danzig6767

Thanks TooLive. I wonder why that is? In general, i tend to be skeptical of a lot of the cliches which regularly get thrown out there by sports announcers and commentators, but when most in baseball talk about how if a team pitches and plays defense well, that they'll usually be at least competitive even if the offense is a weakness, it does seem to play out that way more often than with good hitting teams who have poor pitching.

I don't read much on sabermetrics and baseball studies, so i don't know if this has been looked into to have an answer, but i was curious about something. Let's say hypothetically you had 10-20 teams who had lead their league in runs scored, but were also last in ERA. On the flip side, you had the same number of teams who lead their league in ERA, but were last in runs scored. On average, should the two sides be expected to finish roughly the same record wise if also hypothetically the team defenses weren't all that different? I ask because i don't know if this is mainly just something i'm wrongly perceiving, but it seems like more often than not that teams with good pitching, but very mediocre to poor offenses are able to remain more competitive than good hitting teams who have a bad pitching staff. Is that perception more myth than backed up by facts, if something like that has been looked at? BTW, i understand that my question lacks full data since a team last in ERA can vary on just how bad they are, same with how many runs a top offense scores in given years.

The so frustrating thing is if say we score 6 runs like we did tonight, the pitching staff will give up 7 or more. Then the next game the staff will hold one of those teams to say only 3 runs, but we only score 1 or 2. Almost without fail if the pitching staff actually has a good game vs the Red or especially St. Louis, then the offense craps the bed. Score a decent amount of runs though, of course our pitchers implode that game. I'm not trying to imply that the Brewers deserve to be above .500, but man, when things are going really bad for a baseball team, it's so maddening how often things can happen as i mentioned above.

And the stolen bases totals are inflated by the two games vs the Pirates where we stole like 10 or 11 bases on their brutal backup catcher with one of the worst arms i've ever seen.

We all hope for that, but if you look at his minor league stats, he had a career 1.410 WHIP. A poor K/BB ratio. The only really good thing he did was not serve up a lot of home runs. If Peralta didn't throw as hard as he does, he'd likely have never been called up to the majors yet.

I don't think Attanasio micromanages the team on the same level as Jerry Jones does with the Cowboys, he's probably somewhere in between Jones and when ownership stays completely out of team building as is the case in Green Bay. Mark isn't there in the draft room telling Seid who to pick and likely isn't involved with any smaller type of moves on the big league roster, but i do think he's both super competitive and very protective of seeing 2.5-3 million fans filling Miller Park, so he involves himself in free agent signings like Suppan, Ramirez, and Loshe. He either just gives the ok or pushes for trades of Marcum and Greinke. His taking over the team has mostly been a huge positive, but hyper-competitive owners in any pro sport who take pleasure in being involved with roster construction can sometimes have a negative effect.

Are you suggesting that he should fire Melvin? If so, that is ironic for a couple of reasons, considering you mentioned the 2011 season in the same post. I think he's saying that completely gutting the farm system and putting all your eggs in one basket (the 2011 season) was a pretty poor and unsustainable long-term strategy. Those trades aren't what is mainly killing this year's team, but the Lawrie trade i still worry about. Far and away what is killing the team is the massive failure over many year to properly evaluate pitchers in the draft and then develop them. We have the worst ERA in the NL and a big chunk of the reason why is that of the arms on the team who actually came through the farm system, they've been terrible, while a team like St. Louis is getting fabulous production out of multiple arms from their farm system. It was only a matter of time before the abysmal track record of drafting/developing pitchers caught up with the front office.

Thanks for stating the obvious. Good luck finding a single person here who doesn't think St. Louis is clearly the better team. They have lots of good pitching, we have lots of bad pitching. End of story.

Didn't Melvin get a three year extension last year? As for the team, it has multiple problems, but in the end, if your pitching stinks, you can't be a playoff contender. Watching Peralta struggle so badly is a real bummer because he by far has the best arm of the young pitchers on the roster and in AAA. If at least he was pitching well and with Segura being a stud, there would be more to get excited about going forward.

The Cardinals are clearly a better team than we are, but it is amazing how many grounders they hit against us find empty space and flares find outfield grass. Then after guys on are base, a finally hard hit ball clears the bases.

I wouldn't expect Bianchi to be anything special, but he'd almost have to be better defensively and given the massive slump Weeks is in at the plate, it would be hard for Bianchi to be worse offensively until or if Rickie can turn things around. Maybe give Bianchi a couple of starts a week and see how each guy responds. Who knows how exactly things would play out, but currently Weeks is a big liability both at the plate and in the field. I really respect how Rickie works hard and carries himself, yet it's painful watching him out there with so many ugly at bats and gaffes in the field. It's to the point that whenever he comes up to bat, i just really hope he can draw a walk, especially if runners are on base.

His emergence has easily been the highlight of the season so far. What a joy it is to watch him play in every aspect of the game, especially defensively. I'm blown away at how he's been doing it all at shortstop. He makes all of the routine plays. Shows fabulous range going to his left, right, and charging in on weak hit balls. Has not only a good arm, but he's consistently accurate also. Mix in he's been surprisingly really good at the plate already and has great speed on the bases, there isn't a single tool he lacks except i guess big time power and even on that front, his power should end up being up average for a shortstop.

If they were to bench Weeks for say 10-15 games, Jeff Bianchi could end up being more productive than Scooter would and no roster move would need to be made.

You can't make a statement like that as fact. A lot of people on this site have opinions different than yours, you need to realize that every once in a while. Actually I can make it like it is fact because it is. They might take on a miniscule portion of their personality just like any two people who spend time together but to say that one manager is going to suppress all other personalities is not going to happen. To try to blame these players personalities on Roenicke is nothing short of absurd. These guys are acting exactly the way they always have, we just lost some of the bigger personalities in the clubhouse. Gomez is still looking like he is hopped up on something, Weeks has always been the quite guy, Braun is acting exactly like normal only without Fielders antics, Aramis has always been a quite guy, Lucroy has always come off as nothing but a complete profession etc. Nothing has changed. The biggest problem on this team to me is obvious, that being the talent on the pitching staff and i'm struggling to find a logical explanation as to how a pitching staff takes on the personality of a manager, much less how that would impact how a pitcher pitches? If say you gave the Brewers the Cardinals pitching staff and St. Louis had our pitching staff, i'm pretty confident in saying that the Brewers and Cardinals records would change pretty dramatically. Roenicke certainly does his share of things which i'm not a fan off, but he isn't the one on the mound pitching the Brewers into the worst ERA in the NL. Two years ago when the team won 96 games and the pitching staff was good overall, did that pitching staff not take on the personality of Roenicke, but this year's worse staff has?

That's pretty much the college football system and it's baffling why the NFL refuses to adopt the same system. I'd like to see baseball do something similar, even if it took limiting say managers to a set number of challenges per game at two or three.

Probably a lot of what goes through Melvin's mind given Attanasio seems to have taken a pretty prominent role in some of our bigger free agent signings and he signed Doug to a contract extension. Between the two playoff berths and likely as important to Mark, the vastly improved attendance since Melvin took over which equals more revenues, i just don't see Attanasio making a change at GM anytime soon unless the team both loses a lot of games over say the next 2-3 years and attendance takes a dive with the losses.

I'm sure there are a variety of reasons why the franchise has been so abysmal at drafting and then developing pitching, but when you think about the vast number of pitchers the team has drafted over say the last 15-20 years, it strike me as being statistically hard to do odds wise for so few of those pitchers to amount to anything in the majors, be it starter or bullpen guys. Clearly the hit rate is low overall throughout the league given most drafted pitchers never will reach the majors, much less be a quality MLB pitcher. That said, what has been the Brewers hit rate over the last 10-15-20 years? Off the top of my head, roughly 1 every 100 pitchers drafted?

Once Hart gets back, i don't want Yuni being a socalled super sub that gets regular starts all over the infield, but with as bad as Gonzalez looks, i would rather see Betancourt in the lineup over Gonzalez if a starter needs a day off or suffers an injury which requires some games to be missed.

Those same Cardinals hitters lit up Texas in the World Series, especially Freese.

The Cardinals certainly hit a number of balls hard off Lohse, but he also caught some bad luck. 1. If the ump rings up Holliday, no 2 run homer. 2. In the two innings which they scored two runs, twice balls fell in front of Aoki that most rightfielders catch if they aren't playing only 2-3 steps off the warning track as Aoki does. Keep in mind both innings the two runs scored with two outs. I have no problem with the non-strike call on Lohse, it was close enough off to justify not calling it. Probably missed the plate by an inch. Still on Lohse for giving up a 450 foot moonshot after that. What I have a problem with is the inconsistency, where worse pitches the following inning to Estrada and Segura resulted in ringups. I was only trying to say that in any given game, a variety of things can end up have a pretty big impact on exactly how many runs a pitcher gives up, more or less runs. So sure, Lohse could have easily ended up being charged with more runs, but one different call on the pitch to Holliday and Aoki not stationing himself a few feet off the warning track, those balls become outs instead of hits, ending the innings before runs score. Hell, look at Peralta yesterday. He gives up 6 runs in an inning full of mostly seeing eye grounders and flares finding outfielder grass. That's the life of pitchers, sometimes the baseball gods are kind and other times pretty cruel.

I had fairly high hopes for Kintzler and i known he's only thrown 12 innings so far, but he hasn't looked good like much of the bullpen hasn't. Then pen has to be more productive going forward for the team to have any chance of staying in a race for a playoff berth.

The Cardinals certainly hit a number of balls hard off Lohse, but he also caught some bad luck. 1. If the ump rings up Holliday, no 2 run homer. 2. In the two innings which they scored two runs, twice balls fell in front of Aoki that most rightfielders catch if they aren't playing only 2-3 steps off the warning track as Aoki does. Keep in mind both innings the two runs scored with two outs.

yeah i really dont see why this kid is considered a future ace. you aren't going to last long in the majors relying on the fastball 80% of the time. the majority of those fastballs are in hittable spots. brewers hitters are stupid and unlucky. they should be crushing this kid right now. It's not just been Brewers hitters though, Miller has only given up 8 earned runs so far this year in 38 innings, with 38 K's and a 1.06 WHIP. As a side note, Kintzler hasn't exactly been impressive so far.

Man, it's ridiculous how deep Aoli plays. That's two hits tonight which should have been outs, but Aokie stands nearly on the warning track. I understand that he struggles going back on balls, but standing 2-3 steps off the warning track regardless who is at the plate strikes me as extreme. EDIT-- Now they get two more runs in innings where none would have scored if Aoki catches line drives which landed no more than 8-10 feet from the warning track, but he was so deep that they fell in a foot or two front of him.

In the last inning, Carpenter got a walk on a strike, but the pitch was supposed to be on the outside corner and instead Lucroy had to move his glove to the inside corner where the pitch ended up. Not excusing the ump, but they miss pitches like that a lot. It was the two strike pitch to Holliday which hurt. I don't think Miller has been getting help so much as Lohse has been getting pinched.