Ennder

I fully expect Bush, Gallardo, Davis and Wolf will be the first 4 starters, I'd be absolutely shocked if that is not the case. The 5th spot is probably Parra's to lose and if he struggles to throw strikes in spring training it goes to Suppan. I also think we break camp with an extra pitcher until things figure themselves out. Depth is just not a big issue at all in April so your roster has a lot more leeway than later in the season.

The difference between these two things is pretty small. On sept 1st of 2008 Hart had an .822 OPS. Hart had an OPS as low as .828 on August 17th of 2007. The difference between these two seasons was pretty much one months production. That is the point here, when you are keying in on a single season the difference between a STUD and a DFA can be as little as one month. You just need to look at a larger sample in general.

But again this really isn't the case. Hart's 2008 was very similar to his 2007 until the last month of the season where he fell off the cliff. He has been bad for about 1 single season now, the 3/4 of a season he played in 2009 and the last month of 2008. I'm not sure there is a meaningful pattern in there or not though I'd obviously rather have his last 162 games be better than worse.

I'm guessing Suppan falls under this category talked about in the article.

Hmm, maybe the actual spreadsheet is premium then. That would be a rather odd choice to link a premium resource in a free article. For the Brewers we have Red - Weeks Yellow - Zaun, Hart, Gallardo, Wolf, Bush, Hoffman Green - Fielder, McGehee, Escobar, Braun, Gomez, Davis, Suppan, Hawkins Cubs have 5 reds and 6 yellows. Cardinals have 4 reds and 6 yellows.

Dave Duncan fixed Carpenter and that is it. I can't find a single other pitcher that saw a big improvement from him that they kept for more than a single season. Maybe Pineiro will be the 2nd one but pretty much every other starter that people have claimed he fixed were just one year wonders.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=10018#commentMessage I find these interesting every year and they are free so everyone can view them. The Brewers come out as the lowest risk team in the NL Central and one of the lowest in baseball. Weeks is the only red player with not a single red pitcher which every other team in the NL has. The Cubs and Cardinals both have high risk teams again this year, I imagine one of them will suffer a lot of injuries and fall out of the race just like last year with the Cubs.

While I think they have improved quite a bit I think the combination of losing their huge home field advantage and having a pretty brutal OF defense on a flyball happy staff is going to hurt them and keep the division race wide open.

Projections will never match what really happens in a baseball season because they can't project luck/variance. I mean even if every single team in baseball started the season with exactly 81 win talent you would still have a couple of teams win 90 games and there would still be a couple teams that just got nailed by injuries who won under 70. I don't think anyone expects to be able to actually predict baseball, they can only project it. Personally I still think PECOTA is too negative on our rotation, the CHONE projections look a lot more likely to me. The CHONE projections would likely leave us with more RS than RA and a low 80 win total.

That isn't really true though. He had an OPS of .822 as late as sept 1st of 2008. If you were going to break his production down starting in 2007 he has pretty darn close to 2 years of solid production(albeit with a low OBP so a bit overstated by OPS) and a little under 1 year of futility(since he was hurt for more than a month last year). I'd say his career numbers are probably a better indicator of what to expect than either chunk taken on its own since the bad streak is basically only one single season which isn't nearly enough data to make a judgment on. If he doesn't keep taking walks there is almost no way he rebounds to a solid level though.

Doubt he was counting the 6 pitcher one given how he worded it.

They updated these again and now we are at 79 wins. Part of what they did was tweak defense. It now lists us at 746 runs scored(still most in division) and 765 runs allowed.

I think he meant nobody reading this is talented enough at baseball to be worth millions of dollars. You are correct that it doesn't add much to the argument but I don't think he meant it in a negative way.

I don't know what the cut off is but it goes by PA not AB so if there are guys who BB a lot they can be qualified but have lower AB.

Of course if we are anywhere near what CHONE seems to project we'll be holding on to him. PECOTA is overly negative on the pitching most likely and CHONE has outproduced PECOTA the past couple years.

He signed a 2 year deal specifically so he could avoid worrying about contracts this season. I wouldn't be worried at all about him not taklnig an extension.

There is no way to judge something like this when injuries are involved. Weeks has been a very solid player when healthy, who knows what he could have done without the wrist problems. We rushed him to the majors which did him no favors either. It was also a pretty mediocre draft class in the first place. Here are the top 11 picks in that draft. You have to go down to the 13th pick to find a single player who has made an all star game and only 2 of the top 20 have. Only about 11 of the top 35 picks have become full time major league players. Delmon Young - bad player so far Rickie Weeks - derailed by injuries Kyle Sleeth - ? Tim Stauffer - bad pitcher Chris Lubanski - ? Ryan Harvey - ? Nick Markakis - good OF Paul Maholm - uneven SP John Danks - good SP Ian Stewart - just now finally getting a chance to prove himself Michael Aubrey - ?

Sure if the Reds bat him 2nd or 3rd (where he hit in 2007/2009) then yeah he might get 77 RBI playing every single day. Of course that total is not impressive at all for a 2nd or 3rd hitter and he'll give you a mediocre OBP and likely average or below average defense to go with it. Almost any player in baseball can get 75 RBI batting 2nd or 3rd every day. My guess is this is a deal where if they pick up the option it is to keep Cabrera as a utility infielder for 2011 because I doubt he is a full time player for more than next year. Again I said it is probably a fair deal, I just don't think it helps the team all that much. The defensive difference between the two is about the same as the offensive difference. There is more certainty in Cabrera so maybe that was part of the reasoning.

Not sure I can say he is an upgrade over Janish at this point. His glove has slipped and is probably average at best at this point and he put up a .316 OBP last year. Last year by WAR he was worth $2.9M so it seems like a fair deal but I think Janish probably would have been just as valuable since he is a plus defensively at least.

94 to 93.5 to 93 is not up. I don't think they are going to trade a player and pay Carmona over $4M to be in AAA though. If we decided to sort of tank 2010 I think this deal would make some sense. The situation we are in I think they are spending all the money they can to try to have a shot at the playoffs before Fielder is gone. Carmona doesn't do much to improve our chances for 2010 unless we are really lucky.

I don't think Gomez will lose playing time unless he shows an attitude problem of some type.

If the team is giving up on 2010 I could see doing this. Carmona is even more of a project than Parra and having two of those in the rotation all year would be a disaster. Carmona has lost velocity, has lost control and when he does hit the strike zone hitters are making contact more often. His one good year was heavily luck influenced in the first place. I think you'd be lucky to get an ERA under 4 out of him even once over that contract.

You only have to throw out 1 start to get him to his career norms. Suppan is the true definition of an innings eater though, he has basically no value other than to take up innings because you have nobody else to do it. Unfortunately we are just giving him a lot of money to do it. You are most likely going to be disappointed. Wolf's 'true talent' level is in the 4.00-4.25 range and he isn't so old that you should think it will slip much by 2012, certainly no more than to 4.50. We aren't likely to have 4 home grown guys with more talent than that by 2012. The whole notion that Wolf and Suppan are similar is wrong in the first place. If you look at the underlying stats it was pretty clear that Suppan was a 4.50+ ERA pitcher when we signed him, in fact I'd have guessed his true talent at around 4.70 when we signed him and given age regression would have predicted a talent level of 5.00 ERA or so by the end of it, pretty much exactly what hasa happened.. These pitchers really are not comperable at all. The Suppan deal was pretty terrible, the Wolf deal is probably too much money but it isn't a disaster unless he gets hurt right away.

Part of the update was the fact that defense was being double counted and that is probably why the Brewers runs dropped so much. My guess is the defense is still going to be better than the system thinks if the impact from double counting it was 80 runs. As for Wolf being Suppan 2.0, pretty much doubt it. Suppan's last 3 seasons with the Cardinals his FIP were 4.77, 4.53, 4.70. His first year with the Brewers it was 4.42. The past 2 seasons it has been worse due to age/injuries/luck whatever but the first year he pitched more or less just like in STL. It should have been very clear that Suppan was a 4.50+ ERA pitcher going into the deal and that is why so many didn't like the deal.(I'm looking at FIP instead of xFIP because of the change in ballparks meaning his HR/FB should change.) Wolf's last 3 seasons his FIP has been 3.99, 4.17, 3.96. He is genuinely a better pitcher than Suppan was and by a significant amount. The expectation for Wolf should be an ERA under 4.50. I'd say the PECOTA result is probably too high and my guess is PECOTA hates the Brewers defense and that is the cause. Edit: Ok I dug a bit deeper and it is definitely the defense causing the problem. I've never liked FRAA as a statistic and they are in the process of updating their defensive model so hopefully they get that done this season. It has Gamel listed as the worst fielder in baseball. Fielder is the worst 1B in baseball not believing he'll keep up last years improvements. Gomez is one of the better CF in baseball but Escobar is basically league average. It also lists all of our C as negatives. Overall it looks like the Brewers have close to the worst defense in baseball and I don't believe that is really true. That is why the pitching projections seem a bit too high to me.

I completely agree with this yet I think Edmonds should fill in at CF before Hart does. Hart is below average in RF and is a disaster in CF. Hopefully when Gomez needs a day off we use Gerut.