kramnoj

Chris was below average OFer but a top notch pinch hitter. As far as I see, that was true in 1994, when he went 11/33 with 2 HR and 6 RBI, and 93 when he went 6 for 16 with 3 RBI. Did those two seasons create that impression for you, or was it more widely thought that he was a top notch PH? In his career, Chris Gwynn was a .230 PH.

The beta site is updated as seen here: http://sandbox.baseball-reference.com/ Want to see Weeks situational hitting? its here for you! http://sandbox.baseball-r...layers/w/weeksri01.shtml Amazing amount of info.

The beta site is updated as seen here: http://sandbox.baseball-reference.com/ Want to see Weeks situational hitting? its here for you! http://sandbox.baseball-r...layers/w/weeksri01.shtml Amazing amount of info.

The season isn't going to be won or lost in the 1st 10 days. It won't be decided then, but it could easily make the difference when the season is over.

After that... once we get into the season and have to skip starts... they better be skipping Suppan and not anyone else. Why do the Brewers have to skip starts? How many teams have pitchers skip starts as part of a set rotation, as opposed to in response to minor injuries, rainouts, etc? Last year the most games started was 34, and quite a few pitchers did so (looks like 12 per b-ref leaderboards). Based on a 5 day rotation, it looks like pitchers who start in the front of the rotation and don't miss a start get 34 games.

JB, what specific benefit does Duffy being left handed have? Duffy has had a little bit less than a seasons worth of ABs against RH. This is what he has done: .275/.338/.369. Against LH, he is pathetic: .246/.297/.339 His being left only gives him the platoon advantage to where he is below average, or worse, as a hitter at CF. I don't see how his being LH is going to have any impact on any other hitters in the lineup.

He won't hit the homers Cameron will, but he will steal some bases, hit for a higher average, have a lot less strikeouts, and get on base more. Why is Duffy going to get on base more than Cameron? Duffy's career OBP in the majors is less than .330 and has been less than .320 the last two years in the majors. Cameron has only had an OBP that low once, in 2004. Duffy's being left handed doesn't add any value.

The Astros probably aren't looking to take on payroll, so I can't imagine it will be a big $ player. I would guess they will wait to see how the Brewers 3B situation plays out and see if they can get whichever player the Brewers won't have on the 25 man. Lamb might make the most sense guven his 3 decent-good years there.

I'm optimistic about Jeffress, but there's only so much to say while waiting for a prospect to develop. I certainly don't expect him to contribute to the club in 2009. Beyond that, it's just wait and see for me. As I look at it, he's at least a year behind Gallardo in terms of development at the same age. So with Gallardo becoming a good contributor to the Brewers at age 21, I see Jeffress doing so at age 22 at the earliest, and that will be hugely dependent on how he does going forward.

The statement that was made that Weeks gets undue criticism, not that Weeks shouldn't be criticized. We have one person here saying that Weeks doesn't even belong in the majors and insultingly saying he should be a bat boy. Do you think that is fair? Too many people can't just be fair and say that Weeks has been disappointing. They have to try to find ways that they think is funny or clever to diminish his value. Others here call Weeks a bust, which should really be reserved for players that truly bust and contribute no value to the team that drafted them.

We should have let him walk in the offseason and picked up someone else. Who do you think would have been better? If he had been taken anywhere other than the 1st round we would have bailed by now but we have too much money invested I guess. Weeks just finished his age 25 season and has played less than 3 seasons of games in the majors. It would be too early to give up on a player who has as much potential as he does and has performed overall as an average or below average player at his position.

Get rid of, let go, trade, ship off, package, embark, whatever wording you want to use - replacing Hardy with Escobar means Hardy isn't here anymore. Saying that "jettison" is the equivalent of "make a good trade" is like saying that walking and running get you to the same place. It's true, but it doesn't really paint a complete picture. I'm not disputing that both results would end up with Hardy gone. That's clear. But I don't think anybody is saying that the Brewers should cast off Hardy, and it seemed a bit dismissive when addressing the points that were made. sbrylski06 is pointing out that trading Hardy and utilizing the best prospect at his best position would probably be the best use of organizational resources. I don't know how long it will take before Escobar is a better player than Hardy, but he will certainly be a more valuable player than Hardy to the Brewers in 2011, and possibly before then.

but I hope this organization doesn't sacrifice a better chance to win to try and justify a bad contract. Do we have reason to believe that of this organization? This is a team that fired a coach in September in a playoff race. I don't think Attanasio will let anybody drag the team down if there is a better alternative. I think we have numerous options in the organization right now besides McClung that would be better starters than Suppan. Which pitchers do you think would be better, and how do you think they would do?

he may be average on balls he gets too but his range is way below average jeter is no longer a major league caliber defensive shortstop but he's to big of a baby to move. It doesn't really matter what his range is. It matters how many plays he makes compared to peers at his position. Jeter was basically average last year. Since he was basically average last year, there is no objective way to say that he isn't major league caliber.

Two wins this year are more important than having a #3 you can't use next year. Where are you getting 2 wins? Alex isn't projected to miss enough time for Beltre to get enough time to earn 2 Wins. The Yankees need to move Kennedy No, they don't. It wouldn't be unusual for a team to need 8 SP in a year. I don't know if its likely Kennedy will see the majors this year, but he probably will sometime over the next 2 years. It won't make a big difference if that person is Kennedy or some other pitcher in AAA, but its better to have that depth.

It would take an overwhelming showing by Escobar in AAA to convince me that the Brewers should jettison one of the top few shortstops in the game in order to possibley upgrade elsewhere, save some cash and take a chance on another young kid. Jettison seems like a loaded word there. I don't think anybody is advocating jettisoning Hardy. There is a belief that Hardy would fetch more in value, and that it would be better to explore the option of trading Hardy after 2009 to see what kind of value could be obtained, compared to letting Hardy become a FA and get a variable amount of value. This analogy doesn't line up as well as I would like, but I see it as somewhat similar to the Orioles and Brian Roberts. The Orioles would have loved to trade Roberts and stock their farm system, but that trade wasn't out there. Eventually the Orioles decided to lock up Roberts rather than trade him away for less than they would like, or let him become a FA a year down the road. Obviously the Orioles didn't have an equivalent to Escobar looking to take Roberts place.

Swisher+Kennedy for Beltre makes sense for both teams. This would not follow the current Cashman philosophy. He's not going to give up Kennedy for a player he will only use for a month or two, let alone Swisher.

This is a great discussion but the way I see it: Hardy ends up replacing Jeter in Yankeetown in 2010. Do you mean after the 2010 season? That's when Hardy would be a FA and Jeter's contract expires. If Cashman is still the GM, he has shown reluctance to trade for players that he knows will be a FA in a year or less anyway. It's two years away, so that's a lot of baseball time, but Jeter isn't as bad as many stats people seem to think. He was basically an average defender last year at SS. He has typically had his worst years when he has had nagging injuries that don't make him miss a lot of games but really decrease his range. Of course, as he gets older, the chance of that happening will increase. But it's not like he'll have to move because he won't be able to field the position. Also, there's a pretty solid chance Jeter will get his 3000th hit in 2011. I think there's basically no chance that happens in a uniform other than the Yankees. He may move to an OF position, or he way do a lot of time at DH, but he will almost certainly be a Yankee.

If they are defined by some giant averaging of plays made, that doesn't mean that they provide a good way to position players unless the team was required to choose a single positioning point for their defenders and/or the measurement of the value of those plays in total was greater than what would be achieved by positioning elsewhere. I may be misreading you, but I don't think the ZR charts should be used to define where players are positioned. How about Hardy absolutely smoking every other SS in baseball in the number of out of zone plays? That would be a problem with ZR, but Hardy does well in UZR. That's why its helpful to understand each stat and look at multiple metrics to try to gain a more complete view of the players performance. What is the evidence that measuring a player's defensive ability is better served by not considering where he is positioned and assuming he was positioned elsewhere? I don't really think UZR cares where a player is positioned, it just cares how many plays are made relative to peers, with several adjustments made. The point of positioning would be to either minimize maximum damage in doubles defense, or to try to take advantage of hitter scouting or spray charts to gain an edge. If this is really a problem and certain players are punished for it, I'd love to see it. Some blogger somewhere must have the time to go through games and show how certain defenders are better than they are perceived because of their positioning.

Why would a team be doing something wrong by positioning players outside of the center of arbitrary zones? In what way are the arbitrary? Per the article that I read, the zones are defined by the number of plays that are typically made at that position. That seems rational to me. How would you define them? As far as them doing something "wrong", the point that I tried to make is that if a team positions a player in a way that they don't make a play, that is the problem. If there is evidence that teams position players in ways that aren't captured in ZR, that the number of plays made is positive because of the positioning and doesn't show up, I'd like to see it.

1. So you are objecting to an unknown amount of subjectivity for a professional who has far less emotional investment in the event, but are willing to accept the subjectivity of fans who care deeply about the players and have their own biases already formed? I'm not going to say that scorers are perfect, but the parameters in place for them should give us much better data than the memories of fans. 2. The key to any metric is understanding the flaws of the metric, or rather, understanding the use of the metric so that it isn't used in a flawed way. For example, the topic of defensive shifts for players in ZR. How much of an obstacle is this? Have you looked at the ZR chart? The coverage for any position is fairly large. If the number of plays that is missed because a player can't make a play because of being in a position shift is large, that is a problem with the team's positioning, and less a problem for the stat. Again, ZR isn't trying to tell us how inherently good a player is. It is trying to tell us how many plays that player made relative to peers. If a player didn't make a play, he didn't make a play. The whole point of positioning would be to hopefully make more plays, not fewer. If a team consistently puts their players in bad positions and misses plays because of it, I would hope they could realize such and adjust. This is one of the areas where ZR and UZR aren't neccessarily good predictors. They just attempt to give us value after the fact. 3. Again, this can be true of any metric. I don't think Milton Bradley is a great hitter. But he was last year. UZR says that Hall was a top 10 defender at 3B last year. Some people will disagree strongly with that. But there's no way that anybody here could objectively list the top 10 performers last year at 3B based on their observations. Nobody has enough time to watch those games, and even if they did, they couldn't account for what they saw better than what ZR and UZR already give us. That doesn't mean that I expect Hall to be a top 10 defender this year. I probably expect Hall to be average or above, because I believe he improved at 3B as he accumulated more time there, but that is just my personal opinion.

There are so many variables they simply cannot account for because it's impossible to watch every single play... not all GBs are equal, defensive positioning, movement on the base paths, pitch location.. In the article that I linked about ZR, it says that STATS scorers do watch every play, many have TIVO, and the scorers are scored. I don't need to see every other 1B to know that Fielder isn't a good defender. I understand that the concept is relational to a league average or to other players, but that really isn't my point. It's easy to refute a point by going for the extreme. Hall's defense isn't an extreme. UZR rates him as less than +5 runs over the course of a season. I don't know the exact number, but that would be the equivalent to making an extra play every 20 games, something like that. It would be tough for a casual observer to notice that (note that the number is measured in runs, not plays). I don't know if my point is getting through. You seem to be looking for a metric that qualitatively measures the goodness of a defensive player. I would guess the closest thing to that would be Tango's Fan Scouting Report. ZR and UZR just measure plays made against opportunities with some adjustments made to that. It would even be possible for an average or inferior defensive player to play above his head within a season and get a defensive rating that doesn't match his tools. Just like Milton Bradley can hit .321 in a season. Bradley isn't a .300 hitter, but he can exceed that number in a given year.

I'm pretty comfortable in my opinion that Hall isn't a good defender, regardless what the numbers say. This is stumbling block. UZR isn't saying Hall is a good defender. UZR is saying that Hall has had positive defensive value at some positions relative to his peers at those positions. Those are different things. There is no way that your observation of 110 or so games in a year would be able to tell you how Hall relates to all other players who play at his position.

Berkman is interesting. His OPS is listed as 6th among active players at bref, but Bonds and Thomas are ahead of him and don't have a contract right now, so he's really 4th. One problem he has is that he walks 90+ times a year, so it's tough for him to rack up the more impressive counting stats. He's a career .302 hitter, but has never had 200 hits in a season. He's got a career slugging of .560 but he's only hit 40+ HR twice. He's got HoF talent or very near it, but becoming a starter at 25 will probably prevent him from getting the numbers he'll need to get consideration.

Manny had a great year last year, but in the previous 3 years his RC total would not have made that top 10 (at 126 a couple of years, it would have just missed). Combine that with age regression at 37, I would guess that's why he must have missed the list.