kramnoj

And we're off veering again. Who's using his very brief big league stint as an argument FOR him? Are you really unaware that this has happened? Not specifically in this thread, but by posters here? So why does it bother you so much that some disagree? That some, in particular given the title of this thread, simply think that Mat Gamel would be a better option to play 3rd base and hit 2nd in our lineup this year? The only thing that has bothered me is someone choosing the exaggerate the deficiency of McGehee's minor league stats. I feel it's best to be fair and honest, and I think trying to put someone else down to support my own argument is pathetic. It doesn't bother me to that some people prefer Gamel over Casey, but it often involves flawed logic.

On this board pointing to semantics is usually a sign someone is in a pointless debate with you. Everyone gets his point, including you. I don't know what his point is. If the point was just to say that Gamel had a much better minor league career, that's an easy point to make. I don't know what the point of calling McGehee's career in the minors very poor is, but I have a suspicion. I don't typically ask rhetorical questions, if I ask one, I'm trying to gain understanding. If you want to chastise posters for embellishment in attempts to diminish what players have done why not look at posters saying Gamel has done nothing at the MLB level. There are enough defenders here to carry that banner. As for the statement of whether Gamel has done nothing at the MLB level, well, it's not enough of a sample size to say anything with certainty. If I want to make the case that Gamel will have a good major league career, I cite his minor league numbers and cite the general projection of minor to major stats. If I try to find significance in the 94 PA that Gamel had as a 3B in 2009, that opens the door to thinking that is a significant number of PA to base projections on. I mean, Counsell has a 967 OPS in his career with the bases loaded in 123 PA, but I doubt many people would prefer him over other hitters in that situation. Shane Spencer once had a 1.321 OPS in 73 PA. It's too small a sample to have much meaning. As far as Gamel vs McGehee, my preference is for the Brewers to choose what his defensive position in 2012 is and have him play that position in the minors in 2011. If Gamel's only real defensive issue is his arm, 1B would be a decent position for him to play. His projection would be reasonable at 1B, but below what many people would like. For a lot of people that want McGehee replaced, it seems the -22/150 UZR of 2009 has overpowered the -4/150 UZR of 2010. Given that Gamel has made 35 errors at 3B in AAA over the last 157 games played, I don't really think Gamel's better ZIPS projections makes up for his defensive questions.

As I said, this discussion really has no further course, especially if we're devolving into arguing semantics. Really? Poor vs very poor is the basis of your question? Defending a point by pointing to semantics is usually a sign that the person defending did a poor job communicating. You chose to use the term very poor, and when asked to define that, you backed off. Given that, why did you describe it as very poor, if not to attempt to diminish McGehee? It's baffling how you can run your head into the wall. I don't know what this means. You used a word to describe something and then used a different word. Seems to me my head isn't running into a wall, but changed your description. Wasn't the issue a lack of "facts?" Saying something is very poor with no objective support isn't facts. If you want to point out his minor league stats, you can list them as a fact. If you want to put them in perspective, then do so. But inaccurate language is not addressing the lack of facts issue.

I'd say for a corner IF'er, .741 after playing at AAA for 3 years can best be described as average and closer to poor. Given that, why did you describe his career as very poor? It just seems like a way to try to diminish McGehee more than is reasonable. It's easy to say that Gamel has been better offensively in the minors than Casey has. There's no need to degrade McGehee to say that Gamel was better.

McGehee came up out of nowhere having a very poor minor league career. I'm curious why you would describe his minor league numbers as very poor. If you feel a .741 OPS in the minors for a 3B is very poor, what would you describe as poor, and what would you describe as average? I'm also curious if anyone has seen a study that shows that there needs to be a balance of righties and lefties in the lineup, or if this is commonly accepted.

I guess it depends on what trade would need to be made. There are enough players to make a Ray Durham type trade if needed. I don't think there's enough high end quality to do a CC type trade.

For all we know that could mean his family and friends. It could be aliens and ghosts, but there is no reason to assume that's what was meant. I don't see any reason to think that TH was talking about anybody but baseball people. I think it's just another example of people looking for reasons to criticize TH.

I didn't read it that way. I don't think you are representative of TH's target audience either. My argument was and is, when you know a SS has significantly below average defense and a sub .300 OBP, unless he has some real power, everything else is basically irrelevant. You have yet to respond to the data that Betancourt was a win better with the bat than Escobar despite having the same OBP. You can continue to repeat your argument, but it's not supported by actual data. Unless you think a win is basically irrelevant. I don't. If he doesn't project to be replacement level, he's pretty darn close. I'm not disputing that. I'm pretty sure I said it, maybe in a previous thread. I certainly am not excited by Betancourt. I'm hopeful that he returns closer to the player that he was earlier in his career, and he has motivation to do so in terms of money and in terms of being on a good team. He's not so old that a return to those years is inconceivable. And the other SS that are out there aren't projected to be better than Betancourt was when he was at his best (which is admittedly a low ceiling).

the problem is that in addition to being average-ish with the bat he's horrific defensively, and that's what makes him an unacceptable starter The issue with this statement is that our preconception of what is acceptable may not match reality. There were worse players than Betancourt playing at his position last year. It's certainly possible that all GM's playing shortstops worse than Betancourt weren't doing a good job, or it's possible that what we believe to be freely available replacement players aren't quite so freely available. I focused on his OBP because that's what ruins his offensive value. Again, when a guy has a sub .300 career OBP, he's kind of screwed. Again, you weren't trying to paint a picture of his offensive value. You were highlighting his negatives. There was no valid reason to only present the negatives if you were trying to be honest. His 16 HRs last year has been quoted numerous time in this thread, so I didn't think it was necessary to point out that he's shown above average power as a SS. I don't really understand your logic here. Betancourt's OBP has been previously mentioned here. His offense isn't really a factor on whether he should be a starting SS, because it's near the middle of what his peers provide. If you want to make the argument that Betancourt shouldn't be a starter because of his defense alone, make the argument. But throwing in OBP alone to support the argument is weak. I don't think we should assume he'll hit double digit HRs If you can find anyone making that assumption, you should let them know. Betancourt has been better offensively in the past than he was last year. His OPS+ last year is marginally better than his career. His slugging was higher than usual, but his BA and OBP were lower than usual. A regression to the mean should provide comparable value to what was provided last year.

And I'd be happy to unearth some data that would change my opinion of Betencourt, so please don't take the easy way out and accuse me of bias. Argue the facts, not the person. You already unearthed the data when you bothered to look at Betancourt's projection vs league average. It told a much more revealing story than just looking at OBP. As far as more data, just looking at the Fangraphs leaderboard for SS last year, Betancourt was 17th among qualified players at his position with -11 batting runs to go with his .288 OBP. Clearly, that's poor, but he was much closer to the 15th best hitter than not being worthy of starting. Escobar, interestingly,had the same .288 OBP, but produced -21 runs. Looking at OBP only is a very poor way of giving an honest look at the potential contribution of Betancourt.

The question is whether inserting a .355 on base hitter in the 2 hole ahead of murderers row instead of a .295 on base guy will offset the additional runs allowed by having a below average glove in CF. How is that the question? Hart can bat 2nd. Has our new manager engraved stone tablets with Betancourt batting 2nd? Detroit had Damon DH 97 games last year. How many times have players been a DH one season and then been a CF the next? Chances are he would be pretty bad defensively, but if he was limited to a platoon role, I would think he would be projected to be a better overall player in CF than our current options. I just am not sure it would be worth the money Damon would be expecting given the Brewers payroll.

That isn't fair, IMHO, and Russ's analysis strikes me as sound. Using limited evidence and only citing evidence that highlights a player's weaknesses is never sound. It's not even analysis. First of all, focusing on OBP always makes a good bit of sense, because OBP is the single most important component of a player's offensive contribution. I don't think that's true for every single player. It's true for the vast majority of players, but clearly, for Betancourt, his power relative to other players at his position is a positive. Second, focusing on Betancourt's (or any lineup addition's) OBP in the context of the Brewers seems to me to make even more sense than usual, because I would say the team as currently constructed needs OBP at the margin more than it needs SLG (the other major component of a player's offensive contribution). We don't know where Betancourt will be in the lineup, so that's not really much of a consideration. It's generally believed that lineup construction can have an effect of 1 or 2 wins over a season. Betancourt's position in the lineup just isn't going to have that much of an impact. Finally, there's nothing at all wrong or sneaky about using the strongest available piece of evidence to illustrate a point that the evidence in general bears out. The issue is that the evidence of OBP doesn't bear anything out with regards to Betancourt's offensive contribution. It's provided as reason with defense to make a point that Betancourt shouldn't be starting. Instead, his offense may be near average for the position, despite the weak OBP. Should a shortstop who, based on the best available evidence, (a) is below-average offensively, (b) is below-average defensively, and © is past the age when most players get better be starting for anybody? I can't see why he should be. That's not enough reasoning to make that decision. What is the players expected projection? What is the error bar of that projection, and how much upside does one player have over another (there isn't much upside to Betancourt, but he has been near average for his position in the past)? What are the salary demands for players that project to be better, and will they want to work in Milwaukee?

It's an easy way to highlight his limitations as a hitter, so I found it beneficial. Sure, you used the best available evidence to support your preconceived notion, rather than address his overall offensive contribution projection. Looks like he might not even project to hit as well as even an average SS but he's probably expected to be close. This is a much more reasoned response, and is something that many people don't seem to acknowledge. Yes, Betancourt isn't an asset with the bat, but given the other options that may be available, it's not really a major deficiency. The question isn't whether the Brewers can live with Betancourt starting at SS; it's whether he's their best available option for 2011. That's an excellent question, but it's a little different than what you said previously. What you said previously was it's clear to me that he should not be starting every day. Now maybe you meant that he shouldn't be starting for the Brewers. Given your previous desire for specificity, I wouldn't have wanted to assume that. I do wonder how the whole getting Greinke thing could have been handled differently. If he had been more aggressive a week earlier, would he have had any interest in trying to acquire Hardy or Hall to play SS? I'm guessing no, but it's possible there were opportunities lost there. As far as taking Betancourt, did the Royals need to trade him because they were short on 40 man space? Would it have been possible to take the worst player on the Royals 40 man instead and send them a C level prospect instead? I have to believe that the Royals would have been willing to trade Betancourt at a later time if the Brewers couldn't have signed a reasonable contract with Punto, Renteria, Cabrera, etc.

Even knowing all the limitations of defensive metrics, it's hard for me to believe that Betancourt is an even average SS defensively. Couple that with his sub .300 career OBP, it's clear to me that he should not be starting every day. I don't see any benefit in focusing on OBP. The guy isn't a good hitter, but then again, most shortstops aren't either. It would be nice if some shortstops moved from Lake Woebegone, but sometimes even good teams can live with below average players.

Just to throw one example out there, Joe Mauer signed his extension 3/22 in the year that he was going to be a free agent. The Brewers have months to get this worked out.

If that was the one thing that jumped out to at least two people here, I don't think it is "minutiae." I don't think 2 people on an independent internet message board are in any way representative of the target audience of TH's writing. If he had talked to scouts, he should have said as much. Actually would have been fewer keystrokes. That's only true if he only talked to scouts. If he talked to front office people, beat writers, columnists, radio hosts, national writers and scouts, that becomes quite a lot of information that doesn't provide much more value for most people. That's Ron Roenicke talking about his new shortstop. For anyone interested in facts, and not caught up in Betancourt the Butcher hysteria, for the first 3 years that he was with the Mariners, he was basically average or slightly below average defensively. So Roenicke's first impression of Betancourt was that the would have been about average. And without knowing the specific details of the performance of Betancourt against the Angels defensively, it's entirely possible that Betancourt might have made impressive players against the Angels that informed Roenicke's impression. His performance with the Royals is not going to have as much of an impression, because Roenicke wouldn't see him as much. And for 2008-2009, when Betancourt was bad defensively, Roenicke could have understandably made the decision that the year plus of bad defense doesn't outweigh the previous 3 years of adequate defense.

Except that "those who watch him" doesn't necessarily mean "baseball people"/scouts, front office guys. I just watched him. I wasn't impressed. If he wanted to reference the collected opinions of some scouts, he should have said I'm going to guess that most people assume that he was talking to professional baseball people. Considering this was a blog post thrown up while TH is on vacation, I don't see any benefit from criticizing the minutiae.

How does a reporter use that as a source? He could list every scout, front office person and reporter he talked to, but the vast majority of people wouldn't care. It's not exactly uncommon to reference baseball people for opinions without naming them.

Are we really going to wait to see how he pitches to give him an extension? Is anyone saying that? I think Greinke might want to wait to see how the Brewers perform and how he likes Milwaukee before signing an extension. He's here for 2 years, there isn't a rush to make this happen right now.

Would never happen. Injury risk could cost him 100 mil dollars. 0 chance they even think about it. Fielder has already turned down $100M dollars that could be risked with an injury, so that's clearly not true. A lot depends on what happens in the 2011 offseason. Fielder may not get the mega offer that he expects and a one year deal with Milwaukee on a team that hopefully was a serious contender may not be such a horrible thing.

I'm just going by what I saw. What you saw was a player that had missed a good chunk of 2010 with an injury. We have little reason to believe that what we saw is representative of his true talent level given how well he performed in previous years.

One of the supposedly best managers in baseball couldn't get squat out of Gomez. Gardy got 2 Wins out of Gomez in 2008. I'd take that in CF in 2011.

Betancourt lost weight before the 2009 season as well. Losing weight isn't the only way that one can show they are motivated, and I haven't said that it is. It might be a coincidence that Betancourt's worst seasons have been on losing teams and he has performed better on teams that are winning or close to .500. It could be just the way he has aged. But I don't think it's nearly the slam dunk total loss that so many here do.

Don't sugarcoat the numbers, he has been a below average defender and that has been backed up by other accounts. Sugarcoat? Where? You are seeing something that doesn't exist. I made a statement based on the available evidence. I was showing that his defense did not take a nosedive. If you find a place where I said that I expect him to be good defensively in 2011, please let me know.

We all know that Suppan was not the #1 or #2 starter heading into the 2009 season. He was coming off of a 4.96 ERA and a 1.54 WHIP in 2008. Yes, and Melvin is smart enough to know that one year isn't enough information to base decisions on. Suppan got the OD start because the team didn't want to put pressure on Gallardo. On July 18, 2009 Suppan had a 4.43 ERA and the Brewers were just two games back. Parra had a 6.36 ERA that year. I'm sure a lot of us were hoping Parra would step forward, but he hadn't done enough to be the #2 starter that year.