Bombers

I decided to take a look at wOBA for a few teams (Tigers, Cardinals, Braves, DBacks, Rockies) ... these teams are all top 12 in terms of runs scored this year. None of these teams sport a lineup with their 4 worst wOBA batters at the bottom of the order. Only 2 of these teams (DBacks, Cardinals) bat players who own a wOBA under .300, back to back. I think having your 7-8-9 be Weeks, pick your 1B flavor (Francisco, Betancourt, etc) and then your pitcher is partly to blame for us not scoring runs. We are conceeding so many innings by stacking all of these bad hitters together. Many teams space them out. I know this will change whenever Hart gets back but I wish they could figure out a lineup that is our go to lineup and stick with it. Batting 3 players in row with an under .300 wOBA is a bad idea IMO (and it seems like other teams stay away from that too.) And our lineup tonight has an wOBA that goes like this: .344, .390, .393, .362, .316 then .272, .153, .241, .147. To me you would get a more consistent lineup doing something like: Schafer (.272), Segura (.390), Gomez (.393), Ramirez (.362), Francisco (.153), Aoki (.344), Lucroy (.316), Gennett (.241), Figaro (.192). I know removing Aoki from the 1 hole isn't something I would want to do long term but we need to start putting guys in a position to help score runs. Not just a highest to lowest of OPS or wOBA or pick a stat. It is like no thought goes into putting a lineup together.

Here is a good one by Splitter about Braun raking after a few weeks in the bigs. (I couldn't get to the Braun is called up thread) viewtopic.php?f=63&t=847 Some good lines: 1. if he keeps it up, he will give it a good run for ROY. 2. In a small sample versus lefty pitchers, Braun has 14 hits in 27 at bats, with 9 of the hits for extra bases - yes, 1 in every 3 official at bats is an extra base hit....along with 6 walks vs. only 3 strikeouts, this has resulted in a 1.810 OPS against southpaws. That would be best labelled as sick ladies and gentleman. 3. Because of sample size I reserve the right to take this back later but right now Prince is no longer the best hitter on this team. This guy is clearly the real deal. Yes, Braun won ROY. Yes, Braun still rakes against lefty's. Yes, Bruan continued to be the best hitter on the team and still is.

I agree Crew07. This is how it is in football. (Basketball is slighly different as players can sign with an international team (Rubio) and then spurn their draft team.) Why MLB allows for this is beyond me. It isn't in the best interest of the players union nor MLB, so I guess I just don't get it.

Here are two pages from fangraphs UZR. In short it takes a lot of factors; Saving runs with your arm, double plays, range runs, error runs, park factors, etc. http://www.fangraphs.com/library/defense/uzr/ http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-fangraphs-uzr-primer/ Here is the current MLB UZR leaderboard. Gomez is currently tied for 1st. Kind of puts into perspective the year he is having. Not only is he having an awesome offensive season, he continues to be a top tier defensive player. http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=fld&lg=all&qual=y&type=1&season=2013&month=0&season1=2013&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=23,d

And the part of does it pay to start reading them. I am partial because I thought these books were amazing. They are extremelly long. (I hooked someone I work with onto them and it took him 1 year to read the 5 books.) They are all like 1,000 pages. There is just a lot more detail to the books then in the show. There are more characters too. There are also some good theories out there about items left open ended at the end of book 5. So it will be interesting where it goes from here. Like he said on Conan, there is no character in my books that is safe from being killed off. (I find that intriguing but also a tad sad as you do get hooked into liking some characters a lot. So you worry about an axe to the back of the head at every turn) ... good luck if you start reading them. (The first two books are similar to the series but IMO I don't think you can just skip them. I think it might be akward for you - but maybe not. I had read all the books before the series started.)

They are pretty spot on. There are things that are different but nothing drastic. Smallish things like Robb's wife wasn't at the red wedding. That is what GRRM was referring too on Conan. (http://winteriscoming.net/2013/06/grrm-on-conan/) ... The also removed some characters. Gendry wasn't taken by Melisandre, Stannis had another bastard called Edric Storm. So they just combined those two people into 1 person. As far as the comment about running out of material, here are my thoughts: Season 3 wrapped up about 60 ish % of the way through the 3rd book. So they are doing a good job. As far as running out of material, they have time to worry about that. Here are some things I have heard: 1. It is expected with the pressure from HBO, GRRM will have book 6 out in 2014. On Conan he says it is 1500 pages. If he knows how long it is, he atleast as a rough outline completed. 2. 2014 will be the rest of book 3. 3. Book 4 and book 5 run in parallel (from a time perspective) and they are huge (1,000 pages each) ... so that could take 3 years to get through. (2015, 16, and 17) 4. If book 6 actually is 1500 pages, I would expect that to cover 2018 and 2019. 5. So he would need book 7 out by 2020. I think he is fine.

I read the books, and I had a good group of people tuning into the show that never read the books. For me, it was great to see their reaction. I remember when I read it in the book I was really mad. Especially becuase you though Arya was dead too (She takes an axe to the back of the head - you find out later it is the butt of the axe and she was just knocked out.)

382 games without a complete game. WOW! Bill just said that RRR does not believe in the complete game. I don't really care about complete games. I'd rather have my starters go 7 innings every game of the year than have 10 complete games where the rest of the starters struggle to make it through 5. Extreme example obviously but complete games don't really mean much. I agree with that. Consistent quality starts means more to me than a complete game.

Nice D Rickie (and this isn't in blue !!)

If a team is at the bottom in fielding percentage and/or leads the league in errors it's generally always a bad fielding team. If you have an example one that wasn't please share it with us. I sort of just stumbled across this one today. The Giants are tied with us at 24th in MLB with a .982 team fielding percentage. But their team UZR places them in 2nd at 21.3. So I guess this would fall into that category of being a bad defensive team (from a fielding % standpoint) but a good defensive team based on UZR. (Now this is where I will need some help from the BF.net brain on what is causing the Giants to jump from 24th in fielding % to 2nd in UZR.) I would expect results to be more like the Brewers. 24th in fielding and 15th in UZR. While UZR shows a different story for the Crew, they still are not a top tier defensive team. Jumping 22 spots seems like a slight abnormality. I was always told defensive fielding percentage used by itself is kind of like using batting average by itself. It doesn't always tell the exact tale of how someone is doing. A general litmus test? Sure, it can do that.

UZR places the Brewers at 15th in MLB. Which would place them middle of the road. http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=fld&lg=all&qual=0&type=1&season=2013&month=0&season1=2013&ind=0&team=0,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=21,d On a side note, with all the love the Cardinals get on this site they are currently ranked 24th. Top 3 are Royals, Giants, Orioles.

Fielding percentage is such a poor metric to use to grade a teams defense. It is nearly useless and doesn't really tell anything about how good or bad the teams defense is. While the Brewers are not all that great defensively their fielding percentage is rather deceptive this would be true if they were at the top of the league also in fielding percentage. I agree and should have picked a better stat. (It was just the first one I went with to do a quick litmus test.) If I had to guess off the top of my head who is doing poorly, I would have went with Ramirez and Weeks. Their fielding percentage is reflective of that, in addition to Rdrs and UZR. I will add UZR to my post

A quick breakdown of starters: Name / Fielding % / Errors (Games started) / Runs saved above average (Rdrs - bb-reference) / UZR (Fangraphs) Infield: Weeks - .973 % / 6 E (51 games) -8 Rdrs / -3.8 UZR Segura - .979 % / 6 E (59 games) -1 / -1.2 Ramirez - .923 % / 4 E (30 games) -9 / -6.6 Lucroy - .995 % / 2 E (49 games) 0 / NA Outfield: Aoki - .992 % / 1 E (59 games) 12 Rdrs / 1.3 UZR Gomez - .994 % / 1 E (59 games) 15 / 11.6 Braun - .983 % / 2 E (56 games) 2 / .6 Others: Yuni - .991 / 1 E (52 games) -1 Rdrs / 2.4 UZR Gonzalez - .974 / 5 E (34 games) 0 / -1 Maldonado - .983 / 3 E (23 games) 1 / NA Bianchi - .963 / 2 E (12 games) -2 / -1.1 Lalli - .959 / 3 E (3 games) -1 / -1.0 Francisco - 1.000 / 0 E (5 games) 0 / .3 Schafer - 1.000 / 0 E (11 games) 5 / .3 Gennett - 1.0000 / 0 E (4 games) 0 / -.6 I didn't look up the leage average for fielding % at each position. Maybe someone can post that. It seems like our outfield is doing fine. Our infield and backups are not doing well. Gonzalez was horrible. Weeks and Ramirez are doing really bad. Segura isn't the best in the league but seems to be doing well to me. Edit - Added UZR off fangraphs.

I had heard recently we were in the bottom quarter in all of MLB in terms of fielding percentage. This confirmed it: http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/fielding We are tied for 24/25th with the SF Giants at a .982 fielding percentage. I am unsure of how each person is doing on an individual basis and who is doing poorly

I agree that it significantly played a part. Especially if we end up not receiving anything for him. If we can't trade him this year, what is the chances he is a type A?

Good job hitting their 2nd pick on the head

That's a good point

This is where I am at. How is it these so called "shady" places only recover names of players from MLB. Are we honestly to believe that NFL players don't take HGH or any other PED's and the league is completely clean? I mean they don't even test for it. So I guess MLB players are just complete idiots to use their own name.

Replace #1 with either not trading Fielder or not signing Sabathia. Not signing Fielder isn't # 1

Way to go Jean - lets go Braunie!

Ah right, Jason Kendall, Gregg Zaun, Johnny Estrada ... yep, just an awesome lot sitting on that scrap heap

Marcum was our best pitcher from April to August in 2011. He was very consistent and I do not believe we would have "handidly" won that year without him. Early in the season he was the only one performing. If we would not have traded for him and maybe signed: - Jon Garland for 1 yr 5 million (pitched 6 games before getting hurt - also was a type B) or maybe we could have went after - Ted Lilly (who had a comparible season in 2011) but has been useless since on his 3 year deal. Or maybe?? - Carl Pavano (2 yrs 16 million ... Had a decent 2011 but did nothing last year) ... don't even think he is on a team this year. - We had no minor league options to consider. In the end, Doug made the trade. I agree with you, I would have preferred one of the listed above over dumping Lawrie but Doug thought differently. In the end, Marcum performed well all year and got the Brewers in the position they were in. Yes, his arm was burnt out and he completely failed them in the postseason. But then point at RRR who should take more of the blame for not identifying it. Marcum never should have started game 6 (especially after pitching horrible in his previous 2 post season starts). To me the two items I blame more than Marcum's arm falling off is (1) blowing 5 of 6 games vs the cards in September to allow them into the playoffs. If we would have won just 1 more, they would not have made it in. (2) Zach Greinke forgot to show up in the playoffs too. Maybe he could have done a little bit better than his 6.48 ERA. (3) RRR's bad managing. Starting Kotsay, starting Marcum, etc. I have less of an issue with the Marcum trade then I do with use not being able to develop in house talent. (Which could have prevented us from selling off Lawrie in the first place.) So in the end, our current state is a result of never being able to develop in house talent and always relying on trades. That really sets you up for short term success which we certainly have prooved.

I like how Rickie gave Scooter a pat on the back after his ground out. I will be the first to admit that Rickie has completely fallen off but he was and still is a class act. He stays out of trouble, works hard, does the right things but just doesn't turn it into positive production on the field. I hope he keeps up the same positive attitude even when Scooter begins to take some starts.

Bianchi is hitting .105/.150/.105 vs LHP this year. Just an aberration but none the less nothing that is screaming platoon this guy and let him see more LHP. (Considering he hit .098 last year against LHP too) Yuni is hitting: .246/.281/.344 vs LHP this year. So in the end, someone is getting platooned until Hart shows up.

This is what is most likely. Platoon Scooter with Rickie. (Weeks has a .693 OPS vs LHP this year)