trade to just buy Sabathia. That could leave the Padres with a quickly shrinking list of options

From what i've read at least, even if the Cubs get Peavy, they are confident they'll be able to keep Dempster also. I don't expect him to have a sub-3.00 ERA either next season, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me if he had another above average year. If his season this year had been more fluky than it was, i'd be more confident that it was mostly fluke. Dempster though was consistent pretty much all year, 4.55 was his worst ERA month, his strikeouts were high, and his homers given up were very low. As for Peavy and his road stats, it's not like his splits have been huge every year since the Padres got to Petco Park. In 2005/2007 his road ERA numbers were 2.57/2.98, both of which are outstanding. In the same 2005/2007, Ben Sheets had quite a bit better numbers at home than on the road. Look home much better Suppan pitches at Miller Park. A lot of pitches just do better overall at home, regardless of the park dimensions for whatever reason. Hell, the Reds had a slightly better home ERA than road ERA the last two years even though they pitch in that bandbox. The Phillies pitched better at home in that tiny park.

A win is worth about 4.8M after inflation for 2009. So if it is 2 wins we just barely lose the deal, if it is 2.5 wins we lose by a pretty significant amount. The other players are going to matter quite a bit. Hypothetically given you can only guess and project the win difference between if we had Cameron or Cabrera. Besides that, a big reason i wouldn't want Cabrera as the Brewers starting CF next year is Cameron has been amazingly consistent through his career. A team with Cameron as their starting CF has been able to count on good defense and roughly a .800 OPS at the plate. Cabrera has a pretty good season in 2006, was worse in 2007, and was terrible last year at the plate. A .642 OPS is around Tony Gwynn territory. I'm confident if Cameron is our CF next season, he'll post an OPS somewhere in the .775 to .825 range. With Cabrera, a sub-.700 OPS wouldn't surprise me at all. Maybe if Cabrera was platooned with Kapler, i'd find the situation a little less distasteful. Then again, who knows if Kapler can repeat his fine year and also stay healthy with fairly regular playing time.

The Tampa franchise was buried in last place for many years largely because they always had garbage pitching, they aren't trading arguably their best starting pitcher who also happens to be still young and inexpensive.

Yea that would be unreal. If the Padres accepted a package built around that riff raff, i'd be irate if i was a Padres fan. May as well just keep Peavy then vs trading him for a package like that.

It shouldn't be that hard to find another attractive blonde to ask pretty basic questions I liked Trenni, but IMO she got overrated by some because she replaced that hag who had the job prior to Trenni.

I don't doubt the serious lack of range by Durham overtakes his more steady glove, but Weeks error total unfortunately doesn't reflect the many botched double plays where we only got one out instead of two, thus he didn't get an error even though he really deserved one.

I love how Boras sites the Red Sox winning 60 percent of games Varitek caught, as if their great offense and pitching staff was secondary to the great game calling skills of their catcher.

Paul, the two links will show you the rankings for runs scored in the NL last year and the following is strikeout totals per team. Look at them and tell me where there is any pattern to where teams finish in runs scored compared to their strikeout totals? Many of the better scoring teams were also among the highest strikeout teams. Some of the teams who struck out the least were also bad at scoring runs. In other cases it's the reverse. Same goes for the AL. http://sports.espn.go.com...Type=batting&type=reg http://sports.espn.go.com...ype=batting&type=exp1

I don't see that mattering. Sabathia is clearly the best free agent pitcher on the market, the high interest by multiple teams will be enough to drive up offers made to CC.

You seem to be just assuming that Edmonds would sign here, that's based on what? If he chose to sign elsewhere after we declined the option for Cameron, the Brewers would have a gaping hole in CF. Don't just gloss over the fact that Melvin had to decide on Cameron by today, Doug didn't have the luxury to exhaust any other options for CF first and then decide on whether to pick up the player option. As for improving the offense, the offseason just started. Who knows right now what exactly the team will look like come opening day? I think someone new will be playing third base this upcoming season. It certainly wouldn't be some massive shock if one of Weeks/Fielder/Hart was traded. Plus, as with any team, we have to hope some of the younger guys like Hart/Weeks have a better year if both are back. It's not like next year all the players will perform exactly like the year prior. Look at the Cubs. Guys like Theriot, DeRosa, and Fontenot all had a much better season than the year prior. Soto and Dempster both performed much better than the team could have imagined. Until we see exactly what the roster looks like in April, it's pretty hard IMO for anyone to say with any certainty what shape the team is in and if it's realistic to hope for a potential playoff berth. Given it's November, not April, i plan to wait and see how everything shakes out first. I'm just glad the team isn't sitting here right now with a gaping hole in CF that we have no clue if it would be able to be filled decently. The CF position isn't a weakness for the Brewers with Cameron. Decline the option though and get rebuffed later by say Edmonds and CF could instead have ended up being a big weakness.

The offense had warts, but you don't "fix it" by removing Cameron and inserting an inferior hitter just because maybe the new guy will strike out less, but the overall production is also less. Cameron is one player and CF is just one position on the team, he produced well for what we paid him. The problems with the offense was the other players on the roster around Cameron who didn't perform well enough. Even if Melvin wanted to consider that idea with Edmonds, who knows if Edmonds would choose to play here. If he decided to play elsewhere, now suddenly the Brewers are sitting there will a gaping hole at a very important position in CF. Melvin had to decide on Cameron today. He didn't have the luxury to sit back and wait awhile to see if he could fill the CF position in a different fashion that he liked better, then if he couldn't, just assume he could get Cameron back at a later time and for only one season at 10 million. You're right, Cameron isn't worth 10 million, he's worth more. If Melvin had declined the option, my guess is Cameron would have fetched something around a 2yr/24-25 million dollar deal.