topper09er

The next time Morgan is up a lefty will be on the mound, too bad he couldnt take advantage there. Hopefully there will be a bunting situation for him

There is no possible reason at all for McGehee to stop running on that play. If at anytime Stewart decides to tag McGehee instead of throw he get him if he fields it cleanly. Did McGehee think he would just be able to stand between 2nd and 3rd during Hart's AB?

With Kot playing today will Lucroy be catching the Wolf tomorrow?

With the Reds up 3-1 in the 9th, CoCo faced Pujols, Holliday and Berkman and retired the side in order for the win.

Um we'll take that, gotta know who the runner is there

That change was juuuuuust slow enough for Alfonzo to pull foul

Nice job! Any inning that Kot, McGehee and Wilson hit and we score a run is big for us.

With Kot, McGehee and Wilson due up Id just play for 1 run and try to get em over and get em in Edit: good work Kot, now dont strikeout out McGehee

Marcum's change is looking really nice so far

Why does everyone around here seem to think Casey McGehee is a major league baseball player? He is hitting worse than Jason Kendall this year, he should NEVER play at ANY TIME EVER, but if he has to he really needs to be buried in the 8 hole.

Weeks hitting 5 is good because we need someone to take advantage of Prince's .421 OBP and get another shot at Braun's .396 OBP before we enter the blackhole of Yuni/McGehee. Prince has only scored 32 non-HR runs this seasons because the guys behind are sucking it up. Weeks is on pace to hit 31 HRs but only have 70 RBI this season, which would be a waste of his run producing potential. He also has a .347 OBP this year and .359 over the past 1.5+ seasons, which is nothing amazing for the top of the order.

I'd go Morgan, Hart, Fielder, Weeks, Kottaras, Wilson, Kotsay, McGehee with this bunch

Hey Ill take 2 straight Wilson starts, is Yuni finally done as a full time starter?

The other thing that seems to be misunderstood a lot is the concept of a replacement player. In reality, WAR is really wins above a certain minimum winning percentage. I don't remember exactly but early in Moneyball they talk about if you have a roster of entirely players being paid league minimum, basically a AAA team, you would still win a certain number of games based on the long season and randomness of baseball. In football, this level would be 0, as demonstrated by the Lions and Buccaneers of the late 70s, but in baseball it would be around .333 or so. The worst winning percentage of all-time in the modern game was the 1962 Mets who went 40-120 (.250). At BBref they use 52-110 (.320).

Conceptually it is simple, you convert everything a player a does into runs, add them up and then determine how many runs it takes for a win in that season/ballpark. The way this is done is much more complicated. In batting, the run value of each event has been determined. These are called the linear weights which are attached to each event (single, double, sac bunt, strikeout, etc) to weigh them relatively. They are determined based on empirical data and differ depending on the run scoring environment. There are 24 base-out states, 8 possible ways the bases can be occupied and 3 different amounts of outs. Every base-out state has an expected number of runs that will score from that point until the end of the inning based on historical data that actually happened in games. You can see it here. Whatever the result of the at bat, you just subtract runs expected before the AB (so if you are batting with the bases loaded, 0 out you already expect 2.417 runs to score that inning) from what is expected after (so if you then get a single, score 2 runs and leave R2,R1, 0 out, you get 1.573 - 2.417 + 2 = 1.156). If instead you strike out you get 1.65-2.417 = -0.767. With no one on and 2 outs a single is worth 0.251-0.117 = 0.134 runs. Then all the base-out states are weighed based on how often they occur and you wind up with the runs added/subtracted above/below average for each hitting event, seen here. (Based on 1999-2002 data, a little higher scoring than we have right now). Note a HR is about 3 times more valuable than a single, not 4 times as implied by the slugging percentage. In summary: BB = 0.33, 1B = 0.474, 2B = 0.764, 3B = 1.063, HR = 1.409, K = -0.31, other out = -0.29, SB = 0.195, CS = -0.456, etc... If you add up every PA for the season and the number is positive the player has produced that many runs above average on the year.

Wow...this lineup is almost where I want it to be. Flip Lucroy and YuBet and I would be doing flips in my office. You mean Lucroy and McGehee. I'm sure over the course of a season this won't have a huge difference in the amount of at bats between the two if they played full time anyway. Here are the Brewers PAs by batting order position from last year, the 7 hitter got 15 more PAs than the 8 hitter. Of course the 2 hitter got 100 more than the 8 hitter which is why it was so frustrating when Gomez was hitting up there. Split PA Batting 1st 771 Batting 2nd 752 Batting 3rd 732 Batting 4th 717 Batting 5th 701 Batting 6th 682 Batting 7th 668 Batting 8th 653 Batting 9th 627

First of all WAR is not an abstract stat at all, you can easily take the time to learn how it is calculated. People do not just watch games and then arbitrarily assign some WAR to every player based on their guts. You are saying if we replaced Loe in these 10 losses with anyone they would have been perfect and turned all those games from losses into wins. You are also neglecting the fact the Loe has appeared in 46 games, so if he had a negative impact in 10 then he had a positive impact in 36, thus negating some of his negative value in those 10 losses. You cant say he has cost us 10 games without acknowledging he may have helped us win 36 games. What you are doing is essentially making up your own abstract stat, WAP, or Wins Above Perfect. You are saying Loe has a -10 WAP, but since we have 43 team losses who are you crediting solely with the other losses? If Ryan Braun would just hit a HR every game that would give us likely 10 more wins at least, so Braun also has a -10WAP. Same with Fielder and the rest of the lineup? The Brewers are only 8-11 in games Marcum has started, so if he would have just thrown a shutout every outing he wouldn't have cost us those 11 games, -11 WAP right there. If you keep doing this you realize that by your method the team should have about 200 losses by now, but instead we don't so you have to distribute responsibility for the losses across the whole team. No players are perfect so it is silly to compare them to that, I posted it somewhere earlier in this thread, but the Brewers have 20 relief losses, most in the NL. The Phillies have the least with 10 and the league average is 15. You need to expect a certain amount of losses, just like you need to expect Ryan Braun to strikeout a certain number of times. WAR does the opposite and compares players to a league minimum level of play, and according to that Loe is at only 0.1 which is saying he has had a bad year, but Yuni and McGehee are both below 0.

Well although having to wait another day would be tough it would give Braun and extra day for his calf. Considering Greinke, Hart, Lucroy and Plush were out for a month, Greinke and McGehee have severely underperformed, Yuni has been worthless and we had to battle through the tough interleague matchups, being in 1st place to start the 2nd half is pretty awesome.

Actually it is because it adjusts for the scoring era, numbers of runs required for a win. Just remember if you are not comparing guys with a similar number of PAs then you should look at WAR/PA to get a better idea of who was more valuable over their career. It is also good to identify huge seasons, for example without using defense here are the seasons of 10 WAR from offense (hitting + base running + position) alone in the last 50 years: Bonds 04 (12.1) Bonds 02 (11.9) Bonds 01 (13.0) Giambi 01 (10.0) Yount 82 (10.7) Carew 77 (10.0) Morgan 75 (10.3) Allen 72 (10.0) Aaron 63 (10.1) Mantle 61 (10.9) If you had to pick the most valuable offensive years in the last 50 you might not pick those. Remember, this is most VALUABLE, not best.

Here is one thing that concerned me a little bit, the other closer free agents this winter: Heath Bell (34) Jonathan Broxton (28) Matt Capps (28) Francisco Cordero (37) - $12MM club option with a $1MM buyout Frank Francisco (32) Brad Lidge (35) - $12.5MM club option with a $1.5MM buyout Joe Nathan (37) - $12.5MM club option with a $2MM buyout Jonathan Papelbon (31) Jon Rauch (33) - $3.75MM club option with a $250K buyout Francisco Rodriguez (30) - $17.5MM club/vesting option with a $3.5MM buyout Rafael Soriano (32) - $11MM player option or a $1.5MM buyout Jose Valverde (34) - $9MM club option, no buyout There are a ton of big name guys there, maybe making it better for K-Rod to accept arby for 1 year and then compete with this 2013 FA class: David Aardsma (30) Kevin Gregg (35) - $6MM club/vesting option Brandon Lyon (33) Leo Nunez (29) J.J. Putz (36) - $6.5MM club option with a $1.5MM buyout Mariano Rivera (43) Joakim Soria (29) - $8MM club option with a $750K buyout Huston Street (29) - $9MM mutual option with a $500K buyout if club declines Rivera will either retire or remain a Yankee and I would think who ever trades for Soria this year/next year would pick up that option leaving K-Rod, only still 31 in the 2012 off season, looking a lot better. I think that in general he will reject arby because it would mean he would remain as a setup man with us.

No its not, its ALWAYS relative to the numbers of runs you produced/saved and then how many runs a win was worth that season. For example the old 1880s guys who threw 500+ innings have huge WAR totals, but you need to understand the context that they allowed them to get that high. Silver King accumulated 16.5 WAR in 584.2 IP in the American Association in 1882. This breaks down to 0.0282 WAR/IP. Pedro in 2000 had 10.1 WAR in 217 IP for 0.0465 WAR/IP, or 1.65 times better

WAR is a counting stat first and foremost and people need to realize that. It is like hits, HRs, etc. There are some players who have a lot because they got these stats at a high rate in their careers (Cobb, hits) and other players who climbed the leaderboards due to longevity (Rose). If you can understand that although Pete Rose has the most hits he should not be considered the greatest hitter of all-time, then you should be able to understand that Phil Niekro was not a better pitcher than Pedro Martinez. No one who likes WAR thinks Niekro was a better pitcher than Pedro. In fact, what you could do is turn the counting stat into a rate stat, like hits/ABs and would see Cobb rates at .366 and Rose is at .303, or say WAR/IP. If you do that you see Niekro = 98.6/5404 = 0.0179. Pedro rates at 75.9/2827.1 = 0.0268 (using BBref WAR), or nearly 1.5 times better. When trying to determine who was "better" you need to understand WAR is a career stat, so often people are interested in some combination of peak prime value + career value. Here is one example of this using WAR, http://darowski.com/hall-of-wwar/ where players get extra credit for WAR over a certain threshold to double count parts of prime years. So if player A has 5 seasons of 8 WAR and player B has 8 seasons of 5 WAR, if you count WAR over 6 as extra value for a dominant season, then player A gets 5*8 + 5*(8-6) = 50 weighed WAR for those seasons but player B just gets 8*5 = 40 weighted WAR for those seasons. Another important thing to understand is that WAR is all about value, not necessarily talent or greatness. It is comprised of runs added/saved from hitting, base running, defense and has positional and replacement level adjustments. So for example, just being able to play SS has great value for your team based on how difficult it is find good ones, even though you may actually suck, you still provide some value by being able to play SS because if you sucked at 1B you would be in way of a better player in waiting. This year is the perfect example of this, Yuni sucks at SS but we dont really have great in house replacements, but if was at 1B we could bring Gamel up, or move Hart to 1B and bring Boggs up, etc. For example out of Derek Jeter's ~ 70 WAR about 11 have come only because he is a SS, independent of how good he was at offense and defense as a SS. This is because it is valuable to a team if you can play SS because it is then easier to find big bats at easier positions. If Jeter played 1B his whole career then the Yankees wouldn't have gotten Giambi or Teixeira. Personally, I think offense is the same way too. Although having a highers OBP is more valuable to a team, and a guy that just sits there and walks as much as possible like Bobby Abreu is very valuable to a team, I don't feel like that necessarily means he is a better hitter than guys with higher SLG%. This is mostly my take from actually playing and realizing I could maintain a high average by trying to slap singles and walk a lot and that was valuable for being a leadoff hitter on my team, but the best players were the ones who hit the dingers. If I was in charge of the Brewers I would want all the high OBP guys because that is more valuable to a team, which WAR reflects, but I don't feel like it as difficult to do as maintain a high SLG. Remember if you just look at the WAR leaderboard and use that to determine who was better it is not that different from looking at the career hits list to determine who the best hitter is, but if you can turn it into a rate stat you can then try to compare players based on everything they did, offense, defense, baserunning etc, whereas you cant do that with any other rate stat.

A quick look at this Oriole fan site's 2010 prospect list has 3 SS in their top 7, including Machado who is a top 5-10 prospect in all of baseball. The oldest is only 21 now but if you were Hardy you would be just a filler until these guys are ready....kind of like what happened in Milwaukee with Escobar. http://orioleshangout.com...e/2010-top-ten-prospects

From any teams perspective they could say to the Mets, you still owe K-Rod $5MM + the very likely $17.5MM next year, so as long as you give us K-Rod for crap players and $20 MM you are still saving money, so maybe from that perspective you can understand most teams wanting more than $5 MM

Here is the NL relief pitching only stats. We do lead the league with 20 Lgr (relief losses) but as you can see the average is 15, you cant look at that 20 number and expect it to be close to 0. So that is 5 games lost above average our bullpen has cost us. For example Yuni right now is at 18.2 runs below average and Casey is 17.4 runs below average which combined accounts for about 4 wins below average between them. Tm R/G G GR GF Wgr Lgr ? SVOpp SV BSv SV% SVSit Hold IR IS IS% MIL 4.41 92 256 91 12 20 38 24 14 63% 78 38 79 28 35% FLA 4.35 91 288 87 17 19 38 27 11 71% 85 41 144 34 24% HOU 5.04 92 271 91 13 19 28 10 18 36% 56 27 106 43 41% CIN 4.43 92 278 90 12 18 31 19 12 61% 74 41 118 42 36% CHC 4.99 92 284 91 16 16 33 20 13 61% 74 39 133 43 32% STL 4.42 92 254 87 15 16 41 26 15 63% 79 32 136 43 32% PIT 3.84 90 289 86 12 15 38 27 11 71% 100 53 158 46 29% LgAvg 4.15 92 270 88 14 15 37 25 12 68% 81 42 122 38 31% SDP 3.67 92 269 92 14 14 35 27 8 77% 75 39 102 30 29% WSN 3.85 92 270 89 20 14 46 27 19 59% 103 52 168 57 34% ATL 3.39 92 291 89 15 13 46 32 14 70% 101 55 126 27 21% COL 4.47 91 279 87 11 13 40 28 12 70% 100 57 103 29 28% ARI 4.42 92 270 90 15 12 41 29 12 71% 84 41 114 40 35% SFG 3.50 92 277 89 20 12 45 33 12 73% 106 51 143 36 25% LAD 4.05 92 250 87 9 11 23 18 5 78% 59 36 125 46 37% NYM 4.26 91 270 88 12 11 34 24 10 71% 72 37 140 45 32% PHI 3.24 91 223 80 15 10 28 25 3 89% 55 26 64 14 22%