kramnoj

Gallardo is a possibility to start a game this week, if they think he's the best option. He's been stretched out enough that he could go 4-5 IP. Right now we have Tuesday: Bush Wed: CC Thursday: Suppan Friday: McClung Saturday: Sheets?/Bush on 3 days rest?/Parra?/Gallardo?/DeFelice? Sunday: CC

IIRC, tiebreakers only come into play if a division winner and a WC team come from the same division and the tiebreaker is used to determine which of the two teams is the division winner (see 2005 AL East). Otherwise, I believe a tie results in a playoff game.

If MLB had as many playoff teams has the NFL, the Brewers would have done so as well (and probably would this year).

also like my chances of getting a runner in from 3rd with less than 2 outs a lot better with Pierre than with a K artist like Cameron. For his career, Cameron with a runner on 3rd and less than 2 out (in 417 PA): .314/.376/.528 (.904 OPS). For his career, Pierre with a runner on 3rd and less than 2 out (in 198 PA): .374/.430/.452 (882 OPS). So Pierre has done well in those situations, but still Cameron has performed well in those situations as well. Would you really rather have an inferior player for a full season just because he has peformed slightly better in a situation that comes up a couple dozen times a season? The Suppan signing was a mistake, especially the way they structured it. In what way? They gave most of Suppan his money in the two years after Sheets departure, and in years they hoped they would have a pitching rotation with pre-arb or arby pitchers like Gallardo, Parra, Bush, Capuano, Villenueva and maybe Jeffress in 2010. Player salaries have gone up about 10% per year recently, so Suppan's contract over the next two years is what league average pitchers will probably get. Suppan could be a #5 pitcher next year. A grossly overpaid one, but providing about the same value that other teams #5 pitchers get. In 2010, if the Brewers have 5 better SP than Suppan, they can make him a grossly overpaid long relief. Most big FA deals are one year too long, because if your team doesn't offer it, another team will.

Attanasio clearly played a role in the Yost decision, and the result of that is that Yost's job security was controlled by public opinion. This is stated with far too much certainty and no evidence to support it. There was no benefit for Attanasio to fire Yost if he was catering to the public. Thousands of fans didn't buy tickets to see the Pirates because Yost was fired.

Attanasio is clearly an involved owner. I don't know if most owners have daily conversations with their GM. To that extent, yes, I'm sure he is close to the level of Angelos and Steinbrenner. But Angelos and Steinbrenner have had very different success. Steinbrenner has 6 WS. Angelos has two playoff appearances since 1993 and hasn't had a winning team for over a decade. Rosenthal made the point that Angelos overrode one trade and hasn't trusted his baseball people since. I'm sure Attanasio will be heavily involved, but I hope that he relies on his baseball people to stand up to him if they think he is pushing for a bad decision.

But at the same time, the Pirates were just willing to deal Torres. This is true. It took the failure of the Pirates to let Melvin win this deal. But it was Melvin that made the deal. The Pirates presumably would have lost on a Torres trade with just about any other organization. Melvin was presumably able to make the deal because he is good at communicating with other front offices, knows what they want, knows who they are willing to move, and has been in baseball long enough that he is regarded in baseball as a good trading partner.

Gone are the days I think where Melvin could parlay anybody into something, so don't know how much a possibility there is there to gain anything. I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. Torres was acquired for very little, and Mota was acquired for a catcher that put up a .370 OPS in 53 ABs this year!

What do you mean by lately? 3 out of his last 4 starts? Cain has been an above average SP since he came in the league. He hasn't been a star, but he's provided 190+IP the last 3 years and above average ERA+. He's basically a # 2 pitcher in that regard. I think one of the toughest decisions the Brewers will make this year is trying to determine Hardy's value, and trying to get appropriate value for him if they decide to trade him. Hardy has said that some of his success this season is because he has never really felt healthy until a couple months into this season. What do the Brewers take from that? Is Hardy a guy that is just susceptible to injuries, whether they be serious or nagging, and will find it hard to be healthy and productive for stretches of his career? Or has Hardy had some bad luck, he's finally found a training regimen that works for him and we can expect to see more of the 2008 Hardy going forward? As far as the recent rumors, I just think Gammons mis-heard some information. He probably heard that the Brewers are targeting Cain, and then heard that the Brewers will explore trading Hardy, Fielder and prospects needed to get players for 2009. He took 1 and 1 and got to 3. There's no way Hardy and Fielder together would be traded for Cain. I do believe that the Brewers will explore trading both of them, but in separate deals as centerpieces.

"But he's had a team for 5 straight seasons that at some point was either in control of playoff berth or within 4 games of one after July 1st and he hasn't closed the deal. Much of that is on Yost, but who hired Yost? Melvin has had a relatively long run here. A clean house is required. " So when do you decide a GM needs to be fired? Terry Ryan is regarded by many as a good GM, but he was responsible for a losing team for half a decade before his teams started winning.

Just warning you, I'm taking you up on this. If you do enforce this, I hope you provide equal enforcement to the member who wrote that he would seriously quit this board if Gallardo pitched this season (assuming that he does so, we'll find out next week).

Thanks for the responses, don't know why I didn't see that in the box score.

I'm not watching the game. Is Weeks hurt? Does Sveum really prefer Hall at 3B and Counsell at 2B over Weeks at 2B?

Minor league innings count too. Baseball-reference.com is a great resource. As far as the rest of his major league stats that year go, since Torres wasn't dominant before that game, it just puts more blame on the manager and GM for making him be the guy to decide the season.

Think about what you just said. BLAME A GM FOR A 103-WIN SEASON!? Are you kidding me? No, I'm not. He put in a CF that cost his team about 2 wins that season with his bat. He also assembled a team and a system whose best option to win the last game of the season was a 21 year old pitcher who had already pitched over 220 IP that season. Blame baseball for not expanding the playoff system earier so that the Giants missed the playoffs. But don't blame a pitcher because he had one poor outing.

Torres was a 21 year old pitching in what amounted to an elimination game. Basically the last great pennant race game ever, as I think the odds of a team winning 103 games and missing the playoffs in the future is quite small. If you want to blame somebody, blame the Giants GM for assembling a team that put a CF in the season for 522 ABs with a 70 OPS+. Torres has been a benefit to this team for the vast majority of the season, and Melvin gave up very little to acquire him. He's certainly not a dominant reliever, but he got the job done much more often than not and the team is better for having him on the roster. I hope he's back next year.

Last year Rickie had a higher OPS than Reyes. That is true. It also has nothing to do with what I wrote. My only point was that using the career numbers of Reyes OBP to predict his future value isn't going to be helpful when his career numbers are weighed down by his learning curve in the first 3 years of his career when he was 20-22.

Reyes career numbers are depressed because of his poor performance as a young player. If you look at this year and his two previous years, he has performed well, and those are the years that have been shown to be most accurate when projecting future value.

I could almost care less about the slugging portion of the leadoff mans stats (not 100% care less...but close) as long as he is getting on at a .360+ clip and can run the bases without a cheat sheet. Weeks fit that description going into this season. Cameron isn't too far from that description, if you take into account the pitcher's parks that he has played in that has suppressed his actual OBP (as compared to his relative OBP, which has been above average for his career). I feel that leadoff hitter is glamourized. A team just needs good players. Teams win WS without a prototypical leadoff hitter.

That said, say you convinced your boss that you needed this really expensive piece of equipment in order to function properly as a business. It might take up 1/8 of the company's entire budget, but this equipment used to be top of the line, industry benchmark. Then it broke. This really isn't a good analogy. Gagne wasn't essential to the proper functioning of the business. He was a piece designed to make up for a glaring weakness the business had last year and the company wasn't sure they had done a good job of fixing that weakness for the upcoming year. Gagne had great success in the past, had recent troubles, so he was a risk this year, but because of his history, he would be expensive to acquire. He was like a salesperson. The business was expected to function well, but it wasn't hitting the goals the team had. In order to move forward, the team decided to take a huge gamble by giving this guy a huge bonus in the hopes that he would find the success he had in the past and to move the team toward its goal this year. Once the salesperson is hired, he is under the control of the sales manager. The sales manager decides which accounts the salesperson goes to. If the salesperson keeps blowing the leads the manager gives him, it is the responsibility of the manager to determine why the failures are occuring and how to deploy his talent. Once it becomes clear that this salesperson doesn't have the skill he used to have, its the manager's decision how to best use the sales staff he has down in the bullpen. If the expensive salesperson doesn't have the ability to close a deal with good rates anymore, the manager should be using other salespeople and decide if the expensive salesperson needs some retraining, needs to be sat, or maybe he just needs to be cut. Attanasio has an investor mentality. He knew that Gagne was a huge, expensive risk. The team going into this year didn't think it would have any other glaring weakness, and they took a shot at the bullpen, which was an obvious failure last year. The team had $10 million to spend for this season, didn't really have any other holes this year, and it was a commitment for only one season. Attanasio said in the Sveum press conference that he has veto power. If he wasn't comfortable with this risk, he could have stopped it. I don't think Attanasio would fire Melvin for decisions that they both agreed to. If Jack Z is offered a GM position elsewhere, he may decide to fire Melvin and promote Z if he thinks Jack has more future value to the team than Melvin does.

I looked at the schedule to see the potential impact here. With the Monday off day, the Brewers could skip Sheets previously expected start next Tuesday against the Pirates and everyone can move up a day while still pitching on 4 days rest. That means we would have CC start the Chicago series and wouldn't need Sheets or a replacement until the 2nd to last day of the season. Just something to consider.

The stat is intended to be free of team bias. The reason that Durham has less value than Weeks is because Durham has the 3rd most negative defensive value among NL 2b.

According to Chris Dial's NL Offense Plus Defense rating as seens here: http://spreadsheets.googl...y=p9BODtOllD4sXsmwK_rgHQA Weeks has been the 10th best NL 2B through September 2nd. Among all players who have played at 2B in the NL, he has provided about 2.4 Runs Above Average. So he's below the average of starters in the NL, but has provided positive value compared to players at the position. For reference, Durham's combined value is 1.2, so just a one run difference. Obviously we shouldn't take this rating as gospel, but I think it's useful to look at some data that tries to give an objective value. It's impossible for any one person to watch Week's games and be able to objectively evaluate him compared to all players at his position, or even in one league. For players that are truly bad at 2B in the NL, take a look at that list. There are 5 players at 2B in the NL that are so bad they are costing their team a win or two: Felipe Lopez, Velez with the Giants, Iguchi, Easley, Freddy Sanchez.

Trade Suppan and Nelson to the Yankees for Robinson Cano This just isn't realistic. Suppan will be making around $25 million the next two years. He may be a little cheaper than some FA this offseason, but money isn't and won't be a problem for the Yankees. They can afford to get bigger bang for their bucks. I think the Yankees are going hard after Texeira this offseason. They have the biggest need, and they can offer more than anybody.

Weeks is better defensively but he makes more obvious mistakes. Glaring mistakes are more memorable for many than a ball that is outside the range of a player. It should also be noted that Weeks has performed well recently, but he has performed well in a semi-platoon role where he has been prevented from playing against pitchers who Yost didn't think he would hit. That's not to say that Yost made the right choices, but if Weeks has a greater than normal platoon advantage in his recent numbers, that's a small explanation of why he has done well.