Thurston Fluff

Seems like Melvin has to get some over the hill OFer every year. Once and awhile they work out (Edmonds, Kapler) but most of the time they don't. I think you are exaggerating. I get that you disagree with the approach. I just hope you are seeing his approach for what it really is. Otherwise how will you know for sure what you are disagreeing about? He went with young bench guys sprinkled in throughout his time here. That number varies by what one calls young. There are older guys who are young major league experience wise like Clark and Podsednick. There are young like Brad Nelson, McGehee, Gamel and Gomez/Morgan. He routinely has a mix of all the above and sorts them out as we go along. This season was no different. Counsell and Kotsay along with Morgan, Almonte, Reed, Boggs etc. each season it seems like a different type of player did the best. No rhyme or reason to it, age or experience wise, as far as I can tell. Thus the mixed approach. Maybe he missed on Kotsay but that is not to say Boggs will be better in that role. I get that you don't think Kotsay will be good for us. but that is different than saying RRR must think we are idiots or he's doing totally senseless things. Typically when I see that I just assume something is going on I am not aware of. with Kotsay I would assume several things are going on. One is he's getting to know his players abilities and what he can do to maximize their abilities later on. Another is something I see at the beginning of the year with pretty much every manager since Garner with Macha being the exception. They give the regulars more days off early so they are stronger later and the bench guys stay sharper to boot. Yet another is the injuries.

No it just removes those 3 PAs. Kotsay has gotten on base 25 times including the 3 IBB in 73 PAs. Looking at the other 70 PAs he got on 22 times for a current OBP of .314. Those IBB had nothing to do with Kotsay or how Kotsay is hitting. I think just removing those ab's like they didn't exist is wrong. Do you think Gomez would have been walked in those situations? If you intend to take out one thing to make your point why not others? Why not start taking away singles that were hit poorly but found @#%%%%? Those are not indicative of how well someone is hitting are they? What about taking away any pitch that the pitcher made a mistake on? That doesn't show how good the hitter is. It shows how poor the pitcher was. If you manipulate the data by taking one aspect out while leaving others in seems like cherry picking to me. If you really want to show how well he's really hitting you have to go through each Ab and determine the reason for the outcome. Otherwise just accept the numbers as they are and get one with it.

Yes Kotsay has a .362 OBP but take away the 3 IBB and it drops down to .333 and projects at .315 going forward. That assumes those ab's would not have resulted in him getting on base.

I agree. Those 90's teams had every bit as good an offense as we do now. I still have not forgiven Garner for destroying Eldred.

Seriously, I fully agree with AJAY. The teams of the 90s with Nilsson, Cirillo, Vina, and Loretta were capable of collecting 2 hits each on any night. Yea those guys lead some great teams to great records.http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif I get what you're saying but the first two treads I read today I saw pining for the 90's Bando years and Macha. This is going to be a better season than those years. We are in a slump. In the last few years the team fired how many hitting coaches, pitching coaches, first base coaches, and third base coaches? Not to mention three managers. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is not sane. Nor does it help win more. I know fire Melvin. That will solve it all. It won't. Not until we stop the change for the sake of change, or the proverbial shake things up, mantra's will we be different than the Pittsburgh Pirates. To address the actual point of hitters Gamel is going to be a nice addition sometime soon.

It's going to take some time to transition from a station to station, play it safe, style to a take chances, base stealing type. Players not only have to get a feel for playing that way but also when to do so. Personally I don't care which way they play as long as they are set up to succeed that way. Given the team is built long term around Braun I think it makes sense to build to a more aggressive style. He seems to play better that way. Ditto for Plush and Weeks. Yost is a Cox disciple. He's going to ask for slightly aggressive moves, go on "feel", and shake the lineup up when things aren't going right. He was a somewhat likeable guy, but he wasn't Bobby Cox. Cox probably rarely had a "the ship is sinking" moment for his team to turn on him anyways, but that is why the guys turned on Yost. The only problem with that is the players never turned on Yost. After they made the playoffs a couple even publicly thanked him. It was the owner and fans who turned on him. I miss Macha. He could at least make out a lineup. I guess that shows how important that skill is to winning. But you are correct in that he was the best X's and O's in game and lineup wise.

A list of the worst/best analogies of high school student papers. Well worth the read. link

Not a bad idea to sign him. Let him play shortstop for a week and people will beg for Yuni's defense again.

Second lowest of all qualified shortstops. Kind of sucks because I liked him and want KC to do well. I wonder how much the 120 OPS point difference between him and Yuni is negated by the superior defense of Escobar. Not being snarky either. I really do wonder what the threshold is when terrible offense negates great defense.

Pitcher in his 40's with hamstring then oblique issues is never a good sign.

His defense seems way above expectations. His eye is good with above average power and he runs the bases well. I think the scary part with him is, with his bat speed and quick wrists, he could still learn to hit for average.

You can't say to ignore the previous 3 years and just look at this 1/6th of a season and try to make any kind of logical argument about anything, I love logic arguments. So please allow me the fun of taking up your challenge. If A then B (A means his stats are above average, B means he's played above average offensively over that time) A (based on OPS which is currently 8th among shortstops) Therefore B If B then C (C means he's done better than expected) B Therefore C This is a logical argument and I think it says something. This isn't only about Yuni but goes on about how some people just see things differently. When I look at him he seems to be a guy who is doing better than I expected. Since I thought the team was going to be good with a poorer version of him I see it as a positive,. If I look at him for what he is likely to give in an absolute then I'd think he isn't good at all. To say something is meaningless just because you don't think it's important seems to fail to take into account everyone views/evaluates players and the team in their own way.

He is what he is. A not very good, here for a year, or until we find someone better, stop gap player. I had some hope he would be one of those dudes who did better in a contract year but that is fading. The bright side is he is a stop gap, here for a year or less, guy who has a very good team around him to pick up the slack. So far he hasn't single handedly destroyed the team so there is that. Plus you can stop bringing up the only gets to balls hit right to him because I said it and I already told people what i meant by it. I'll second that. I think everyone knows what he meant by that. If they didn't he clarified. At this point it's a bit of a strawman.

My bad. I looked at the splits between two teams as separate seasons. Of course he's not. Few are saying he is. Some of us are saying we had to take him and keeping him as the stopgap shortstop was a better alternative to paying him not to play and acquiring someone else for a million+ to do little or no better. Cabrera, Punto and the likes are going to find it as difficult to find full time jobs next year as Yuni. As far as how bad he sucks I think it's fair to say he sucks but maybe doesn't suck as bad as I feared he could.

Reteria is 36 and played a total of 68 games last season. Cabrera is one year older, has a high water mark of 123 games in the last three seasons. In that season managed 303 OBP and a 657 OPS. His numbers are worse this season. Punto is often injured and is so again his high water mark for the last four years in 125 games. That year his OBP was .337 and OPSed .621. Neither of the last two are bad for someone who is stellar defensively and stays healthy. They are neither. Punto is more of a third baseman than SS and only played a handful of games there ever and Renteria is well past his prime. Anyone of them can be considered as viable an option as Yuni. None of them appears to be significantly better. If Yuni had to be taken none of them certainly are so much better that it makes sense to pay Yuni not to be here and one of the others as well.

The only time I see an OBP based more on hits than walks being beneficial is the two out, man in scoring position scenario. That would be the one time a base hit is better than a walk. While that scenario does happen the amount of base hits in that position compared to any other outcome is so small that it really is negligible. All that said driving in men on base with two outs was an issue for this team in the past so perhaps it has more weight for this particular team. It will take a smarter person (Rluz probably has it stored in his computer like brain somewhere)http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/laugh.gif than I to know if it matters but I can only see this particular situation on this particular team having any effect at all if there is.

Exactly true, which was all the more reason to keep Luis Cruz over Almonte or Reed, as Cruz could easily play corner outfield, but I digress I was pulling for Cruz early on. Right now Cruz has an OBP around 300 in AAA. I know small sample but he never had very good on base skills in the minors and doesn't have enough power or defense to make up for that. What exactly is it that makes people, myself included in spring, to think he can indeed be even as good as Yuni? Personally I think we tend to think it's derived from the term replacement level. It's used as some sort of cut off line where, once you're below it, anyone can do as well. Player X is replacement level so lets just plug player Y in there and he'll give you the same production. It means get someone better ASAP not anyone can do as well. Not bagging on the concept of replacement player just that maybe we misuse it sometimes. I agree replacement level players need to be replaced. However if there are no others above replacement you can actually get worse players if you just decide to get rid of what you have without viable alternatives. I know many called it early and thought there were legitimate options but I think the Brewers had to take him or not get Greinke. After that they had the choice to just cut him or keep him. Given all the alternatives have their warts why waste the money for the same production? Yes he sucks. We all know that. The only questions are is he as bad as we thought and how much worse could it be there? Some think he is and it can't get worse. I say remember Chris Barnwell.

How can the offense that scored the 10th most runs in baseball be considered bad?

A run saved on defense is worth more than a run scored on offense? If it's the 6th run scored vs. the 4th run saved, sure. But a run is a run, otherwise. Overall I agree but to be fair I think last year showed how an very unbalanced team isn't as good as it's sum total. I would rather have an average offense/defense and pitching than have one aspect top rated and others bottom feeders even if the sum total would be average out the same overall. I think that is where UQU's reasoning comes from.

People often use WAR which uses single season UZR. Which is a level known not to be very accurate. It's also been used to show Yuni can be replaced by pretty much anyone. This is a tidbit from Alex Remington about UZR. It was in a piece about WAR but I think it may be useful since UZR and WAR have been bandied about quite a bit. link I am far from knowledgeable enough to know his true worth but WAR and UZR are both useless indicators IMHO. One because it's too small a sample the other because it uses those same too small of samples for it's final calculation.

My back hurts and it's damp out. why do I have to work today? ...oh wine as in the beverage. A lesson learned recently is have a white wine if eating spicy food.

It is not like good or even solid SS's are just sitting there ready to be picked up. The option I thought could have been better was Cruz. So far he's putting up a 260 OBP which isn't all that far from his 309 from last season. Goes to show what I know. Given his age it's hard to see him putting up even Yuni's offensive numbers in the majors. To be that bad at the plate he has to be gold glove material defensively. I'm not sure even Yuni's bad all around game is as bad as what Cruz would be doing now.

For what it's worth I think he's pretty sweet at turning double plays.

To take the optimistic side maybe moving to the easier league and a better hitters park helps. Also moving to a team where winning actually matters might help too since he seems to be a lazy player and playing on a losing team can't help with that. Not only a winning team bu ta contract year. The lazy guys are the ones who seem to have that one good season coincidentally line up with a walk year. All in all I think BM knew he was getting a subpar player but added up all the pros and cons of the team and decided the team built as it is can get us to the playoffs. No, it isn't perfect but it is built, Yuni B and all, to win.

Maybe if he wasn't so interested in the unwritten rules his team might actually score more runs thus win a few more games. Hard enough to win in the majors without adding rules only they follow.