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kramnoj

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Everything posted by kramnoj

  1. kramnoj
    On the other hand, if Prince is traded this off-season, that might free up enough payroll room to be able to resign Sheets. Assuming Prince will get $9-10 million in arbitration, that's not far from what it would probably take to sign Sheets (I'm guessing $12-14 million per). I don't think the Brewers have the finances to be able to keep both. If we were able to resign Sheets, the top-flight pitching prospect(s) wouldn't have to be as major league ready. Why is there a belief that the Brewer's won't have the money to re-sign Sheets? They are already paying him $11 million this year. If you think Sheets will sign somewhere for $14 million, all the Brewers have to do is move Mota's money this year to what they have budgeted for a #1 starter, and they will be able to re-sign sheets. If you think Prince is going to get $10 mil in arbitration (and that isn't likely with his season so far), then you give him what you are paying Cameron and Kendall and play rookies at those positions. Plus you have the $10 million from Gagne going away to give arb increases to Hart, Weeks, Hardy. I don't think it's likely that Sheets only gets $12-$14 mil. I think his floor is $15 mil AAV, and I think he may get as much as $18 mil (although Zito stinking may curb that somewhat). Even then the Brewers could afford that by not re-signing Counsell and using a young player as the utility infielder. Really, I don't see anyway the Brewers won't be able to afford their own talent, it's just a question of how they want to manage their roster and if their contract lengths of the offers match what the players want.
  2. kramnoj
    I can see Braun's yearly lines looking similar to Francoeur's first year, but other than that, I don't think it makes a lot of sense. I would be fairly surprised to see Braun hit .260 in a healthy season. To go back to Puckett, his lowest in a season was .288. Jeter, another high average hitter, had a low BA of .291 in a full season (of course, I expect Braun to slug about .100 better over a career). Vlad Guerrero is probably around the peak of what Braun could be, his lowest BA was .302. I'm not really sure where you are getting the Frenchy similarity.
  3. kramnoj
    I think of Kirby Puckett's approach when I think of Braun at the plate. I could certainly be wrong, but I don't think Braun is going to develop into a guy that walks a lot. I think his approach is that he is going to to the plate looking to make something happen, and if the pitcher just refuses to give him anything to hit, he'll reluctantly take the walk. Kirby in his career hit for .318 and got on base 36% of the time. While obviously people want Braun to get on base more than that, I think that would be acceptable he hits for enough power. One difference of course is the power. Pucket slugged .477 for his career (which is brought down somewhat by his first two years when he didn't break .385). Braun in basically one season's worth of play has slugged .615. He's obviously unlikely to sustain that, but if he settled into a guy that slugged around .550 for his career average, he will be a very valuable player, even with an OBP of less than .380, or whatever.
  4. kramnoj
    You don't lose muscle that fast, people don't go vegetarian and have crazy muscle atrophy begin the next day. The issue isn't about him losing muscle, it's about him displaying less power. Let's say that he has the same muscle, but he has added fat on top of it, which could numerous effects. It could slow down his swing, it could lead to quicker fatigue and less stamina, it could slow his speed so that he isn't going to leg out as many doubles, or he sometimes isn't going to score from 1st on a double with two outs in the inning. Fielder has gained weight, there isn't any question about it. Watch some Brewers Classics on FSN and you'll be able to notice the difference. He is developing neck fat, his stomach and chest "jiggle" when he's running. It didn't do that before, or at least not as much as before.
  5. kramnoj
    Okay maybe he had a good year, but since then he has been garbage He actually had two good years. In 2005, Hall had an OPS+ of 116, which would have been around a top 5 for SS if he had played there all year.
  6. kramnoj
    It's been documented/discussed many times that if Hardy gets hurt management has already said that Escobar would come up That was true when Hall was the full time starter at 3B. You think if Hardy would need a 15 day DL for some reason the Brewers would bring up Escobar and start him at SS over Hall? Has there been a mention of that since Branyan has been brought up?
  7. kramnoj
    My opinion only, but I don't think calling a high strike over the plate will change much. How often is that pitch thrown and and not swung at anyway? In my observation, the high pitches that don't get called strikes are at the outer edge of the strike zone anyway. It seems to me that if a pitch is high and over the plate, it is one of two things: the strikeout pitch when the pitcher is climbing the ladder or its a mistake. The wide strike zone will certainly make the game go quicker. I went to last night's game, I think that was the quickest game I've been to in years.
  8. kramnoj
    You said he wasn't hitting like a first baseman. If you want to assert that Fielder isn't doing everything he can to be the player he should be, that would make sense. I don't see what the point is in making false claims about his abilities though.
  9. kramnoj
    he is not a big league 1st baseman right now. What do you think a 1st baseman is? Right now, he's very low as rated by ZR, but he's not last among qualified players and his OPS is 14th among qualified players at his position.
  10. kramnoj
    I should have just written down the full extent of what I was thinking so that people wouldn't extrapolate. In my observation there were times when Hardy would go out of his comfort zone to try to make something happen because the pitcher was behind him and the Brewers needed a run, and the chances of the Brewers getting a run were much higher with Hardy than the guy behind him. A typical situation would be two outs, guy on base, etc. In that case, it is actually preferable for a hitter to extend themselves, because a walk isn't that beneficial there. Frank Thomas was criticized in Chicago because he was too comfortable taking a walk when he should have more agressive in getting a runner home. So it's not a bad thing that Hardy would extend himself, it's just a question of how comfortable he would be in doing so.
  11. kramnoj
    The relevant question, however, is whether it is sensible to attribute Hardy's struggles to a phenomenon that not only cannot be empirically verified, but upon empirical investigation, looks to tend to cause exactly the opposite effects we hypothesized. I think you are taking a brief statement I made to include things I didn't say. I never said or even hinted that JJ was seeing less strikes. I said that my observation was that he was swinging at more pitches outside the strike zone than I remember. I observed that in numerous games, but don't know if it's still true, or even if it was true in most games. Secondly, I said that I thought he looked like he didn't want to take a walk. I didn't say that this actually resulted in him taking less walks or more walks. Just that I thought he didn't look comfortable at the plate and that he felt more pressure to produce with the pitcher behind him.
  12. kramnoj
    I'm still suspicious that Vargas's 5-1/3 average start is below average even for a #5 though, which would further reduce his value. Based on that study you wouldn't be wrong. The pitchers as a group who were considered #5 starters averaged 167.7, 168.3, 173, 170.7. So in Vargas best season he would be below average for IP, but close to it. The whole point though is that there aren't that many #5 starters. They are often swingmen, or veterans who make a few starts and get cut, or young guys who come up to make a few starts for injured players and go back down, etc.
  13. kramnoj
    Hasn't the 'bats in front of the P, therefore sees worse pitches' myth been debunked here? The question isn't whether they see worst pitches. The question is what they do with the pitches. It also isn't useful to look at player population as a whole and then determine that every individual will conform to that standard. You also didn't mention that 3 of his 20 BBs are IBBs, and since you are using last year as an example, he had one.
  14. kramnoj
    How are you making this claim? This is a huge stretch at best. I don't think it's that huge a stretch. When I saw Hardy hit in front of the pitcher, I saw a guy flailing at balls out of the strike zone more than I remember. If I was in his shoes, I would feel more pressure to produce because I knew an inferior hitter was coming behind me. I don't know if he ever said anything in public, but he looked like a guy who didn't want to take a walk and wanted to make something happen.
  15. kramnoj
    What methodology did they use to define how good a #5 starter should be in in terms of both ERA and average innings/start? In case you didn't see, I edited my post to link the thread that I am basing my knowledge on. I won't pretend to have the ability to perform these studies, but I do find them intereting and revealing.
  16. kramnoj
    There was a phrase that buyers used when I sold Gateway computers some years ago: "Nobody gets fired for buying Compaq". Basically, there is an expected level of performance and risk, and when you stay within those parameters, you are safe. But if you fail while trying something outside the comfort level, you are under more fire. It's not like there were numerous games where having the pitcher bat 8th cost the team games and Yost pointed to those as evidence for change. It was a weird decision to be sure.
  17. kramnoj
    I don't understand how there can really be a debate about whether a guy is a 5th starter or a 6th starter. There is debate because people have different understandings of certain terms. It seems somewhat common to argue so strongly against one position that the original position goes too far. In his career, Vargas has an ERA+ of 92. He's had years where he looks like a 3-4 and years where he looks like a 5. If Vargas was a pre-arby player, I don't think there's a chance of the team cutting him. Unfortunately, he was awarded a $3 million salary, and the market determined that he wasn't actually worth that (I personally think that's an argument against what some players make in arbitration, but that's fodder for a different thread). I think it's important to properly value what Vargas was and not undersell him in order to prove a point. He's a major league starter, because that's what the current talent pool is. It is just wrong to say that he is a 6th starter at best. It is an unsupportable claim.
  18. kramnoj
    Isn't that basically the definition of a #6 starter? He is a 5th starter as I have seen it demonstrated in threads at bbtf. I don't have much doubt that he would have been signed as a 5th starter on a year deal if he was a free agent all offseason. over 22% of his career starts, he failed to even go 5 innings. He's kind of falls somewhere between a long reliever and a starter, really. I think that would actually be a good description of most 5th starters. Edit: http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/primate_studies/discussion/starting_rotation_analysis/ is the best look at rotation spots that I have seen.
  19. kramnoj
    That is overstating things. He was cut when teams basically had their rotation set. Vargas is a 5th starter, but he's not so much an improvement that you send down a young guy to make room for him, because you care more about the future of the young guy. He is a nice guy to have around when a starting pitcher goes down. The Brewers decided they didn't want to spend something like $2 million to have an extra starter sitting in AAA or putting him in the bullpen making noise. They obviously decided that the available talent was comparable enough to Vargas that they could weather any short term injuries or rough spots. I agree with that move. I would rather save $2 million for a much higher impact player.
  20. kramnoj
    My favorite stat to look at is ERA+ as found on baseball-reference.com I guess it depends on what you are looking for. If you are looking for the value that the pitcher provided to the team, ERA+ lets you know how the pitcher did compared to the league average and adjusting for park effects. If you are trying to predict a pitcher's performance, I believe FIP is generally more useful. Last year, Capuano's ERA+ was 88, which I believe is generally considered the margin for being replacement level, or what a typical 5th starter gives. For his career, Capuano has had a 101 ERA+, which is slightly above league average for a starter, or around what a #3 starter is (because relievers have better ERAs than starters, a league average starter is usually around a 96 ERA+, give or take a point or two).
  21. kramnoj
    Per ESPN, the Brewers have 21 Quality Starts, currently 23rd in the league. By my count, Sheets has 6, Parra has 1 (he just doesn't go deep in enough games), Suppan has 5, Villenueva has 3, Bush has 3 and Gallardo had one in each of 3 starts.
  22. kramnoj
    The team won Opening Day, so who cares about Hall? Ditto for Prince yesterday. If a poor approach on the bases needlessly results in outs, it should be corrected so that the approach doesn't lead to losses later in the season.
  23. kramnoj
    Presumably one could go through recaps to see when players make an out on bases, Would be a fair amount of work, unless it is out there and we're not aware of it. If we just look at SB%, right now the Brewers are in the lower third of teams with a 69% rate. There are 15 teams with a rate of 75% and higher, but it's still early, yada yada yada. I know Hart has made at least two outs at home with the run on contact play. It's annoying when it happens, but I understand the reasoning.
  24. kramnoj
    This was predictable. This will be an interesting story for the rest of the year. Hall is trying to win his job back, not just for this year, but also for his future with the team. His stance and approach have changed from his productive years, is that correct? I wonder if this will put him in the video room until he rediscovers his stroke.
  25. kramnoj
    I love that he had a little league field in his backyard. One of my Little League teammates had an enclosed batting cage with a pitching machine. Did you play in Northwest? I'm not from these parts, that was outside Houston where I grew up. That guy's father was also the coach of the team. I moved after junior high, I have no idea how far that kid made it. One last unrelated note, Andy Pettitte went to the same high school that I would have gone to if I hadn't moved, and he is two years younger than me. That would have been cool. Back to Dillard, small sample size alert and all that, but I like Torres as closer and Dillard and Villenueva as relievers. The team might just build a decent bullpen without Gagne and Turnbow.
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