SconnieKid

Yeah but. I mean the profit sharing checks the 09 Marlins, 10 Pirates, 11 Royals get are as big as their payroll.

It cracked me up because when Corey missed the two balls he missed (both were tougher plays) a bunch of people stepped in voicing dismay that we could have had Cruz instead. It was beyond terrible. He was lined up insanely deep and could easily have gotten to the ball. OR, he could have just played it off the wall. There is NO WAY Berkman scores from first if he does that. Instead he made that pathetic attempt that ultimately cost Texas the WS.

Hart is NOT going to first. I saw a twitter feed from Melvin. Its not happening. So we are back to needing a 3b, ss, 1b. we aren't getting Reyes. We would just resign Prince if we were going to drop that much coin. The SS FA situation is poor. Barmes is about the only realistic option out there. I love Hairston in Counsell's role. But if you think you are going to put Gamel and Green at the corners and improve your situation... Its just not going to happen.

I guess I dont see a ton of guys who overachieved on this team. The only really way of saying they overachieved is that they didnt sustain big pitching injuries - although I would argue Greinke's injury cost him a good 1/4 of a season since he didnt get spring training really. Where did we overachieve? LF - Braun is just that good. Maybe he could regress a bit CF - I could see this although having to play Morgan against lefties because Gomez got hurt, hurt us a lot RF - Maybe a little but not much 3B- Definitely not. This was a huge under-achieving spot SS - Nope 2B - Not with Weeks injury 1B - Nope C - Nope SP - Wolf yes, maybe Narveson but no one else overachieved BP - Lots of injuries and guys did what they were supposed. Axford may regress a bit and we are not sure who we lose Bench - No one overachieved here. This team can stay close to maintaining 90 win potential without huge name acquisitions. 3B and SS will be huge improvements if we get average players. The "overachieved" was nerdspeak for given how well everyone played they should have won ~90-92 games. There are several models for "how many wins the team should have given their offensive and pitching output". All of them had us winning significantly fewer games. There were only a few teams that outperformed their play by that many wins.

Well we are anxious fans. I want next year to resemble this year only with a nicer ending. I expect the Cards to keep Pujols and frankly it doesn't matter if they keep Furcal as he did very little for them this year (great in the field, terrible with the bat-against anyone outside of the Brewers). His WAR was less than Theriot's. The Brewers were at least co-favorites this year according to everything I saw. I am hoping to be in a similar position by the time spring training starts.

I certainly agree that it's a .500 team if you take away Fielder and K-Rod. Especially Fielder. I mean, I know he has limited range, but that's a lot of balls getting through the right side, and the other infielders would get worn out trying to run all those grounders over to first base themselves. But seriously, folks . . . if you replace Fielder and Rodriguez with replacement-level guys, and then do nothing else to upgrade the team, then right, you're close to .500 -- I'm not sure you're all the way there, as a matter of true talent, but you're certainly there or worse in a bad year, especially if the Rodriguez hole causes a bullpen mismanagement cascade. Wat? K-Rod pitched 31 innings for the Brewers. He MIGHT have been good for 1 win. How could you possibly consider him a key player? Prince is going to be a painful loss. But there are a lot of 1B out there that put up reasonable numbers and aren't defensive and baserunning liabilities. Every metric I have seen has said he was good for ~5-6 wins. The funny thing is between K-Rod and Prince their WAR was a combined 6.6. The pythag and second and third all have the Brewers winning ~6 games more than they should have. So they were literally as lucky as Prince was good this year. Which really scares me. Its like having to replace Prince twice.

Exactly. There isn't a ton of room with player salary. There are quite a few holes considering they won 96 games. I saw the Brewers win the division by 6 games and thought, hey losing Fielder and his 5.5WAR isn't the end of the world. But when you see that the Cards a different team next year (with Wainwright back, and a full season of bullpen that cost them ~11 games more than ours did) they are already behind the 8-ball. The idea that we have the answers already doesn't ring true to me. Especially when we don't have a ton of wiggle room.

This is what I have been saying too. They not only have to make up the 5-6 wins Prince gave them but also the 5 wins they "overachieved". Plugging in a few rookies isn't going to get that done. I think next year is the Brewers best shot at the postseason in the foreseeable future. They don't need to sign Prince or Reyes, but they do need to bring in some big pieces.

I support this thread. I am still hurting but I want some playoff gear.

Thats a lot to put on pythag. All that really does is take run differential and spit out a win EV. Which is pretty dumb. It gives runs in 16 run games the same weight as runs in 0-0 games. There are better models out there for EV Wins.

Managers in baseball have very little influence in win totals. They can't add more than a few wins over the course of a season. They can, however, have a negative impact.

You might want to look into that remedial math class... I think the runs/win can differ year to year. I think Fangraphs had it at ~9.4 this year. So that is really 17.5 wins, or about 90% of the difference in those teams.

Last year his OPS was .947 against L. ~150 AB last year and ~125 AB this year.

I was thinking a Green/McGehee platoon at 3rd would make sense. Then I looked at Casey's splits against lefties. What right handed 3B hits .169/.228/.413 against lefties?? Wow Casey.

I have read it several times. Sorry if I blamed you for someone else's lousy argument. I'm sure you understand how I could think this way. My first inclination was to blame Braun for it too but it clearly hit Kotsay's chest/stomach and went a completely direction.