brewjihad

According to McCalvy, you won't get that first start announced: he'll be pitching in relief. http://brewersbeat.mlblog...signed_to_t-rats_wi.html Generally I'd be against it, but I understand the reasoning of wanting to keep him focused if there's a chance he will pitch each day.

Your first post basically describes tRA. It's on the player pages here, and here's the main explanation.

Watch the interview. Colleen Dominguez is throwing him loaded questions. It's awful, and almost embarrassing that an interviewer would use tactics like that. She brings up hate mail, he says that he did get some, and then she asks three times if he suspects that some was from people within the Cubs organization. Then they got the "prisoner in home" quote and ran with it. Bradley is a crazy dude, but this is just a terrible interview. I think he did well for the questions he was asked.

The calculation at Fangraphs uses just FIP. You find the difference between an average inning and the pitcher's inning in FIP, divide by 9 to scale it to 1 inning, and then multiply it by the number of innings pitched to compare it to the average. The methodology makes plenty of sense, and there can really only be two objections to it: - Using FIP over straight ERA, tERA, or a hybrid. FIP looks to be the best to me as of now because ERA is so heavily influenced by other factors over 1 year, and though tERA is the most sound stat, batted ball classification isn't at the point yet where I would trust it as an indicator over FIP. - Replacement level. 80% of league average comes out to around a 5.50 ERA that is used for replacement level starters. You can argue that it's low, but a fifth starter in the majors doesn't beat that mark by very much. And FIP is much more clustered to the average than ERA, causing fewer outliers.

80% of league average is the mark in the pros. If you want to create a stat the values the amount of runs a player produces of above a replacement level player (more like WAR without defense, just wRAA) you need to figure out how many over 80% of the league average each player was worth. Good luck. The replacement level player is a concept that's somewhat limited to the pros, but comparing to average in runs could be useful.

Inglett was the one who hit the grand slam off of David Riske in the most ridiculous baseball game I have ever seen. http://mlb.mlb.com/news/a...p;fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb Edit: That said Dillard before. Riske gave up the homer to Inglett.

Russ, I think you and I have a very similar perspective on evaluating players in terms of runs produced above a replacement-level player. I think we can agree on evaluation methods and still somewhat disagree about Wolf vs. Harden. Based on Wolf's past performance, including a 4-ish FIP in the last few years, I'd project him for around 180 innings and a 4.20 ERA. I'd put Harden somewhere around 130 and 3.8. Wolf's probably slightly more valuable in this scenario, but again we can't completely ignore the fact that Harden's injury past makes him somewhat of a risk to even put up 80 innings in a given year. Normally I'd be all over that gamble, but I completely understand why Melvin did what he did here. If his main addition to the pitching staff is Harden and there's what, a 30% chance he finishes with less than 100 innings, he might be on his way out as GM. I don't know what to make of Harden. With an injury risk guy like Sheets, your upside is 220 innings and your downside is the same as Harden's. With Harden, your upside is probably 150 and your downside is nothing.

I think most of us here don't let 3 starts-- or even year to year fluctuations in a team stat like ERA-- change our evaluation of Suppan as a pitcher. His FIPs from the last two years have been 5.50 and 5.70. That doesn't really have value when a replacement-level FIP is generally considered to be around 5.5. Maybe Suppan has some ability to beat his FIP by a little bit, but Al, I think your point about pitching and bottom rotation starters is correct but I personally think that your evaluation of Suppan isn't.

The irony here is, this is exactly why you don't offer a guy arby if you can't afford him. The nerds on the various sites act like teams never get stuck with a guy, yet it can easily occur. ATL probably wasn't too far from having to cut him before the guarantee date in March (and pay him 1/6th of his salary) or hope he stays healthy and deal him in the season. You're using the fact that the worst-case scenario did happen-- he accepted, and they still were easily able to dump him-- to support your view that the Brewers shouldn't have done the same with one of their free agents? The Braves risked the chance that he would accept, he did, and they traded him for basically nothing. Not exactly sure how this is an example of "irony". Sincerely, a nerd on another site.

Nice call bk. I don't know why they wouldn't have taken someone, it's not like Luis Cruz on the 40-man should prevent a high-upside, no risk pitcher from being added at little cost on the chance that he does stick. Makes the Hawkins deal make a bit less sense, but pretty much any Rule V pick is a good one.

Logan, if you're referring to 804sox's post, I think what he's saying is that he doesn't think Salome will stick at catcher and that he would be an average to below average 1b, so he's not as good of a prospect as Lucroy who he thinks will stick at catcher.

Keep in mind that the projections and website are entirely the product of Sean. It's not some big organization that can find errors like that. He has a lot on his plate.

Do they give MLB possible draftees an intelligence test, like the NFL and Wondersomething or other? Maybe they should, as Jeffress and Brewer would have likely sucked at them, and raised numerous red flags. Wow. Really? You think you can use the fact that he has struggled in his career and that he apparently talked to a reporter about a career switch to say he isn't intelligent? This is a lot like your argument that Parra is not intellegent because of his lack of control. I think you should look for some more evidence before labeling people you have never met as intellegent or unintellegent. And grouping Jeffress and Brewer isn't just strange, its kinda.... offensive.

Anyone else bothered by this? http://www.freep.com/article/20091106/SPORTS02/91106058/1050/rss15

I guess the point I was making is if a system is used to show a players value by attaching a $ figure to it and it doesn't match up with what that player actually got paid it appears to me that something is wrong. Either with the owners and GM's or fangrpahs. The owners are playing for projected performance. It wouldn't be right if the numbers did match up, because you're comparing salary to actual value in salary. That very well may be the case at least in some instances. Then again if fangrpahs did field a team it may be a AAA level team with a Yankee payroll. The fact they rate players like JJ Hardy as being worth $21 million seems to me to suggest the latter but that is just me. This is where the measure is misunderstood. Pre-arby and arby players are paid less than they would be worth on the free agent market. Market value for Hardy on a 1-year free agent deal putting up the year he did was about $20 million.