kramnoj

Has Escobar played different positions in ST games? He has only played SS in his minor league career, and Ash said that Alcides was chosen for his versatility. Dillon has quite a bit of utility experience, but the Brewers may feel that Escobar's ability and skills will allow him to play anywhere if needed, and Dillon's bat has slipped where he isn't a huge upgrade over Escobar there either, plus Alcides is a better PR. Stinks for Weeks. I was kind of surprised that Sveum put Counsell at 2B last night rather than Durham, and I don't remember the announcers talking about that. I didn't want to wage through the IGT, was it strictly a defensive move, did Durham have awful numbers against Moyer? It worked out, but it made me wonder if Durham wasn't 100%.

Parra really struggled down the stretch. He probably doesn't have the endurance to go deep in a game right now. Gallardo could have been an option, but he's not stretched out enough to do deep when rested, he certainly wouldn't be able to do so on 3 days rest. The best option is to see if Suppan has his stuff today and see how long he can keep the game close. Have the shortest leash on Suppan possible, and unleash all bullpen arms as needed. Keep Parra back to unload on a high leverage situation against the lefties in the middle of the game, and you still have Stetter and Shouse to do the same. If Suppan keeps the game tight for 2 times through the lineup and we have three lefties to neutralize the big bats and Villenueva and Seth and the rest to soak up the difference, the Brewers can hold the Phillies again. We just need the bats and gloves to have a good game.

No the best option is for the Brewers to choose a short stop and trade the other one. Why? Escobar has far more value to the Brewers than he would in a trade. Putting square pegs in round holes just because you have a bunch of square pegs is bad. What do you think the Brewers should do at 3B next year? I don't think Hall in a platoon at his salary next year is a good use of resources. If the Brewers can trade him for anything, or if they can give him away and find a stopgap 3B for a year, that would be good. I'm just not sure who that would be. I personally think Escobar at SS and Hardy at 3B isn't great, I just think it's better than staying with Hall, and I'm not seeing lots of attractive options out there. Add to that that Escobar is at least a year and could very well be two away, talk of moving Hardy to 3B makes little sense. A year or two away from what? Escobar wouldn't have the worst bat at his position if he was the SS next year, and he wouldn't be significantly worse than what Hall did this year.

It wouldn't make sense for the Brewers to pay Hardy $15m to play SS either. If the best move for the team is to play Hardy at 3B, they should do that. If he pouts and doesn't perform well, that's not going to help him make his money when he becomes a FA.

Blalock is tough. He really has had only 2 seasons where he has played a full season and he was good, and that was in 03 and 04. He hasn't been able to put together a full season out of the last two seasons combined. He did well against lefties this year, but for his career you wouldn't want him facing lefties, so you need a platoon partner for him. His defense is average at best. He would be attractive for a small deal, but there's no reason to think that Milwaukee would be able to get him to such a deal. If you moved Hardy to 3B, you would expect to get more value for a whole season than if you put Blalock there and you wouldn't be adding to your payroll. If the Brewers could snag him cheap, he and Hall would be quite the platoon, no question.

Guys like Cain, Escobar, Gamel, Gillespie, Salome, Green, Lawrie, etc will be cheap for quite a while. Not all prospects become good major leaguers, and those prospects that do won't be cheap at the end of CC's contract. You then have to expect that the Brewers will keep drafting excellent players and turning them into solid major leaguers. That's tough to do, because no team can consistently do that.

What about Kotchman's crummy production being of equal weight to Lee's? That production of Kotchman is for his Atlanta time only. If you want to see AL teams, you can look here: http://spreadsheets.googl...y=p9BODtOllD4twT9howzgTVg Just because it's available doesn't mean it should be trusted. It's a measurement. All measurements should be looked at in context. Milton Bradley isn't a .321 hitter, but he was in the chances he had this year. ZR isn't meant to measure true defensive talent. It measures plays made compared to opportunities, compared to positional average. Bad defensive players can have good defensive years, and vice versa.

If you follow the links I provided in the Stats forum, you can see the methodology. I won't try to describe it in detail, but this stat measures production provided. If a player has limited playing time and plays well, they can really skew the stats. Look at 3B and Branyan for example. In his limited time, he was the 5th most productive 3B in the NL. I don't think it's a perfect stat, but it's one of the few easily available stats that measures play by play defense and converts the chances into a value of runs.

Could you find some (doesn't even have to be Brewers) that are way off, though? I guess off the top of my head I could think of Milton Bradley. You can go through ZiPS, which are close to PECOTA in forecasting accuracy. For example, here is a link to the projections of Padres players before 2008 (Bradley last played in San Diego, that's why he's projected there): http://www.baseballthinkf...ections_san_diego_padres/ ZiPS projected him to be a little above average for a RF. You'll have to adjust the rate stats, because projecting to play in San Diego is obviously different from hitting in Texas. Even so, projection systems are going to be wrong 30% of the time, and sometimes they are going to be very wrong.

This is a great example of why I don't pay much attention to defensive metrics. If you watch these dudes play 1B, it's very readily apparent that Lee is at or near the top of the spectrum, where Fielder is at or near the bottom. This isn't an example of this at all. It is a total production metric, and through Sep 2nd, Fielder provide more total production than Lee. That is probably true through the end of the year as well, but the metric hasn't been updated.

telling me you cant sign Sabathia with all that money freed up, on top of record attendance and increased vending/ticket/parking prices? The issue isn't about the ability to clear cash for CC. There are two big issues: How far will the team go in a bidding war for him once he hits the open market, and how feasible is it to devote so much of a team's payroll to one player? If CC gets hurt one year when he's making 25-30% of the team's payroll, it is going to be very difficult for them to compete that year. Even if CC stays healthy, devoting that much to one player means that the team will always need to have a few key positions manned by good pre-arby players. It's tough to expect any farm system to provide that kind of production.

There's no way this team can compete next year with Escobar at short. Do you think this team can compete next year with Hall at 3B? Escobar should provide more total production at SS next year than Hall did at 3B this year. Ideally Escobar gets more seasoning in AAA and there is a better player at 3B, but Escobar at SS and Hardy at 3B with Hall as expensive utility or traded is probably the best use of resources for 2009. I guess it depends on what we mean by competing. The Brewers without CC and Sheets but with a full season of Gallardo and improvements or bouncebacks from some of their players should be a .500 team plus or minus 5 wins. That may be enough to compete next year if they get lucky. It's obviously far too early to say who will be competitive if we don't know what the Cardinals will look like, or other contenders for the WC.

http://blogs.jsonline.com...3/goodies-for-game-3.aspx

http://spreadsheets.googl...y=p9BODtOllD4sXsmwK_rgHQA is a metric called Offense plus Defense. It uses Zone Rating as the metric and converts the chances into runs (positive or negative). The DRS is the defensive metric (I believe Defensive Runs Saved). One thing to keep in mind is that people who study defense says that you need two full years of defensive stats to equal one year of offensive stats. That chart is for this year through Sep 2nd.

Branyan and Gamel can catch a flyball, right? Won't ever happen, we'll have to hope Hart clears his head. I don't think either one of them can catch a flyball right now. It really is unfortunate, because having one of those guys healthy would improve the team.

We have one thread devoted to the rotation, might as well use this for the other stuff. I'm guessing that the Brewers use 4 starters: Gallardo, CC, Bush, Suppan. McClung, Villenueva are multi-inning guys to piggyback for Gallardo or Suppan if he doesn't have his stuff. The regulars are obvious: Fielder, Durham/Weeks, Hardy, Counsell/Hall, Braun, Cameron, Hart, Kendall/Rivera. Bullpen locks: Torres, Gagne, Mota, Shouse. By my count, that is 21 locks (or locks in my opinion). Kapler has said on Bob and Brian the last couple of weeks that he hoped to return. I know he's just a positive guy, but I don't think he's ready. Maybe he comes back for a hopedul LCS. So the team needs at least one more OF, and maybe a utility guy to be a 5th. I see the options as being Gywnn, Nelson and maybe Dillon. I could see Gwynn making it because of the possibility of being a Pinch Runner. Nelson obviously gives them the better LH bat for a pinch hit. Dillon could make it on his veteran presence and his defensive utility. I think how many of those 3 make it depends heavily on how many pitchers they take. I think they probably add Stetter. Other than that, Sveum has only used Coffey (who I don't believe is eligible despite what some writers have said) and DiFelice in limited appearances. I guess the 25th spot goes down to DiFelice or having a 5th OF. I'm guessing that Sheets and Kapler are out for this series, and I don't think Branyan can take up a spot if he is only eligible for PH duty and is still banged up. Edit: For some reason, I wrote something about Parra and didn't submit it. Anyway, a big question is what his arm strength is right now. If he is available as a swingman, he definitely should make the roster ahead of DeFelice. I guess I just don't know where his arm strength is. It was certainly good in his last appearance.

CC this year was like Pedro Prime in a Milwaukee uniform, plus he could swing the bat a little. Truly amazing. If the Brewers thought for some reason that CC was a better pitcher than the last 3 years when he was merely very good as opposed to amazing, he would be worth it. It's just hard to find teams that can succeed with 25% or so of their budget tied to one player. If the Brewers continued to have success with their farm system, they could rotate in players and then trade them away every few years before they became too expensive. It would be incredibly hard to do, but to have a guy like CC taking the ball for 34 games a year would be incredibly cool.

I think I would go with Gallardo/McClung, CC, Bush, Suppan, CC. Gallardo isn't stretched out enough to go deep, so he probably needs a designated guy to go a couple of innings. I also don't think they would bring Gallardo back on 3 days rest (although maybe he's told to be ready in case Suppan has a bad outing).

That link doesn't say he's over with this year. That's just speculation from a reporter. I could easily see him being left off the Division series roster and being activated for the LCS if the Brewers make it and he feels better.

Congrats to all Brewers fans!!! I moved to Wisconsin a couple years ago, adopted the Brewers as my team two years ago. I can't imagine the joy that long-suffering fans have felt. It's been a heckuva year!

I'm almost positive that a player has to be with the organization before September to be eligible for the postseason. Otherwise, we would see teams with free agents to be trading them away as they got eliminated in September. The whole put a player on the DL and then activate someone is for bringing up players on the 40 man in the minors and having them be eligible (I believe Francisco Rodriguez is an example).

Trenni was on 540 the other day, and she said that nobody loves being a Brewer more than McClung. It's great to see him put together a sold season.

His production is only down from 3 years ago. It is up from early in the year, and up from his bad year last year. It's also not clear that he won't ask for $10 million. That's basically what he got in his contract for the past two years. As for his production this year, his good stint with the Cubs is only 246 ABs and it is fueled by 18 HRs. His slugging hasn't been this good since 5 years ago. It isn't common for a 39 year old to be a decent CF.

I'm going to be semantic here, but just wondering what you mean by blog. I think of a blog like Aaaron Gleeman. Then there's discussion forums like this (I know there's original content, but most of the traffic seems to be daily discussion of Brewers events). Then there's references like b-ref or Cots. I guess I'll be specific and you can take what you want. Regular Brewerfan.net bbtf.org Baseball-reference.com Cot's Occasional (or less) Hardballtimes The Book

Would this stressful experience really cause great trauma to Escobar and endanger his ML career? The hyperbole is a bit much. The Brewers have 3 games to play. Their advancement to the postseason could hinge on the smallest events over this weekend. Escobar is supposed to be great defensively. But we actually have to play the game to find out. We don't know how Escobar is going to react to the set of circumstances that he would be facing this weekend. When the first groundball is hit to him, we don't know if his ability will let him make the play, or whether he will be nervous and make a mistake that could cost the team.