kramnoj

What rumor? That Ford may have been traded for Sheet? TH heard that Ford was pulled because he was going to be in a trade (this part turned out to be true). TH knew that the Brewers were scouting Street and that the team wants a bullpen arm (first is true, second has been publicly stated). He guessed (and was clear about it) that the team may have traded for Street. The JS has their sports writers have a blog specifically for these purposes, to provide info they have and share their insights, beyond what appears in print articles. TH was clear on what his guesses were, what he heard, how reliable his sources were, and what were facts. There were some rumors that he included that didnt' turn out, but we don't know the full story. We don't know if the teams tried to make a bigger trade and couldn't come to agreement. We know that Ford was pulled because of a trade, which TH told us. We knew the trade details this morning (minus the financial details), but the team couldn't announce it without making a move and clearly wanted Dillon today just in case he was needed. As far as Street, TH has reported that the team's interest in him has cooled, based on scouting and probably also on Street's poor performance recently. I think the cost of Street's past would be too rich for his current performance and likely future.

Thanks for linking the TH blog, HY, good info. There's really only two reasonable options for Suppan to come back right? DFA Mota or send down Stetter again? I think most of us agree that Mota should go, but the team may think they can save Mota and want to send down Stetter while they work with Mota on his mechanics.

There was speculation here, but I don't think anything official has been said yet. The team was open about wanting a LH bat and another arm. I don't think they would be that public if they didn't have the cash to back it up. I'm sure they are looking for a bullpen arm and will make the move they think helps the most without costing too much.

Based on the broadcast crew, it doesn't sound like it will be a platoon. We'll see how it plays out. If Durham just starts once or twice a week, and is PH off the bench, that's OK. If he's insurance against Weeks not regressing to the mean that's okay too.

Per Zone Rating this year, Branyan has been better than Hall, .847 to .780. Branyan's career ZR at 3B is .754 compared to Hall's .795. Hall should be expected to be better but he's been in a general funk this year.

I don't know of anything I'd call "exhaustive". Sure, guys have fluke bad seasons. Clearly you believe in Marcel when it was created through the exhaustive research of enough player seasons to be a good projection tool. I don't think there are enough seasons like last year for Durham to try to account for how truly flukish there are. Durham was a good player for a decade, was awful for a year, and is good this year. I don't have any reason to think this year's performance should be projected right now with any relevance from last year, just as I think that Mike Lowell's crazy flukish season didn't have anything to do with the rest of his career so far. But Marcel isn't doing what you say it's doing -- it's not projecting him to hit as bad as he hit last season I didn't say this. Not to mention that once you factor in defense, Weeks and Durham have been worth about the same number of runs this year so far anyway. You could be precise and say that Durham has been better this year given that metric. I have said that I view this as insurance, and I believe that even more after hearing the broadcast so far. If Durham stinks immediately upon arrival, we bench him, and he wouldn't have been much worse than what we have been getting from Weeks anyway. I don't see anyway that this costs the Brewers anything, and there's a possibility it could be the marginal difference the team needs to get into the playoffs.

You can't simply throw out an entire season worth of data. Maybe it was an injury-ridden, struggle-filled campaign. Why not? I mean that sincerely. Has there been exhaustive research into seasons that are so aberrant for established major leaguers that come back and continue to be average or better major leaguers? Marcel does care about how old a guy is. It sure does, but Durham's projection is weighted far more because of last year's stats than his age. Durham would certainly be expected to decline due to age. But I wonder why you cling to last year's performance when they aren't showing any relevance to how Durham is performing this year. You're right that I probably needed some qualifiers in there -- 'probably's and 'best bet to's and the like -- but nobody bothered to use qualifiers like that in the dozens of posts in this thread that quoted this season's hitting stats and used the present tense in declaring how much better than Weeks Ray Durham "is". I think most people use "is" to describe recent and current performance, given large enough sample to work with. There isn't any doubt that Durham has performed better this year. And most of us expect Weeks to be better. But I don't want to gamble this year's playoff hopes on the regression to the mean of a player that has performed as poorly as Weeks has this year.

Assuming this deal does go down, both the guy losing playing time to Durham and the guy losing his roster spot to Durham will be superior hitters to Durham, This is stated far too definitively. Marcel is great for large pools of players, but it doesn't know how to account for some things. Durhams year last year was clearly out of line with the rest of his career. I would think his season so far and his career should be weighted far more than the aberration of last year. There is no way he comes out as a better overall regular player than Weeks, or a better bat off the bench than Dillon, except if you only care about this year's hitting stats. If that's how you like to project performance... If we made this trade in the offseason without seeing Durham recover from last year's awfulness, I would be concerned. That he has bounced back indicates to me that last season's results don't have anything to do with who Durham is this year. That being the case, Durham should be a nice option for the Crew the rest of the season.

It's true that Durham can be expected to be a net negative. However the negative he should bring is less harmful than what Weeks has done over the last year and a half. Being less negative is still a positive. As far as Ellis and Grudz, both are certainly better than Durham, but we don't know how much they would have cost. Maybe Melvin was too focused on improving against RH and settled on Durham.

Somehow, Melvin found a 2B who is expected to have even worse defense than Weeks? I'm thinking that we are going to hear a lot of cliches from Melvin when he tries to justify this move.. Why would you only focus on the defense? Durham is insurance in case Weeks doesn't turn it around. If Weeks starts hitting better and Durham becomes a bench player, that's fine too, we gave away things we won't miss. Melvin may indeed spout cliches when talking about this, but he doesn't need to justify this, it was a good move to improve the team, if only marginally.

Did not want an old, has-been player who's been inexplicably playing over his head in the OBP column for 80-some games. (And this from someone who pretty much hates Weeks!) Adding contributors to the starting rotation and/or bullpen should be much higher priorities. Do not like. He's not a has-been. He is a is. It's true that his OBP is on pace to be a high for him, but he's had OBP of .360 and .356 in the last three years. He was awful last year, I don't know why, but other than that he has been average to good as a hitter for a decade. He represents an improvement against RH for this season. His defense is bad, no question about that. If Weeks turns it around and this trade is meaningless, that's fine. Hammond doesn't look to have much of a career and Ford is years away from making it, if he ever did. These players have more value to a bad team like the Giants than they will to most. So it looks like we may have a platoon at 2B and 3B. Hall and Weeks face lefties and Durham and Branyan against RH. Rickie may be able to earn his spot back, but the team couldn't risk losing a chance at the playoffs waiting for Weeks to come out of a season long slump.

I'm just looking through the Giants minor leagues to see who might be interesting: Eugene Espineli looks good, lefty, reliever now, was starter last year. Adam Cowart has decent numbers, but he seems to have been a year older than his league. Joseph Martinez, see above I guess there's a couple of arms that could be worth having, depending on the trade. Salome might not be seen as having a future with the Crew. Kendall will probably be here next year, and the team probably has faith in Lucroy. This is probably crazy, but they could see trading Salome as a benefit so that Lucroy can be promoted to AA and face better competition.

Taschner has only thrown 125 ML innings. I'm not sure we know who he is. I would trade for him if the cost was something the Brewers wouldn't miss, but I wouldn't plan on him being a solution. Would the team want 3 lefties in the pen? I wouldn't take him over Shouse or Stetter.

This team needs to keep prospects around for the long haul, we cannot simply dump every simgle prospect for short term solutions, when there is still the larger long term need in the rotation as there are no high level prospects close to the bigs. Nobody is suggesting dumping every single prospect for short term solutions. Street wouldn't cost every single prospect, and he is more of a medium term solution. I don't want to get into another small market economics debate because there is enough information out there now on the subject and if people don't agree with me that's fine, people are going to believe what they want to believe. If you don't want to get into a debate, you shouldn't suggest that others are close-minded. I don't "believe what I want to believe". There are certain undisputable facts. The Brewers started the season 15th in total payroll. That is not an attribute of a small revenue team. It is true that the Brewers play in the smallest market and have the worst TV contract, but that doesn't define them as small revenue. Brewers fans love baseball so dearly that they will fill a stadium for a team that is good and they will draw 25-30k for a team that hovers around .500. Not many other cities can claim that. My point is that prospects are far more valuable to the success of a team that isn't going to ever be player in the free agent market, The Brewers have been and will be players in the FA market. They may not go for the top players at the position, but they can fill holes with moderate contracts. Generally speaking it's in the best interests of clubs like Milwaukee to be the sellers, instead of the buyers. Losers sell, winners buy. It is in the best interest of the Brewers to develop prospects. The Brewers should use those prospects to improve their team, whether that is through playing for the Brewers or being traded for players that will play for the Brewers.

90 million and the team is the red, there isn't any room for growth with the payroll... people who think Milwaukee isn't a small market, when in fact it's the smallest market in baseball (30 out 30) need to realize the truth about the situation. Be proud how well the community and state is supporting the team, but realistic about what it takes for Milwaukee to compete long term. There is presumably some room to grow the payroll this year, because there have been comments that the team is still looking for the right pieces. Unless they think they can dump Hall and get a good player in return, chances are that some payroll will be added. TH quoted Melvin as saying that he can't add $2 million for a tweak to the bullpen. I think that means that he could add that money for Street, for example, but not for a mediocre arm. As far as small market, the size of the market doesn't matter as much as the revenue. Milwaukee is around mid-revenue, which is great, and should be as long as they keep a decent team on the field.

The best part...Ned is basing this decision on 4 road starts from Seth McClung. And in those 4 road starts, McClung has gone 6 innings exactly once (and that start was on June 10). I think this is really based on the poor road performances by Bush. That McClung has done ok on the road just gives him enough reason to make the move. The funny thing is, Yost is making this decision based on numbers. He's just not following any line of thought regarding sample size or any other research principle.

And to address the small marketism talk - we have stupid money tied up in the bullpen. That is not sustainable and not a wise investment. Most of the money tied up in the bullpen is this year only. That's not an investment. The Brewers thought they had a decent team at every position except bullpen, and a lot of the rest of the team was fairly inexpensive. Melvin took gambles on guys who had been successful in the past. I don't really see it as a long term strategy, just as a way to make this year's team better, the budget was there, and it didn't cost anything but money.

I spend most of my listening time to 540 during the day and don't read the JS except for TH blog. Who locally is ripping Cameron? I kind of recall some people saying that he didn't belong at the top of the order, but that is more of a reflection on Yost more than Cameron. Cameron has been an excellent signing so far, no doubt. It is interesting, he was expected to be a low average guy with decent OBP and some pop. So far his BA and OBP has been worse than expected, but has more power than previously displayed. I guess that happens when 15 of the 52 hits are HR! Edit: I know someone out there will post some cool defensive stats. I know he was leading all CF's in some kind of OF stat recently. On June 9th, there was a link to UZR that had Cameron as the best CF defensively, rated at +40 for a season, IIRC. Recently there was a link to a stat that is based on ZR that had Cameron as basically average defensively.

Does the Kidd jersey come with that price? Looking at the house pictures, it seems clear that this is a vacation home as opposed to a primary residence. Two of the BR have bunk beds and one of the rooms is listed as TV/Guest room. I'm curious, does anyone know what kind of commission Realtors get for higher priced homes like this? A 5% comission would be over $1 million! Do they set a price beforehand, like maybe $50,000-$100,000?

It's true. They confirmed it on the broadcast. Not really sure why this is the case.

Street's periperals look good this year, but his ERA+ is 94. I know, that's not the best way to judge a reliever, but still, kind of odd. Without looking at game logs looks like he might have just been unlucky with HRs: 6 in 42 IP. Still would be an improvement over Gagne and Mota. Would be a good pickup if it doesn't cost too much. Devine looks like an interesting pitcher too, but I imagine that Melvin is probably looking for someone more established.

Al, I don't understand why you are talking about 800 OPS and being average. My whole point is that Nelson can be valuable to one team by being better than anybody they have. Let's look at another team, the Indians. Ryan Garko has the 25th best OPS among starters at 1B this season with 668. That amounts to a 78 OPS+. And there are 5 teams that have 1B wishing they were hitting that well. Nelson could OPS 700 and he would improve some teams. Garko had previously played a nice 1B for 188 games but he is already 27. Is he just slumping, or has he already peaked and is he declining? The Indians don't have anyone in AAA that is better than Nelson. They could put LaPorta there if they needed to, or they could have him play in the OF. If I'm the Indians, having Nelson in my farm system next year gives me a better chance to have a 1B in the majors who isn't awful. Garko is also an interesting comparison for Nelson. He had a 882 OPS in AAA at 24 and 772 OPS in AAA as a 25 year old, but was promoted to the majors and won a position at 1B. There are guys like Morrow who look like AAA All Stars but never get a real shot, and then a guy like Garko who gets a shot and holds his own for awhile. I think Nelson could do that for some team for a few years until they get somebody better.

Duh, thank you. Subsitute DeFelice. Or other reliever. Thanks for the correction.

Who do you think is starting on the 21st? It hasn't been announced. If Yost decides to go with the SP H/A platoon, this would be the start that McClung gets. Bush could act as reliever for the day McClung starts. If the team does get in trouble and thinks it will need another reliever, they will probably need to DFA Mota or send down Dillon and bring back Stetter.

Do you mean this is like WARP? I see that you already know this includes defense, which VoRP doesn't. IMO this is superior to WARP for two reasons. WARP is against replacement player, which is a somewhat nebulous level. WARP's defense isn't based on play by play data, and this is based on ZR, which is PbP.