xisxisxis

Yep, for a fanbase that loves Value deals, the failure to sign Grandal at the White Sox terms is an epic fail on Stearns part. The Brewers have lost/released/traded away 10 WAR from last years team (a 0.500 team by talent). To replace that on the open market will take a minimum of $60M (if you go by the cheap estimate of $6M/WAR), or $80M if you go by recent contracts or $100M if we go by historical $/WAR in FA. I'd be gobsmacked if they added $60M in salary before opening day, $80M is a fantasy, $100M a pipe dream (the kind available in CO, WA, CA)... Really? Seriously? 1) to get Gregorious the Brewers would likely have to spend most of the $18M to outbid the Phillies for Gregorious and nobody is penciling him in for >4 WAR in 2020. B) Lyles hasn't had a season full of success in MLB, but we're drinking the cool-aid that a 10 game stretch is the new Lyles? Lyles should be the 7th or 8th option for SP, not any of the 1-5 slots. We don't even need to look any farther back than 8 months to see what a poor plan for the rotation will get you...

Those are Forbes numbers, not team reported. MLB teams don't report ANYTHING except attendance and even that's a questionable number.

This is the biggest fallacy being thrown around this thread by multiple posters. if "area with much talent" mattered so much then we wouldn't have Alabama and Clemson in the national title discussion every year, we wouldn't know that Boise State existed and a California, Texas or Florida school would be in the national championship every year. University location is a minor factor for elite recruits. The reason OSU, Alabama, Clemson, OU and other successful teams do so well is that they have dynamic coaches/coaching staffs that implement innovative pro-like offensive and defensive schemes, not 1950-s era vanilla schemes that UW seems to be stuck in. An elite recruits chance of getting drafted in the big-money rounds is significantly better coming from the "elite" schools. The only thing keeping UW from being competitive for elite talent is their entire approach to football. Chicken and egg. Without a dynamic/pro-like approach to playing the game, few elite prospects and without elite prospects, little success running a pro-like/dynamic approach because the slow unskilled talent that gets UW won't lead to success. Success breads success. UW has been successful being one of the top dog with an old-school approach, but they will never be OSU, not because OSU has a slightly better recruiting base, but because UW would have to evolve and that's risky, takes you out of your comfort zone and might not get you a bowl game for a few years or even as successful as the tried-and-true "UW football" approach. I'm not knocking the UW approach as it seems to have been successful, but that approach is exactly why they won't get elite talent and compete with the elite schools like OSU, not some cop-out about recruiting talent in your area. Coaching staffs matter a lot more than any other factor.

Bob Arthur knows a lot about measuring drag. What he doesn't know a lot about is how to do a proper study. Comparing a few pitchers on a few teams to the entire MLB data is wrong. He should be comparing the same teams/stadiums and pitchers from the regular season to the post-season. Then he would have "proof" that there's a difference between playoffs and regular season. All he has is data that could very likely have a sampling effect that could easily disappear when he actually does the correct analysis. The numbers from previous years show clearly no change between regular season and post-season (2015-2017), so if there is a true change, was it intentional? Assuming that MLB has done something intentionally to somehow skew the results, in a way that is unpredictable, is just more crazy conspiracy theory b.s. In fact, an argument could be made based on team makeup and data that reduced travel would hurt the Dodgers and Yankees more than the other teams, which then leads to why would MLB try to give two teams in their largest markets a handicap? What is clear by Arthur's analysis is that MLB could test each baseball to make sure it meets a specific drag number and throw out those out of range. Then there wouldn't be so much wasted time on such an idiotic issue.

Hader can be good. Hader can be bad. He was bad when it really mattered which leaves a bad taste in your mouth What do you put in your mouth when you watch the Brewers... Nevermind, best not to know. Can we move on from Hader and discuss the seriously much more relevant Live or Die with Christian Yelich... I mean what type of quality player breaks his kneecap when the team needs him most... Seriously, if he can't get a hit every time he bats, why do we have him around. Sure his salary is comparatively low, but he bailed on the team when they needed him the most and every Brewer teammate, employee and fan should be on his case for letting the team down...

Before grabbing the pitchforks, it might be good to think about this for a few minutes. This doesn't require a PhD in Chemistry... Why wouldn't they test for it if they COULD? How often do professional athletes who take steroid take them? Every few hours like pain killers/opiates? Why not? The active ingredients in Marijuana (banned substance) and Testosterone (PED/banned) and it's derivatives are highly stable molecules that linger for a long time. Marijuana can be picked up 30+ days after use. Opiates are not stable. From my experience the minute you collect blood, it begins to change. How fast something degrades/disappears depends on it's stability outside the body in a vial which is no longer at physiologic temperature. It is very likely that to measure opiates, MLB would need to completely change the way they collect specimens. Realistically they are testing for everything they can test for given the way they collect and test. Does that mean they will miss some? Yes, but it's hardly intentional neglect. It's what's pragmatic given how they can reliably collect/test.

I think we just saw what $100M+ invested in your defense will get you. I don't think the Bears had any indication the packers could consistently cause pressure. The DL and Secondary are so interlinked. The Packers can now get pressure in the backfield. The secondary benefits from the reduced time for the QB to react and the better coverage/speed in the secondary makes the pressure from the line that much more damaging. Nagy should have adjusted at halftime, but maybe Trubisky needs a set gameplan or he can't adjust so they go with what they brought. Who knows, but that was a very nice performance by the D. Kenny Clark is a beast. Very encouraging game. Now if Lafluer can get through to home run Rodgers and instill some form of ball control offense instead of the "throw it 40 yards and hope" this offense might be formidable. Its becoming clear that Aaron Rodgers is the biggest impediment to getting this offense going...

So you want Brew Crew 92 to stop posting?

Doesn't reaping qualify as off topic? Oh nevermind, I read it as "raping" 2 runs in 5 IP for the bullpen should qualify as a bright spot....

I read it that Jopal was concluding the "Brewers would have gotten great value from Cain for their money" over the 5 year contract as he is clearly pointing out the defense he brings would likely be equivalent to his salary the next 3 years. While the overall value he delivered over 5 years would still be value for the Brewers, there isn't any added value projected for the next 3 years unless this years offense is an outlier from his aging curve. Teams aren't going to take on a contract that isn't clearly going to give them some value, they can go to the FA market and sign a market value contract without giving up any prospect. And from those studies it's clear the slope of the decline is different for each individual. Hence, each person will be different in their decline and at this point nobody can predict what an individuals decline will look like. I believe JosephC pointed out that Cain's defense this year is almost identical to last year so their ain't no slope right now. He may start declining soon, but his defense could be elite for another 1-2 years and then begin to decline. Not enough data to know, but being an optimist (like Jopal), we tend to think positively about Brewers players.

Baseball teams spend about 30% of the year outside their home state. I am sure teams are getting prescriptions filled all the time outside the state where their MD is licensed. It's hard enough for the federal government to track prescriptions in state, without adding in the complication of purchases across 20+ states by the same entity/doctor. The only real people that the current crackdown addresses is people who actually have chronic pain and need to see their doctor every 60 days to get a hand-written prescription for another 60 days of drugs. Slightly off topic, but there are hundreds of prescription drugs that when taken improperly will lead to death. A doctor can only do so much if the patient is not following directions. Just google "prescription drug deaths", the first hit should be a government website. Just look at the numbers. >70,000 in 2017!!!! while a large amount of that is driven by opioids, there has been a large increase in non-opioid related deaths also. This is from PRESCRIPTION DRUGS...

Nope, he ain't no Aaron Wilkerson...

I think Brewerfan should add advertisements to the forum. The money from bipolar drug companies over a season would more than offset the hosting costs for 5-10 years...

Maybe the Brewers can just put "Braun" on Hiura's jersey then Brew4U would ignore his awful defense...

I'm guessing the quality of replacements for other teams are just as bad as the main guys so other fanbases don't notice a difference. I believe for the Brewers the dropoff is significant enough that many people notice the difference.

That's the beginning of the calculation, then you have to reduce the 70 by the times Trout removes baserunners because of his high OPS and HR rates. Every HR contributes to his OBP, but removes all baserunners for the next batter. Also, you need to account for hits that reduce the baserunners from 2 (trout knocks in) to 1 (trout on) or from 1 (trout knocks in) to 1 (trout on) as he gets an OBP for each of these events, but he reduces or doesn't add to the baserunners for the next batter. I used a rough calculation for these as I didn't have time to go get individual game level data. That's why I used a ballpark of 50 for Trout's contribution to baserunners and that clearly contributes to the elevated numbers for batters behind him, but is hardly the majority of the impact for the other positions baserunner numbers. I will make 1 comment about the previous studies. Most incorporate stats for runner on base when deciding the best position for your best hitter. The issue I have is that they use a combination of all data for MLB, yet, they state repeatedly that most teams are using a poor strategy for deciding on the batting order. So the data they are relying on to make a conclusion about where to put your best hitter is flawed by the cumulative bad lineups of teams in baseball. So bad data in leads to a "good" conclusion? That also is likely why the 3rd position in the batting order takes a hit overall. To prefer the 4th position over the third means there are significantly fewer baserunners at 3 then the drop in overall PA going from 3rd to 4th. That difference is likely driven by all the teams that put poor OBP players 1/2.

Yes there are. Have you looked at how they did their analysis or just looked at the conclusion? How many here actually looked at the methodology and the assumptions when looking at these analysis vs. just restating the conclusion? I have a problem with their methodology and we could go into it in another forum/thread, but when one of the most referenced studies says you put your best hitter at #1, #2, or #4 you have to wonder what did the #3 do to them as a child! Someone brought up the Angels and Mike Trout. Here's some data: What this table summarizes is the LA Angels players from 2017-2019 with the highest opportunity to knock in a baserunner (baserunners on for each) and their Plate Appearances (PA). I've included a BR/600 PA to normalize the data to compare easily across batters. I think we can all agree that Trout is the best hitter on the Angels by a long-shot. I think we can also agree that players like Kole Cahoun, Andrelton Simmons, Albert Pujols and Justin Upton are significantly average/below average batters. What is shocking in these number, is the number of baserunners that poor hitters "see" where they bat compared to Mike Trout at the mostly #2 spot in the Angels lineup. In 2018, Justin Upton, Pujols and Ohtani had about 100 more baserunners on when they batted in the #3/#4 spot compared to Trout at #2. Trout obviously contributes to that due to his high OBP, but if you adjust for his OBP compared to an average hitter in his spot, he is accounting for only ~40 of the 100 and probably less as you likely wouldn't/shouldn't put a league average player at #2. One of the assumptions of the previous analysis which lead to the selection of #2 as the best slot for your best hitter was that the opportunities for having men on base was not significantly different from the 2&4 slots. In reality, the Angels have introduced a worst case scenario (almost). Mostly the difference for Trout in number of runners on when he bats is the fact that the OBP for the #1 hitter in 2019 is the highest it has been in the last 3 years and if you look at OBP of runners before trout and number of baserunners when Trout bats you get this graph: This isn't rocket science. Higher OBP, higher baserunners for Trout. Which is exactly the point I was making with Yelich. Put high OBP guys in front of him (not just 1 at the #1 position), but also at #2 to increase the chance of baserunners on when an elite hitter comes to the plate. (BTW, in 2019 Moustakas has had 50 more baserunners than Yelich in almost identical PA's - it would really be nice if Yelich was hitting with more batters on than a worse hitter). Is this a major factor in the teams success? No. The overall impact is likely in the 10-15 runs a year. So about 1-1.5 games. So what many will say, but that's an important 1-1.5 games. Brewer shifting is probably in the same ballpark of impact, but most don't question that. So why is putting your best hitter in a position to have the most impact so controversial? Also, most managers get the big things correct. Where a manager can stand out is getting those last few win(s) out of each and every situation. Counsel does the big things just fine, I think he needs to work on this. And the issue of lower hitting position = lower Plate appearances, that is correct. On average there is a 15-18 PA drop for each batting position, but the reason you don't put your best hitter #1 (especially in the NL with the pitcher hitting #9) is that there's much fewer baserunners for them to drive in. As you drop in the order the baserunners go up and the PAs go down so it is a balance, but looking at the baserunner numbers, it would be easily justified to lose 15-18 PA from Yelich/Trout if dropping that 1 slot increase the number of baserunners they see by 50-100.

You know who he didn't yank around all season? Cain, Arcia and Shaw. They all have been terrible. He didn't yank around Burnes or Peralta going into the season, and they both completely bombed. This is one of the two issues I have with Counsell. His uber slow response to crapitude. From last years Sogard fascination to his penciling in Shaw and Jesus for most of the first half, when everyone in the universe could see they didn't have it. As an ex-player he's way to slow adjusting to poor performances by players and way too fond of players like he was... The other issue is frickin batting Yelich #2. He's one of the best players in baseball and he has nobody in front of him to get on.... Jesus frickin C... We've wasted an MVP and near MVP season with our best player hitting with the bases empty so often! move your R/L down 1 and put him in the 3 hole with 2 high OBP guys in front. If he really is a "new" generation manager then why is he Mike Scioscia Jr? At least the Angels play in the AL and a real batter hits #9... batting Yelich #2 doesn't maximize the Brewers chances... But, but if he bats #3 then I need a lefthander leading off and a righthander at #2, and I really should put Grandal in, but he's a switch hitter and Cain is a righthander, but he has to leadoff.... beep... blue screen... beep, restart...

It's not ironic at all. There is very minimal year to year correlation between RISP/clutch stats. You've said this a couple times, and I agree with you, but it seems to be getting ignored? I don't know if it's because accepting that variance makes it harder to blame somebody or if sometimes we all get caught in oversimplifying a players ability. Ability, or talent however one wants to put it, isn't a set number that stats like WAR leads people to see it as. Players ability is a range dependent on a lot of factors. I'm ignoring it because: 1) It provides no information 2) It doesn't address the current discussion. 3) Generalizations tend to have very poor correlation with specifics. Sure, subsetting data leads to problems with sampling issues and introduces noise, but more specifically reduces the signal to noise so signals are harder to detect. Looking at a teams data for almost a year, reduces the signal to noise issue. The Brewers have been at the bottom of baseball for 2 years in a row as a team converting baserunners into runs. There's no small sample issue there. If you go back and look at the numbers, the Brewers will score 30 less runs in 2019 compared to a team that can convert baserunners into runs at the MLB average, and 50 runs less than a team at the top. Using 10 runs per win as an estimate, that means the Brewers lose 3 games a year compared to the average offense and 5 games per year compared to teams like the Braves and Dodgers. That's a huge inefficiency in the offense.

I wanted to see the underlying player contribution to BRS% for the Brewers, but couldn't find the individual data for BRS%. I did find individual data for OBI%, which is similar (or ABI% = All Batted In %) and measures the percentage a batter is successful in converting a baserunner into a RUN. Here are the Brewers numbers so far for 2019: As we've expected there are at least 3 player that have been hurting the team this year and they clearly have low efficiency with getting men in (2018 numbers): Travis Shaw (14.40%) Lorenzo Cain (9.66%) Orlando Arcia (12.44%) The other issue is that while Moustakas (17.48% in 2018 w/MKE) is having a very good year looking at traditional saber stats, he has been part of the problem with runners on. Funny thing is that if you look at last years BRS%/ABI%/OBI% for the Brewers, the numbers are almost the same as this years. So the team was pretty crappy last year, but the pitching hid the struggles of this group of players converting baserunners into runs. All adding Grandal did was mask the huge drop in Shaw and Moustakas being worse in 2019 compared to 2018. This team is (2019)/has been (2018) near the bottom of major league baseball in their ability to convert baserunners to runs.

Funny how we can't discuss politics, because it's too contentious, but now we have arguments about baseball that are exactly the same as past political discussions. There's a lot of middle ground between the 2 opposing opinions, but heaven forbid anyone treads in there...

Rosters go to 26 next year, which might actually mean they will keep players with small injuries active because they have the extra roster spot. Cain will be fine.

and one of the few games the bullpen is keeping it close, the offense goes MIA.... Just So Brewers...

The EEG to flatline?

We're set at: LF (Grisham) CF (Cain) RF (Yelich) 2B (Hiura) 1B (Thames/Braun) Sign Moustakas for 3B, Keep Shaw for depth at 3B, part of platoon at 1B (where Thames moves to OF to spell Grisham against tough Righties). That leaves: SS C I don't really want to go with Pina as the prime Catcher, but he isn't an Arcia... Grandal might not get the multi-year he was hoping for, but I bet he does sign somewhere else for more than 1 year. SS options were plentiful last offseason and are sparse on the FA market for this year. Personally, I can't wait for the last game for Arcia as a Brewer, but I don't think there's a quick fix for the bottom of the order black hole. I'd be fine with a defensive whiz at SS who is actually above replacement level who doesn't offer much offense or at least knows the difference between a ball and strike. Braun/Thames may not be as good as the current Brewers 1B, but a full year of Hiura and Braun-circa2019 production from Grisham in LF the offense will be a little better especially if they limit the Shaw suckitude (if it continues).