Ennder

Khris Davis can't play CF. He would be a backup OF for us right now. As bad a defensive player as Santana is, Davis is much worse.

These posts are getting just silly at this point. Jay Bruce isn't worth anything to this team. The Brewers are not pushing for the playoffs right now, just learn to live with it. There is almost nothing worth giving away to try to push for an unlikely division win just to lose in round 1 of the playoffs. This is not a contending team for the World Series and there are no moves that DS can make that turns it into one without heavily mortgaging the future. The only reason the Indians even made this move is because Brantley got hurt and their OF wasn't amazing pre injury. A bad GM makes these types of moves with this roster and that isn't what we have right now. To put something into perspective lets look at the Dodgers roster vs us at each position and which team has the advantage. C - Dodgers 1B - Dodgers 2B - Dodgers SS - Dodgers 3B - Push LF - Brewers CF - Push RF - Brewers by a tiny bit Bench - Dodgers SP1 - Dodgers SP2 - Dodgers SP3 - Dodgers SP4 - Dodgers SP5 - Dodgers CL - Dodgers RP1 - Push RP2 - Dodgers RP3 - Dodgers You could do the same with the Nationals and it would look much the same. This Brewers team is 4 or 5 guys away from really being a competitive playoff team. Not one marginal guy.

1. Yes analytics look at game situation but not every stat does. I'm assuming this is in regards to the bunt attempt discussion and in that specific case I was showing you numbers based on just scoring 1 run. There are also numbers that look at scoring multiple runs which would be more important earlier in the game. Most stats are context neutral though so you have to add the context. 2. I couldn't find this info with a quick search. I know the number of bunts are way down, don't know about the success rates. 3. I would assume it is but I haven't seen any actual proof ever. Using context neutral stats a bunt is never good, ever. The context has to push the decision into being good. Whether it is a good bunter, bad hitter, great hitter up next, bad defense etc. If we had say Dee Gordon up and Christian Yelich was up next the bunt is almost certainly the right move in that game because Gordon is an elite bunter and Yelich is a really good hitter. I just can't imagine Pina is a good bunter and Broxton isn't a great hitter. In the specific case of Broxton such a large percentage of his hits are extra bases that he doesn't need the runners moved in order to drive them in with most of his hits. Such a large percentage of his outs are via the popout or strike out that moving the runner to 3rd doesn't increase his chances to score a run on an out nearly as much as others. The context of having Broxton up next is a negative, not a positive. I'm assuming Pina isn't a great bunter, it is really just a guess. Not very athletic catchers usually aren't. So his context is a negative. Tampa Bay is a good defensive team, Longoria being one of the better defensive 3B in the game. Sucre being a good defensive C. I'm assuming this context hurts the bunt. In this specific case all of the context seemed to point away from a bunt. I will also say this is only a major league baseball thing. In high school where the fielding isn't as good and the players don't hit as many extra bases bunting is right in a lot more cases. Even in college it is right more often than in the majors. 50 years ago it was right more often as well because there just wasn't as much power in the game and there were way fewer strike outs.

I won't go into it again but what you are missing in your math is that only 75% of the time does the bunt move the runner. You have to include the 25% of the time it fails into the math. You don't get to just point at 3rd and the runners move over, you have to execute first. The math you showed up is what would happen if the bunt worked 100% of the time and it simply does not. The final math shows you lower your chance to score a run by about 2%. That is completely context neutral so the context behind the specific bunt has to make up that 2% somehow. That is where the opinion part of it comes in. If someone believes that was a much better than average situation to bunt in that makes up the 2% I'm all cool with that. I just disagree with them. But I'm done with the discussion. I just don't like someone saying my math proved they were right when it clearly proved they were wrong. Math is a big deal to me.

I don't care about the bunt but that is not what my numbers say and that is the problem. You don't seem to understand how math works. But whatever, be mad at Counsell all you want. He is going to get blamed for every loss by someone anyway, it comes with his job.

Its an awful way to evaluate a trade. If we trade Travis Shaw tomorrow for Asdrubal Cabrera it is a bad deal even if Shaw has a season ending injury the next day. The process matters, the results are so variable that a good 50% of them are out of the GMs hands.

Just because you are wrong about the bunting thing doesn't mean people think he strikes out 100%.

False. Oops, didn't notice the pitcher was in parenthesis. 7th!

I see a lot of results oriented thinking in here and that is not a good way to evaluate a trade. Feliz's velocity was up and he pitched well last season. There was a really solid thought process behind giving him a small one season deal. A move that didn't work isn't always a bad move. Feliz is nowhere near a black mark against Stearns. Not every move is going to work out. Nothing Scooter has ever done in his career suggested something like what he did this season was coming, he even said it surprises him. This is just a random breakout that nobody can see coming. They had two players they liked more than Scooter so there just wasn't room for him. You can send him to AAA and eat his cash or release him, either are totally viable. I'm sure Scooter asked for the release if he was given any sort of choice in the matter. A poor defensive platoon 2B coming off of a basically replacement level season has no trade value at all so trading him was never really an option. Corey Ray is just way too early to tell yet. He doesn't even have 600 PA in the minors yet and a lot of times college hitters are behind the age curve because the college game is played so differently than the majors.

Brett Phillips slashed .522/.593/.739 this week. Look out Broxton!

He's batting 6th tonight.

I just showed you the math that says otherwise. You can't just assume the bunt always works, the times the bunt does not work cost you more value than the times it does work gains you. I am trying to include all outcomes of the bunt just like all outcomes of swinging away are accounted for in the original run expectancy. This has been studied to death. It is rarely helpful to have a positional player bunt in today's game. Bunting there with Pina is ALWAYS wrong, it lowers your chance to score. You can't argue with the math. If they changed sac bunts the way they changed IBB and you just got to point to third and they got their base than yeah, bunting improves our chances by 6%, that just isn't how it works. When you factor in failed bunts it is clearly a negative move. When deciding to bunt there needs to be some reason that you think the situation is better than normal. Either you have a really bad hitter up, a really good contact guy up next, bunting to a poor fielder, a really good bunter is up etc. There are certainly cases it makes sense. This one the context was against a bunt in almost every way. TB has a good fielding team, Pina is a better hitter than Broxton, Broxton strikes out a ton. Pina probably isn't a good bunter though I don't know it for sure. All of the context is going against the bunt and the math always goes against it. Do a simple search on why you shouldn't bunt and you can find article after article that spits the math out for you, you don't have to take my word for it. Counsell did the right thing and there really isn't any reasonable doubt about it.

Broxton in on pace for roughly a 1 WAR season, he really isn't the problem with the team.

They won't always stick to the plan. This is just not the year for the Brewers to make impact moves. The Dodgers and Nationals are too far ahead of us in talent. If we wanted to be serious World Series contenders this year we would have to trade away multiple major pieces. Trading guys who might be rule 5 guys for fringe players is fine but one or two more fringe players isn't going to save the offense. The guys who have been good in the past just need to start hitting again.

If we move him up and he slumps the narrative will be that the pressure got to him, if we leave him where he is and he slumps the narrative will be that he got frustrated they didn't believe in him. Jean Segura was not ruined by where he batted in the order. He was ruined by hitting everything into the ground for a bit and then having a catastrophe in his personal life.

If we give Pina a 75% chance to bunt it means we have lowered our odds of scoring 25% of the time by 27%. The other 75% of the time we raise our chances by 6%. So the math is .75*.06-.25*.27=.045-.0675=-.0225. We have lowered our chances of scoring a single run by over 2%. But of course the people up do matter. With Broxton that 2nd and 3rd run expectancy goes down because he strikes out 40% of the time. With him specifically batting our run expectancy for a single run probably goes down like 4 or 5%. Bunting is very clearly wrong here. There isn't really an argument for the bunt. It would take an extremely good bunter or someone who is extremely fit with runners on 2nd and 3rd to make this a smart move and we had neither. This -2% is generous in this case. That also doesn't include the fact that our chance to score multiple runs goes way down. So you are lowering your chances to score one run a minute amount, lowering the chance of scoring multiple runs a ton. There just is no case for a bunt here other than saying that's how they did in the old days, which really doesn't matter in today's game.

I can't read the article because jsonline is terrible. We can still trade for Kinsler if we want to. Broxton and Granderson are pretty close to a wash and at the deadline we still had Brinson in the mix. I don't really think Granderson does much other than adding a lefty bat. I mean I wouldn't be against them getting him but I wouldn't pay anything at all for him.

The run expectancy with runners on 1st and 2nd with no outs since 2010 are 61% to score at least 1 run. With runners on 2nd and 3rd with 1 out it becomes 67.6% That is assuming an average hitter of which Broxton is not. A higher than normal percentage of his outs are from K's and popups and a higher than normal percentage of his hits are for extra bases which would score the runner from 2nd as easily as the one from 3rd. The seasonal success rates of sacrifice bunst generally ranges between 70% and 80% and Pina is almost certainly a below average bunter. If the bunt fails you are down to a 40.6% chance to score. It is pretty unlikely that bunting was the right call in this specific situation. Bunting's value has gone down in today's game because players don't put the ball in play as much and when they do it tends to be for more extra base hits. In an era where people didn't K a lot and hit mostly singles it made a ton of sense. That isn't today's game. Now if it were say Villar up and there was a chance to bunt for a hit or stress out the defense into an error or something I might like it more. Or if we had say Dustin Pedroia up next who only strikes out 10% of the time. There are situations where it is definitely the right move, this just wasn't the right time.

Yeah I'm not sure a bunt is a smart move with your slow running catcher with strike out machines behind him. I'll take Barnes over Hughes or Drake in general. I don't know what to think of Hader, his peripherals have still been just awful so I don't trust him even a little bit. Hard to blame the manager on this one. The offense has to figure it out, they have an OPS right around .650 since the all star break and that isn't going to work.

I'm assuming MLB's Gamecast is the only one using Pitch F/X or whatever MLB's system is. The other's I'm guessing are basing it off of the camera view like ESPN's K-Zone. mlb uses stat cast which is the in stadium radar system in all parks now. It has some calibration issues but I think what you see on Gamecast is probably more accurate than what other sites show.

He has been right every time. Hechevarria didn't go. Not really up for debate. He went so you are correct, no need for debate.

Because Swarzak had pitched 3 of the previous 4 days so he was only going to be used if we were still ahead in the 9th. The bullpen is just gassed from all of these close games. Hughes is the worst arm in the pen and Drake does a decent job against lefties. Drake was probably only coming in if they scored and tied up the game. Counsell used the bullpen well tonight given the limitations due to over usage lately.

He has been right every time.

Villar actually isn't really any faster than Thames. Villar runs 27.5 feet per second, Thames runs 27.3 feet per second. Though now that I look at it you meant run for Aguilar and move Thames to 1B and yeah Villar is faster than Aguilar .

Thames is tough to read. His xOBA+ per month is. I use that stat because it isn't so results oriented. The K rate can't stay where it has been lately pretty much sums it up. 155, 108, 89, 102, 89. So if you take out April he looks pretty league average.