Thurston Fluff

It starts with KRod and basically includes everyone in the bullpen who has no future with this team. I get the sentiment but how does paying people not to be here and pay their replacements do anything to actually help the situation. It's not like any of the relievers in the minors are going to stabilize the pen now. I don't buy into the "they can't be any worse," argument. Dillard already did do worse. I don't buy into seeing what we have in the some of young guys argument for the most part either. Here are the AAA pitchers. Burgos looks ok but has 14 games above A ball. Jesus Sanchez 9 games above AA. I don't see the need to bring them up now. It can hurt as much as help a young player to be pushed too fast. See Thornburg for example. Then there are the older guys who are not very good at AAA like Baker and Butler. There are some non-prospect types that may warrant a look like Hand, Perez, Rivas, and Wooten. Maybe they could be put in the majors and we can see something out of them but are any of them guys you would pencil in next season regardless of how well they did in a couple month trial? Less than a couple month trial really. They can all be called up in a month anyway. Is that month enough to pay more salary in an already too high of salary season? Chulk is on the DL but maybe when he comes back. Then there are the been there done that guys like Dillard, Vargas and Stetter. Is paying extra salary just to have them back up worth it? What will we see out of them that we don't already know? What can they do that would be better than what we already have? That leaves us with three possible candidates that make some sense. Peralta, Thornburg and De Los Santos Peralta and Thornburg are starters and one has already failed in relief in the majors. De Los Santos is the only guy who makes a lot of sense now. We can do that without DFA'ing everyone and pay them for nothing.

I couldn't agree more. Yes, Kyles is a "class act". There have been lot's of "class acts" in baseball throughout the years that have been fired. Those guys have a way of resurfacing somewhere in a different capacity. As often as not with the same team that fired them. If you fire a guy but rehire him doing essentially the same type of work elsewhere in the organization indicates to me teams understand the problem may not be with the guy being fired. I guess they hope that while he was not the problem his firing from that post can be part of the solution. Long way of saying maybe we are looking at who caused the problems when the team may be looking at how to fix it. The two are not always one in the same.

I don't know, but someone should be in these clowns ears telling them that you don't throw a fat fastball or hanger right down the pipe on 0-2. These guys have been getting crushed on 0-2 counts this summer. I don't think you need a scouting report to tell you that. Nor should a coach be necessary to inform them that is a bad idea. That goes back to who's fault this mess is. Though I guess the argument could be made the pitching and bullpen coaches should be held somewhat responsible for mechanics and such that cause such poor pitch location.

they do play a big role in going over scouting reports of players relievers may face when they come in, Do they? One would think that is done in team meetings by the pitching coach or manager before the game starts. During the game by the time they know who is going to go in a game said reliever would be a little busy warming up to be going over scouting reports. and there needs to be someone in the pen to tell the manager that the reliever is warmed up. Also someone needs to pick up the phone to know whom to get warmed up. A well trained chimp can do that.

This is by no means a defense of the move. More of an question I have about bullpen coaches as a whole. If they have no impact on the player's performance why are they there in the first place?

If Doug didn't tell them that, he should be fired. To be fair if Texas' GM believed what Doug told them he was getting from the Angels they should be fired as well. That would be putting a lot of faith in someone's honestly when no honesty should be expected. I think good GM's decide on a player's worth and don't go above that simply because someone else was willing to pay more.

Thurston - I personally just regress the heck out of the defensive metrics and use a little bit of judgment on how to adjust a player's WAR based on their defense. Take Alcides Escobar, who is having a really nice season but has a UZR of ~-15, so only an fWAR of 1.0. I view Escobar as a +5 defensive guy per season, despite the oddball UZR number, so my back-of-the-envelope WAR number for him comes out to more like 2.5. That isn't a bad idea that has been expressed before. Take a correct number of years for defense and use it over the single season UZR. While I agree that helps I still am not sure how to correctly weight the value of defense to offense though. I used to think defense was worth a lot more than I do now so what I thought would be accurate a couple years ago would not be today. If there is some place that shows the relative value of offense to defense it would be helpful in making WAR useful. I'm not against trying to make a simple number accurately portray a player's value. I just don't think any do so far. Thurston -- what metrics do you prefer? Depends on what I want the metric for. If I want to see how well someone is doing this season I look at different things than I do if I'm looking at what he may do in the future. IF you give me a scenario of what I want done I can tell you what I would look at but no one metric fits every purpose. Also, what do you want to do about defense, As it pertains to WAR nothing until there is a way of evaluating it in equal values for the quantity as offense. I don't think one simple number has any value at all if it isn't accurate. So why try to use it just because it is one simple number? I'll just look at offense and defense separately until they come up with a way to properly weight them. Frankly I don't think defense is as valuable as offense to begin with. So when they get around to weighing the value of defense compared to offense then come up with a way to get an accurate measure of defense in a single season (or change it to the appropriate level of three years to every year of offensive stats) I'll take another look at WAR. Until then I'll do the traditional route of looking at more than one metric. Time consuming I know but at least more accurate. what's your ground for claiming that you can evaluate average performance better than replacement-level performance I can take all the stats for second basemen and average them. That is a hard and accurate stat. I can't take all the AAAA 2nd basemen, put them in the majors and see what their production is. So the idea that replacement level is what any old AAAA player can do is an estimate of what would really happen. While that can work as a baseline I don't think it is the best way to do it. Show me how a player does vs the average production at his position then I can see where his value is vs reality. While both work as a baseline I always prefer real baselines vs estimates based on a made up hypothetical player. and what do you mean by the very loaded phrase "actual production" It's not a loaded phrase. Replacement level is an amalgamation of what anyone would, in theory, be able to produce if they played in the majors. While that number is based off calculations over a period of time that calculation had to make some assumptions to arrive at that number. There will always be assumptions on what replacement level production really is. For example who is any old AAAA player? Lets take the number we have today. If anyone can do it then anyone should be able to put up replacement numbers. If anyone could do it then why are there so many negative WAR's? That should, in theory, be an extreme anomaly if replacement level is really what anyone can do. Since it isn't all that rare I have to conclude not just any old AAAA can guy do it. If it isn't accurate it is arbitrary. While arbitrary can work as a baseline I think ones based on actual events are better than arbitrary ones. If we average actual stats from actual players we get an actual number of what an average player actually produced. Now we can compare any given player to a real baseline vs against a standardized hypothetical. One not based on assumptions of an abstract definition of a theoretical players but based on real players producing real numbers. Isn't that a better way of doing it? For someone who claims to have thought a lot about this stuff, you haven't enhanced your dismissive assertions with many of your insights, Frankly I've done so many times on this site that I'm kind of sick of repeating them again. I simply didn't feel like rehashing it all again which is why I stayed away until now. I only posted that one here because don't think people should be dismissed as uniformed for disagreeing with stat like WAR. Go back and look at some of the other WAR threads and you can find every case I've made several times over if what I posted above isn't enough.

I suspect that you would say that about any baseball stat your are unfamiliar with. Like it or now, you are going to have to ignore the majority of stats in 20 years, then. That's bound to happen when a sport uses the same metrics for 100 years. Time to play some catch up! Are you suggesting if you don't know about one stat you have to be ignorant of every stat? I also think it a bit off base to suggest the only people who don't think WAR is useful are ones who don't understand them. Blanket statements like that make it seem like only people who agree with you actually understand what it is. I am familiar with WAR. Frankly I've been so against WAR I've spent more time trying to understand them than any other metric. I know how they work and what is in them. I know the formula and how it's calculated. It is based on that knowledge why I don't accept it as useful. I think it is so far off of accurate in it's portrayal of a players performance that it is virtually worthless. In fact given how often it is misused it's less than worthless. It misleads people into thinking players are something they are not. Most of the things I disagree with I have stated many times. Poorly weighted metrics put into poorly thought out equations. Yes, the numbers work when you put them in. Yes, it does create a baseline to compare players. But if that baseline is created by poor stats like single season UZR it isn't going to create accurate numbers on any given player. Thus the comparison baseline isn't useful. As the saying goes garbage in garbage out. If they would get rid of defense and just rate them offensively I think it would help a lot. They wouldn't evaluate the total player but at least it would be accurate in what they do measure. I also would prefer they change the baseline from replacement level to a comparison against average. It would help compare what the player actually does contribute because it is possible to evaluate league average to a much greater degree of accuracy than some mythical AAAA player. I think comparisons to actual production is always better than hypothetical production. So change WAR to only measure accurately measured offensive metrics in proper quantities and base the number off league average and then lets talk. Until then I think there are far better stats to use to evaluate a player. Ones that use accurate numbers to calculate value are preferable for me.

So why not give the guy that has already shown he can perform in AAA a shot? If he fails, so what? At least then we know. 51 games and a 174 ab's is hardly showing anything at any level. If it did show anything it is that he is borderline major league material. He had an OPS of .729 in AAA. Ransom, by comparison had an OPS of 1.034 in 101 games and 394 AB's last season in AAA. Yea, what they didn't like is that Henderson wasn't in the master plan. Doug and RR have a hard time adjusting when a player at the MLB or MiLB level is severaly underforming or overperforming. Maybe they want more than a couple good months to decide if it is real or not. Dude is 29 and put up and ERA of 5.93 and 23 walks to 30 k's last season in AAA. His 2010 AA numbers weren't all that good either. Exactly how fast is someone supposed to adjust with a player such as that? Is 4 months of good baseball too long after a couple years like that? That's all the longer it took.

Doesn't this mean that Wolf has to be DFA as well? I mean we know he can't throw to anyone other then George....... I wonder what he did prior to coming to the Brewers. This whole he only wants to throw to Kottaras thing is so overblown. There is a difference between not wanting to throw to one guy and only wanting to throw to one guy. He and Luc didn't see eye to eye when working together. So what? That does not mean he can't see eye to eye with everyone else.

There is selling and then there is selling. I don't see Melvin selling players who have multiple years left on their contracts now. Melvin said many times over the years he thinks the best trades are made in the off season for those guys. Basically he thinks, and I agree, there are more potential parterres in the off season than at the deadline. If someone wows him I'm sure that changes but I don't think he's actively seeking to trade those guys now. I think it more likely they trade guys who are in their final season. I think it more likely to trade Morgan than Kottaras for example.

$8.5 million actually. We are on the hook for $1.5 million either way. I'm not sure how much better a starter you get for that price. If Marcum wants to come back at that price I'd be all for it. If not Wolf isn't as bad as he gets labeled IMHO. He isn't Suppan nor was his contract nearly as bad. Last off season, the following players signed contracts: Erik Bedard - 1 year/$4.5 million Bruce Chen - 2 years/$9 million Capuano - 2 years / $10 million Colon - 1 year/ $900,000 Aaron Harang - 2/$12 million Kuroda - 1 year / $10 million Malhom - 1 year / $4.75 million Joe Saunders - 1 year / $6 million Edwin Jackson - 1 year / $11 million Is that supposed to be a list of pitchers who are a better bet for the money? Take away hindsight and tell me which guy was a better risk than Wolf going into the season. Bedard's high water mark for innings pitched the prior three season's was 101.1 innings. Chen 155 with about the same ERA as Wolf. We know Cappy's history. Colon was 164.1. Harang 170.2. Kuroda 202 but coming off an injury last season. Maholm 185.1 and declined three years running. Sanders 202 but surrounded by years under 100 innings pitched. Jackson 121.2. All of them had problems staying healthy and only three of them would cost less than $8.5 million. You may notice that list doesn't include anyone who hasn't had an injury issue in the past several season's. There is value to durability and that according to that list is above $10 million. I've probably missed some guys. But the point is, there are FAR better options at $8.5 million available than Randy Wolf. Not in free agency there aren't. Your list sort of proves that. You keep saying this, but it doesn't make it true. Wolf had a 0.8 WAR 2 years ago and a 1.5 WAR last season, What does that have to do with how much value he has going forward? Frankly any stat that tells you a guy who pitched 212.1 innings in 33 starts and had an ERA of 3.69 is only worth 1.5 wins above a AAAA scrub just proved it's worth. Or, more to the point, lack of worth. WAR is a pretty useless stat to begin with and even worse when you try to use it for predicting future value.

Maybe but I don't think Wolf is going to be as cheap as you think. To make it a wash they would have to sign him for less than $8.5 million. He's pretty durable, has over 200 innings per year over the length of the contract and has actually produced pretty well over his past two seasons. You don't just average an ERA around 4 with one of the worst defenses in the league for two years without some ability. Granted this season so far he's less than stellar but he has been pretty good as of late and if he puts together a good second half after a poor first half like he did in 10 he'll get more years or more for one year. Frankly if free agents ever got as little as people think they would on this board maybe it would be worth letting him walk and renegotiate. But every year pretty much everyone is surprised by how much average players get. Why would this season be different? Even if he only gets something like $7.5 million is that enough to risk losing him when we have to replace so many pitchers? If Marcum is brought back on a one year deal it all changes. I'm simply looking at all the options and Wolf looks to be someone who we can control for a single season at a reasonable cost while waiting for the youngsters to show what they have. Or an even better idea than that is lighting $10 million on fire. $8.5 million actually. We are on the hook for $1.5 million either way. I'm not sure how much better a starter you get for that price. If Marcum wants to come back at that price I'd be all for it. If not Wolf isn't as bad as he gets labeled IMHO. He isn't Suppan nor was his contract nearly as bad. I'd still rather promote a lefty from Nashville. He won't be much worse than Wolf and you can season him in hopes of bettering him. Which lefty in Nashville has the ability to eat 200 innings start every fifth day and give the team a reasonable chance at winning in games he pitchers more often than not? 33 year old Juan Perez? He's the only one on the 40 man now other than Parra, Narveson and Wolf. It's easy to say just bring in anyone and he'll be nearly as good but that doesn't make it true.

Then you can sign a Marcum (or equivalent) or trade for a SP. Or you just pick up Wolf's option. It would give the rotation a lefty and allow the young pitchers to sort themselves out. While we have some nice options in Thornburg, Peralta, Burgos, Rogers, etc but it isn't likely all of them will pan out.

1) If you join Twitter but just lurk, does that mean instead of "Tweeting" that you are "Sylvestering"? Absolutely brilliant. Stupid humor is the hardest to pull off. 2) If you can taxidermy animals, how come you can't do it to humans? Humans already pay taxes so they are exempt. Idermy I think is Latin for "pay your share or get stuffed and put on display when you die."

I just heard old McDonald died. Not surprising. He was old. His farm is for sale. He's got a sheep, cows, dogs, and cats here, there, everywhere that need a home.

The Brewers don't just have to get hot. They have to get hot AND be hotter than 8 other teams just to make the wild card. I don't think how many teams are ahead means all that much until the last month or so. Yes they do have to be better than 8 other teams. But the key is how much better do they have to be? If all they have to be is slightly better I don't think it's all that big of a deal. Currently they need to be a maximum of 6 games better than all of those teams over an 80 game stretch. Considering this is a essentially the same team as last season and now was about the time we got hot last season I don't think it's out of the question. Coolstandings.com gives the Brewers a 5.0% chance of securing a wildcard spot and playing one game to determine whether they make the playoffs. In addition, hey give the Brewers a 1.5% chance of winning the division and making the playoffs outright. I'm not sure the accuracy the odds are of a particular team making a run based off how past teams fared. I honestly don't hold a lot of credence to the precise odds. Don't get me wrong I think the odds are not good but I'm not sold they are as low as 5% for this particular team. They have good starting pitching and a decent offense. Their defense has also been pretty good. The only weakness is the pen right now. But lets assume the odds are accurate for this team. The question then becomes at what odds do you sell? Is a 25% chance of making it to the playoffs enough to make a run? Should we sell when the odds are under 50%? After all the odds say you won't make it and the players could be turned over for a better future couldn't they? I do know one thing for sure. The odds of getting to the playoffs if we give up now are lower than 5%. If we sell every time the odds say it's 5% doesn't that mean we give up a lot of season's with a slim chance of the playoffs? Wouldn't it stand to reason that one of those season's we'd beat the odds. Don't we have more chances of beating the odds once if we try every time? Conversely wouldn't we guarantee not to ever beat the odds if we always give up? Are the chances of a team making the playoffs over a decade better if we play to win even when the odds are against us than if we give up every time? I'm OK with holding off for 9 games before selling but if the Brewers are in a similar position after that, give it up already. I think that is a fair compromise between the two extremes. I'm not for false hope but I'm not convinced right now that our hope is false. 9 games against teams we have to make up some ground against will go a long way towards where we stand.

I almost don't want them to do well during this stretch because then they won't sell off Greinke, KRod, etc. or worse, they might actually buy. I know I've said it a lot but this is not a playoff team (even if you added Thornburg and a couple of guys to the bullpen) and they likely wouldn't make it far even if they made the playoffs. Now is the time to restock for the future. I 'm sorry but I don't buy the doom and gloom. This team is essentially the same one they had last season minus Fielder. Remember several year back when the Astros where sub .500 around the all star break. They then went on to win the division and go to the World Series. How about the Rockies a few years ago? Same thing. That happens frequently enough to think a talented team can win even if it starts out poorly. This team has talent. Their weakness is the bullpen. They are addressing that weakness in an effort to make a playoff push. Over the course of a season I want the team to always try to get to the playoffs until it is no feasible way to get there. They now have a 9 game stretch that will go a long way towards determining that feasibility. I want them to do everything possible to win now. This move as well as the Bianchi move do just that. Teams who have talent should never give up on a season until necessary. The more season's you try to get into the playoffs the more chances you have of actually making them. Conversely the more times you quit the fewer chances you have.

Is it legal to hate summer?

While it turned out to be so I don't think the Riske deal was a bad move. He was durable and put up decent numbers over a relatively long period of time. The odds of him getting hurt or not performing were low relatively speaking. Same with Hawkins who gave us about half a season of good relief work for his two year deal. Those are two guys whose chances of being solid contributors to the pen were very good but didn't really pan out the way they should have. That doesn't make going that route a bad idea in the future. We just got unlucky. AS for the list of starters lets see how they pan out. I see a few guys with either durability or past performance issues on that list. 100ish innings is not enough to think they are good options over an entire year. I would take Cappy back in a heartbeat but that has more to do with how much I root for him than anything.

That said, if need to find three starting pitchers, adding a FA is probably wise. You could add a modestly priced player on a one or two year deal. Someone less than $10 million annually. Another Bradon Looper is what you get for one or two year contracts for under $10 million. 4. Let Manny Parra go. He's got one more year until FA, but he'll make $2 million and he's maddeningly inconsistent. Yes he is but same can be said of most relievers. I think the best way to do it is to take as many bites at the apple as possible. Add in an established guy or two with a decent track record of success along with Loe and Parra then get a bunch of guys who throw hard and let them fight it out for a couple spots. That's how we stabilized some bullpens in the past. We'd get a good year or so out of the likes of Turnbow or Kolb and everything sort of came together. But to get the one success we'd need more than one guy like that. Some guys who didn't pan out here went on to do better elsewhere in the same fashion too. Grant Balfour comes to mind as well as Choate to a degree.

Sorry, I know this doesn't really add anything to the discussion but I figured it was better than talking about Axford's twitter. I thought it was a good question. Russ I assume you gave an overall rate. Is there a way to look up the split between relievers and starters? I only ask because I think the ability to go one inning clean would be different for each group. Both in need and ability.

Am I the only one who feels like watching it is like watching paint dry. You're not. Frankly I couldn't care less about any of the all star festivities, game included. For me it's a four day, catch your breath before the season really gets interesting, break.

I'll give him credit for taking out Ramirez to run with Gomez but what exactly was so special about the squeeze play? There were runners on 1st and 3rd with no one out. Chances are they get a run there, squeeze or not. I give him credit for doing such plays enough that the player can actually succeed when called to do it. Complaining about something that worked seems like allowing preconceived notions of what should happen trump what actually happened. I guess in a roundabout way I was compounding the fact that A)Izturis sucks and is still starting for some reason (yeah I know Ransom isn't much better, but lesser of two evils) and B)I hate that Gomez is playing against RHers AND batting lead off. I think part of what I found odd about that criticism is of the four you mentioned one was the pitcher and the other clearly the worst hitter on the team. Pitchers virtually always hit 9th and the worst hitter usually always hits 8th. The times they don't bat in that order it's usually reversing the two and hitting the pitcher 8th. There is nothing odd or wrong with having your two worst hitters bat 8th and 9th. So you really were talking about the top two batters in the order. Of those two Morgan who has a career .355 obp against right handers and profiles to be a table setter. So the only guy you really can complain about is Gomez. While I see the argument for not batting him leadoff I also see the argument for not moving a bunch of guys for the sake of one. Then they scored more runs than their average runs scored per game. That may be coincidental or it may not be. It is entirely possible keeping guys in set roles helps them perform better in those roles. Either way I am not sure how it didn't work to the point you felt a need to complain about it. Other than it wasn't what you would have done. If that is the reason I'm cool with that. But that isn't the same as saying someone was wrong for doing something different.

As bad as Weeks has been this year, he STILL has an OBP 21 points higher than Gomez! I could say the same about Morgan and his career .342 OBP. You might not have noticed he was one of those guys listed by Glenron in his criticism of how bad the lineup was in front of Braun. Why no comment on that? Also, you should not be restricting yourself to just this year's stats. Then so should Glenron. What is wrong with Morgan batting ahead of Braun? Also, you should not be restricting yourself to just this year's stats. Projections aren't the end all be all but they are better than just quoting half a year's worth of stats. At some point you have to look at what you are getting from your players now. It isn't early in the season anymore. If they haven't figured it out by now I say move them down until they hit like they can. When they start to move closer to their career norms they can start to go back to their normal roles. You can argue that he would make a bad 5 or 6 hole hitter (and he does) but he makes even a worse lead off or #2 hitter. But RR see Gomez as fast, so nothing else actually matters. Is Gomez on the top of the order simply because Ron only cares about his speed or does it have to do with not moving the entire roster around to accommodate one light hitting player. I think a lot of people get too wrapped up in finding motives behind certain decisions that may or may not be accurate. Fact is that group of players had 50% of the lineup that are like 8 hole hitters. How you lineup your roster of subpar hitters when half of them suck is going to be questionable no matter what you do.