Ennder

I used baseballreference, no clue why it is different. Close enough it could just be a scoring adjustment throwing it off somewhere.

CC=Harden, Sheets> Zambrano, Brewers #3 vs Dempster isn't an overmatch. I find it hard to believe they have some insurmountable advantage. Over a 7 game series anything can happen, that is how a team like the rockies can make the world series as about the 7th best team in the NL last year. I wouldn't worry much about playoff matchups, the biggest battle is just getting to the playoffs.

Zambrano is the weakest ace of any playoff team(he is a clear cut #2 imo) so I could see that causing issues, especially if Harden ends up getting hurt. If Harden stays healthy it makes the Cubs so much more dangerous since he is a legit #1 when healthy just one that doesn't go deep into games.

This year as RP before tonights game. 368.1 IP, .724 OPS against, 3.96 ERA, 7.4 K/9, 4.13 BB/9. Last year as RP 511.1 IP, .713 OPS against, 4.24 ERA, 8.4 K/9, 3.52 BB/9. Granted those aren't all the stats we can get to compare things but it is hard to find just as RP stats and I didn't try all that hard. I'd say that in 2007 our bullpen was probably better than this year overall or at least pretty equal, we just had a bit better luck/defense this year. Bullpen stats are very high variance year to year which is why bullpen arms are considered so unreliable outside the top guys.

I could see it if the Brewers make the playoffs, especially if they have the 2nd best record in the NL. Not really sure who deserves it, would probably be best to compare W3 to actual wins or something like that.

I read this same type of thing on the cardsclubhouse forum and I think it simply comes down to STL fans not taking the Brewers seriously so even though we have a better team than them this season they think of us a big a joke and are really just upset that a team other than the Cubs or Astros are competing with them. If this were a Brewer a team that is 7 games behind them they would just ignore it all, the fact that it is a team they dont' take seriously who is ahead of them is what is fueling it all.

We have the most rested bullpen in baseball and a day off in two days. I doubt it is a big deal.

But you can count on one hand how many hitters sit near a 1.000 OPS year in and year out. I cannot be disappointed in a player hitting at a .917 OPS clip for the majority of the season especially if he has a big finish that offsets that slow start and he ends up over .900 for the season.

Bill Hall Not much Weeks could do there in my opinion.

Sounds like Durham hurt his shoulder so that was the cause of the switch.

Weeks is a better defensive 2B than Durham so no problem with that~ The way he did the switch I can only imagine he thinks Weeks will get on and be bunted over to 2nd or maybe he'll PH Sabathia or something, dunno. Doesn't make a ton of sense to me.

I'm not trying to harp on you here I really am not but what you are really seeing is a slow start that takes forever to fix. Fielder has an OPS of .917 since June 2nd and he has been pretty steady over that timeframe. He just had a pretty mediocre April/May and hasn't been able to make up for it quite yet. I agree he hasn't had the year I expected out of him but he has hardly been bad either.

Fielder's stats this season. Total - .270/.369/501/.870 RISP - .242/.384/.467/.851 High Leverage - .306/.444/.792/1.236 I guess I'm not seeing it. The biggest issue with Fielder is Hardy and Braun are pretty low OBP guys and they both bat ahead of him so he doesn't get a lot of RBI chances. He also gets pitched around a lot.

Nice to see Zambrano regress to the mean somewhat, his ERA hasn't matched his stats this season so far.

Yeah but from a statistical chances standpoint the PHI/NYM series is almost meaningless to us. Pick the team you think will be better the rest of the year and hope they lose both games.

He can't prove anything wrong with one game good or bad. I completely disagree with your opinion on this in the first place but if he goes out and pitches a shutout it doesn't prove anything and neither does going out and giving up 5 runs in 5 IP. Pitchers have good and bad games all the time and it isn't just about 'getting up for big games'.

According to http://www.sportsclubstat...onal/Central/Brewers.html this game has a 13.6% impact on our playoff odds. +6.8% if we win(up to 84.7%), -6.8% if we lose(down to 71.1%). I'd have to call this a big game! No other game today is very significant since the Phillies play the Mets.

I didn't mind the Suppan deal though I don't like how backloaded it was so we can't trade him. What his signing did was give us a little stability in a rotation that really didn't have any and allow us to not rush Gallardo/Parra and not be quite as worried about Sheets staying healthy. So far Suppan has been worth what we payed him and if we don't re-sign Sheets or Sabathia I'll be glad we have him next year too even if he is overpaid these next couple years.

Ok lets say that Dave Bush leaves 30 meat balls down the middle every season. In one season only 10 of those 30 are HRs, in the next season 20 of the 30 are HRs but out of those 15 were solo shots. The 3rd year 20 of the 30 are HRs again but only 1 is a solo shot but 29 are 3 run HRs. He threw 30 meat balls every year and one year he had a great ERA one year he had a decent one and one year he had a terrible one. Each season he threw the same exact number of meat balls. Sure it is a goofy example but that is the reality of pitching, sometimes you throw a bad pitch and the hitter pops it up, sometimes you throw a good pitch and he clobbers it, sometimes you give up a HR and it is 1 RBI, sometimes it is 3. These things don't come anywhere close to evening out each season, if they did you wouldn't see ERA jump around so much season to season like it does. I think Joe Blanton is a good example of this. 2005 - 5.19 K/9, 3.0 BB/9, 4.43 FIP and a 3.53 ERA because of a 75.3% LOB and a .255 BABIP. 2006 - 4.96 K/9, 2.69 BB/9, 4.16 FIP and a 4.82 ERA because of a 68.9% LOB and a .337 BABIP 2007 - 5.48 K/9, 1.57 BB/9, 3.50 FIP and a 3.95 ERA becasue of a 68.9% LOB and a .306 BABIP. How do you look at those seasons and think 2005 was his best and not just lucky, pretty clearly 2007 was his best and most likely 2005 was his worst? If you had to guess on 2008 what would the guess be? 2008 - 4.85 K/9, 2.73 BB/9, 4.38 FIP and a 4.75 ERA because of a 68.9% LOB and a .306 BABIP. I'm not trying to exaggerate here but 100's of studies have been done on this and have shown that ERA is just useless as a predicator of future success over one season of stats. You really cannot tell anything about a pitcher from one year of ERA because the sample size is still too small. As long as you are using it as a measure of judging a pitchers season you are not going to really understand pitching. Take that comment as me being smarmy or conceited whatever but it is the truth. It can tell what happened but it cannot tell why it happened or whether or not it will happen again and that seems to me to be the really important part of judging a pitcher.

That's all well and good, but the fact of the matter is you have to translate that "skill" into results and ERA best shows the results. The results were not good for Dave Bush in 2007. They were decent in 2006. They are looking like they could be very decent in 2008. Being result oriented is exactly the problem. Dave Bush can pitch exactly the same two years in a row and a bunch of his bad pitches can happen with RISP one time and not the other time and he could easily see his ERA be as much as 2.00 different between the years. That is luck, it is not skill, it is results it is not a good judge of how he actually threw the ball. I just don't understand at all why people get so focused on ERA, it makes no sense to me. ERA is pretty useful over a 3 season period but it is borderline random over a single season. That is why someone like Peavy can have a sub 3 ERA one year and a 4 ERA the next.

Finally give him a shot? He has had a shot two years running and totally tanked it both times. I mean I agree, the Rangers are in a situation where they have nothing to lose but so far his MO has pretty much been AAAA.

Bush is way closer to his 2007 numbers than 2006 numbers in everything but BABIP. I don't know why people are so pig headed about ERA and WHIP, they are way too luck based to be accurate indicators of a pitchers skill over a single season. Let go of that bias and you'll understand pitching so much better.

My Brewerfan.net projection for Cameron was .272 / .340 / .481 so he is doing about what I expected out of him. I was probably too optimistic about the AVG, surprised me when I looked back and I had it over .270 though i don't think the .260s are unreasonable since he isn't in pitchers parks anymore.

We would have to go 7-24 in our final 31 games to not improve on last years record.

Eckstein or Erstad would have been safe there, Counsell is unfortunately only rated 9 in gritiness not 10 like those guys.