mletto157

as I've said many times the dominos did not have to fall the way they did. This is a pretty big can of worms that you're opening when you say this. Every decision any team ever makes could have been different. You can't go back to every move, in retrospect, and say you would have done something different. Taking your statement at face value; you're right... the domino's didn't have to fall the way they did... we could have never drafted Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun, Rickie Weeks, Yovani Gallardo... even Ben Sheets could have easily been Barry Zito. You can't just say blanket statements like this and proceed to put together a fictional rotation based on some chips that did fall, and others that didn't. How about we worry about the future possible moves, and not dwell on moves from years past that could possibly have worked out much different.

But you're looking at 4 players there. Risky got hurt which no one could have predicted... Wolf hasn't even played a game for the Brewers yet, and I think could easily earn his salary... Suppan was a bad signing, but filled a need at the time and more importantly put the Brewers on the map. Hall was a bad signing, but one that A LOT of fans wanted to make at the time. You don't make up for a few bad signings by making another bad signing. As the saying goes... two wrongs don't make a right.

So because he had a good 2007, he just gets a pass from now on?? What? A 25-year old player puts up a .892 OPS and you're not supposed to expect him to get up near that level ever again in his career? You're just supposed to sit back and accept a .150 point drop? I'm sure the Brewers organization doesn't think that way. I hope they don't anyway. Players usually get better and hit their peak in the 27 to 29 year old seasons, not regress. If you're going to continue to think like this, than you're probably going to be extremely disappointed in Casey McGehee this year. Players routinely have great seasons followed by them coming back to earth when the rest of the league starts adjusting to them.

If Prince is worth $20-$25 million per year to another team, it's hard to see how he's not also worth that to the Brewers. Either a guy is worth the money or not and I would bet on Prince earning his salary over the next 8-10 years. Obviously Prince would take up less of some teams projected budgets but if the Brewers are going to be involved in free agency, they might as well pay the money for a guy who will actually probably be worth it There's a difference in something being worth a certain dollar amount and realistically being able to afford it. Back to Russ's house analogy... I'm sure that $500K house is worth it, but the mortgage payment would be 75% of my salary. Is it technically feasible that I could buy that house and pay for it? Yes. But would it be a smart decision? No. That's where I see this conundrum. IMO Fielder would definitely be worth his contract. And yes, the Brewers could feasibly afford to pay him. However, I don't think it would be a smart decision to do so because it would REALLY limit our flexability, and probably hinder our ability to field a competitive team year-in and year-out. This is why he would be a better fit to another team... Some other teams can afford to pay that salary and still have plenty of financial flexability. Same as some people can afford to buy a $500K house and blink an eye over it. The analogy holds true.

Who are you referring to?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but basically an at bat the 8th inning of an April game with the Brewers down 9-0 basically has the same weight as an at bat with the Brewers tied 3-3 in the 9th inning of a September game. I would say if this is what you believe than you should learn more about statistics. There are statistics that measure everything. Just take a look at Ennder's post earlier in this exact thread, he lists statictics for both "Late & Close" and "High Leverage Situations." If you are ignoring these, than sure... you may not get an accurate measure of a players performance, both in general and in "clutch situations." I also have a problem with putting such a high value on OBP. The objective is to win the game by scoring and driving in runs, not to get to first base. It's pretty hard to score a lot without players on base, don't you think? In all actuality we're talking about evaluating a specific player on offense, not the whole team and nothing to do with defense. That being known, what do you think an offensive player is trying to do when he's at bat? I would venture to guess if you said, "trying not to make an out" you would be correct. Well, the best stat to look at for this is OBP, because it is basically telling you how often a player did not make an out. Hitting 6th for a good chunk of last year, Cameron should have had a high OBP, because generally the guys hitting 7-8 were trash. I'd pitch around him too. Pitchers almost never want to put a guy on base. Because even some of the worst hitters in the game still get a hit 1/5 to 1/4 of the time. If you have no outs, than that's three players with those chances to get a hit. That means more often than not, one of the next 3 gets a hit. Walks are much more a function of the pitcher, not the hitter. Some guys have poor plate discipline and will end up playing themselves out of the league with a low BA and high strikeouts, but some guys like Vlad have terrible plate discipline, but are (or at least were for Vlad great hitters). If this were true... since all the players on the Brewers face the same pitchers on any given day, shouldn't they all have basically the same walk rate? But they don't... Also why did Rickie Weeks have a high walk rate? I'm certain pitchers were not trying to pitch around him to get to Braun and Prince... Also, do you feel wins are a lucky stat? How do you account for the fact that some days weather conditions and/or just the ball carrying at Miller Park for whatever reason favors the offense? In any case, if a guy gets a win he was in theory at least able to outpitch the opponent that day. Wins in general are not a lucky stat. It's when looking at the win/loss record of a specific pitcher that it gets pretty dicey. Wins tell you almost nothing about how good a pitcher pitched. Wins are a team stat, not an individual one. When trying to evaluate a specific player you should not use a team stat. If you looked at is this way, Ben Sheets would have been a bad pitcher because he had a bad win/loss record. Also Braden Looper would have been the best pitcher on the Brewers last year because he had the best win/loss record. There's a reason that both of these are no where near true.

Going further, I don't buy into assigning stats for 'Park Factors' and 'Range Factors' and the like on defense. That's fine if you don't buy into it... but there's a specific reason why people in certain positions would be very interested in such data. For example: if you're trying to decide if you should trade for a certain pitcher... you should be aware that if said picher played for Oakland for the beginning of his career, and he is primarily a fly-ball pitcher, he most likely benefited greatly from a very pitcher friendly field. If you don't take these things into consideration you will wind up getting burned, and be without a job as the huge blockbuster signing you made ended up being more bust than you had hoped for.

I agree... what's with all the Dave Bush hate? Not just on here either - everyone I talk to seems to hate the guy. I really don't understand why... him pitching well is going to have a big impact on our success this year.

But he plays so far back and has such a strong arm that he actually has decent range as well. He's not fast or flashy, but because of how far back he can play his range by all metrics is still pretty good.

His salary could have been a palindrome!

clancy, are you assuming that Gamel gets traded/moved? Why would you move Lawrie to 3B when we have Gamel, McGehee, Green, etc?

Exactly, because if they never result in a CS, than the only difference is when people are on base (runners don't advance as much), which could be slightly less for a lead off hitter. However, if you assume 25% of the time he gets caught, than you're really only looking at 37-38 "doubles" that don't advance runners as well... instead of the original 50 doubles, which is a big difference.

Come on Mark, there's no crying in baseball.

I agree. Elaborating on Ennder's point... Say the Brewers are going to score X amount of runs every year. If you're saying that all the other pitchers stay the same, and Wolf (instead of Looper) pitches a 2.5 ERA over 30 starts, but only wins 7 games - than he obviously didn't get a lot of run support. But since we're assuming that the Brewers will score X runs that season... that means that all the runs they didn't score in Wolf's starts that they did in Loopers now get spread around to pitchers who don't give up as many runs as Looper and will translate into more wins. Even if you don't want to say this is next year, and want to use last year's results... throw Wolf's starts in for Looper's and I'd bet Wolf wins even more games than Looper did.

That's like saying Braun was historically unlucky as a 3B... Although in this case there is a huge track record of Braun playing a bad 3B in the minors as well. In Parra's case, his track record shows that of a good pitcher with great stuff in the minors.

IMO, Tigers got the wrong end of the blockbuster trade I completely disagree with this. The Tigers traded a guy while his value was the highest it'll ever be. Jackson's peripherals show he was no where near as good of a pitcher as his results were last year. I actually could see Scherzer out-pitching Jackson as early as next year, and he's still cheap for a few years. His only problem will be injuries... But IMO - the Tigers found the sucker at the poker table and took them for all they had.

It is pretty concerning to me that he had to request the arthogram himself. I am having an arthogram on my shoulder in a couple weeks and the physician that I saw said if you're going to do an MRI on the shoulder that you should always do an arthogram (inject dye before the MRI) - because otherwise you can't really see what's going on with the tendons in the shoulder. I don't really understand why they wouldn't do that in the first place for DiFelice.

Don't look now, but the Brewers just signed Gregg Zaun...

2 times caught possessing pot = Class I Felony, Max sentence = 1.5 years in prison, 2 years parole. 2 times drunk driving = Misdemeanor, most likely 5 days jail, at the most, unless you hit someone. Reality is that with 2 pot convictions you would get a probation sentence, but prison is knocking on the door. At least in my county. This is false. The 2nd time drunk driving you have mandatory jail time in WI (the laws have changed somewhat recently). In some cases the judge can reduce the jail time to a few days, and they can serve the rest of their time (about 44 days) on house arrest with a GPS anklet. But a friend of mine is currently serving all 44 days in Huber for his 2nd DUI. Neither were crazy over the legal limit, and for his first he was only 2 doors down from his house when he got pulled over.

Count me in the not wanting to get rid of Gamel camp. I believe we will regret it if we trade him. He's going to be a good-to-great player and the pitcher he would bring us will mostly be a somewhat unproven player. Hitters generally are less risky prospects than pitchers are. Top prospect pitchers can be make-or-break, top prospect hitters generally produce in the majors.

mletto157 wrote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What would you suggest giving the Sox for Buccholz? He has the potential to be a star pitcher in this league. Everyone has seen that. Teams don't give up talent like that very often... if ever - especially when they're still under team control for cheap. Gamel and Hardy I think it would be a terrible move to trade Gamel at this point - so for me, that's not on the table. The Yankees happened to get hot at the right time this year. The Yankees were pretty much hot for the majority of the year, or at least the entire 2nd half. And even when they were cold, they still won the majority of the time.

What would you suggest giving the Sox for Buccholz? He has the potential to be a star pitcher in this league. Everyone has seen that. Teams don't give up talent like that very often... if ever - especially when they're still under team control for cheap.

sheet, did you miss this post from rluzinski? Fangraphs tweaked Tom Tango's methodology and will come up with a slightly different number than him. They had something like a 7 part series outlining exactly how hey calculate it. Others are free to tweak, refine and improve as well. It's a model. If somone is arguing that one player was worth 2 runs/.2 wins more than fangraphs indicates, they missing the point.

What does sample size have anything to do with valuing .239/.329/.439 in 238 plate appearances at $5.2 million? The only thing I see, is that if Kapler put up the same numbers in 620 plate appearances he would be worth only that much more per Fangraphs. Sample size is huge here because of the calculation of UZR. Most likely his defense is way overvalued because he performed well over a very small sample. If you took his UZR rating over the next couple seasons and combined it with this one you would get somewhere close to his actual skill level (actually you'd probably need more than that with Kapler since he is only a part time player). However, none of this takes away from the fact that WAR (and therefore the $5.2M figure) is based on ACTUAL production from this last season, not true skill level. This is why it seems hard for people to grasp. And this is one of the flaws of WAR and the dollar value. Because the $ comes from only this last season of data, it doesn't accurately measure talent - only worth for that season. If you used the same type of formula, but over the last 2-3 seasons (or the next 2-3 seasons) you would get a better approximation of true talent level and true worth in the free agent market. I guess I don't understand why you are having a problem with this sheethead. This is a purely objective evaluation of a players worth based on what the average team is willing to spend for a win in the FREE AGENT market. It's very important to remember that this doesn't take into consideration pre-arby players, arby players, and players who never hit free agency, but sign long term deals.

Is it possible that the ratings for Braun's defense is so bad because of how good Cameron is? Since Cameron in CF is so good, he may catch a lot of balls that are in Ryan's zone. If you replace Cameron with a poor fielding CF, maybe Braun's rating improves because he will be counted on a lot more to get to those balls in the gaps that Cameron used to be the one getting to. Or then again, maybe it decreases because in trying to get to those balls, he botches more plays. I don't know, I guess it's just a random thought I had in trying to explain this. I completely agree that Braun isn't a good defender, but how bad he is, is definitely still in question.