Thurston Fluff

Well played BJ if I may add one small critisism though you should have waited until the 7th page before saying April fool. It would have been well worth the read. It would have been even cooler if you had opened it up for all the banned posters. Run amnesty day on april fools day every year so they could gloat over the general demise only to find out it was a joke.

I think we could have had a much bigger (potentially) inning if TGJ isn't forced to bunt and the bat isn't taken out Prince's hands. It worked out well enough -- but I don't like giving up an out and not getting Prince his hacks. Give this some time. If Braun does what he did yesterday on a regular enough basis Fielder will get his chances to hit. Even Bonds would have had more chances to hit if he had Pujols hitting behind him. These two guys have a chance to be that type of one two punch.

It'a amazing how much smarter Yost looks when he has more than two major league level relievers to chose from.

He also had a couple nice blocks on back-to-back pitches by Torres. Sure the average defensive catcher makes those look routine, but with Estrada you'd have to hold your breath, especially with two in a row. It makes you wonder if the pitchers were tenative throwing certain pitches that had a tendancy to hit the dirt with Estrada last year. "Calling a good game" is probably the most thrown around phrase in baseball, every newly acquired catcher "calls a good game" it seems. So true. The phrase is thrown around so much and so many times inappropriatly that it almost makes it seem like there is nothing to it. As Geno pointed out earlier in this thread that seems to be a polite way of saying "can't hit." While it may be a term often used wrong that shouldn't diminish it's value as a worthy trait. It just means we may have a very hard time figuring out if a particular catcher has it. Kenall seems to though doens't he?

I don't know if LaPorta is the player to replace Gwynn if Gwynn isn't a viable starting option. Gwynn is a legitimate centerfielder and LaPorta certainly isn't. We could move Hart or Braun to center but I'm not sure either Braun or Hart would be anything more than average in center.

While he might have won close games in the past, I think it was his inability to make the key decisions to win close games that contributed to costing us a chance at the playoffs in 2007 Did he magically get stupid or did he just have a lot fewer choices for late work in the pen last year or maybe random varience in small samples had somehting to do with it? I don't get this he ranked 7th in close games after six innings over a long period of time yet you chose to use the much smaller sample of last year as proof he can't manage? I'm also not sure what his record in close games was last year. If you have that information it might be more relevant than the much smaller sample of blowing three run leads. Especially when those three run leads are more directly related to lack of quality pitching than poor managerial decisions. After all it's hard to blame a manager when a pitching staff can't hold big leads. I know it sucks when people show evidence by stats agianst closely held beliefs but come on give him some credit even if you don't like him.

Hawing you are wise, kind and wonderful thank you. Rest shall come easier with that piece of trivial knowledge firmly locked in my brain. I wish I could return the favor with Kixing that reflex out of your mind.

I see this as getting what you give. He gave his all on the field and they paid him far more than anyone else was willing to give him. He gave very little in the way of media relations or clubhouse leadership or respect for the game in general. They returned that lack of giving by turning their back on him as soon as he was no longer useful to them. The reason guys like Yount and Gwynn get treated with so much more respect is because they gave it.

Ok this should show my ignorance about foreign language to the nth degree but it's been bugging me for sometime now. How the heck do people in Japan and China type in their language? From what I understand they have thousands of symbols to chose from so how does that fit onto a keyboard? Anyone who has an idea about this and can type it without laughing to hard at my ignorance?

The Brewers upgrades are harder to gauge since the bullpen changes could go either way. The same can be said for any bullpen. I think the pen has enough major league experience that there should be enough of them having a average year that the pen is likely to be better. The Cubs pen very well could regress a lot more than ours in part because ours was so bad last year and partly because the Cubs have to rely on Wood being capable of playing regularly and Marmol being Marmol of 07 and not 06 to be as good as last season. Without Wood and Marmol being as good as he was they have about the same type of pen as we do a bunch of average major league veterans. The only differance is last year we didn't have even an average pen and they did. We certainly closed the gap on the number of sevicable bullpen arms over last year. They also underperformed their expected record last year so they have a little extra wiggle room. when it comes to determining how good a team is I think the actual record is a better indicator than any predictive one. But that's just me.http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

I don't really se where the Cubs are noticably better than they were last year. Where did they actually improve their club? Fukadome, Wood as a closer, what exactly makes them better than last year? The Brewers OTH on paper have a much better pen than they did last year and have upgraded their defense. I'm not sure why the changes the Brewers made wouldn't give them a better chance to improve by more games than the Cubs do.

I know Zips are simply an educated guess and should be taken as that but I don't know how well zips does in projecting someone who has not played for a while. Doesn't zips weigh performance from the near past more heavily than the distant past? Wouldn't not playing for a couple years naturally make it less effective for this type of projection than it is for a more normal player history? Is there some sort of caluclation added in for this tpye of circumstance? Is ther another player with a similar tpye history that Zips has projected as effectivley as normal players so we can at least judge the usefulness of zips for this particular case? Sorry for the 20 questions Russ but, knowing you, I figured you'd have the answers rolling around in your head if it related to stats in any way.http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/laugh.gif

If the Cubs pitchers all perform like they did last year then they have the better rotation on paper. I don't think they will since Lilly and Marquis both had above their norm tpye seasons. Marquis will regress IMO but Lilly always had potential that he never seemed to fulfill until last year. If he truely has fulfilled that potential and last year was not an aboration then they may have the edge.

Defense. It's not just for late innings. I'm not sure why he'll hit second though. It's epseiclly odd since the whole idea of Kendall hitting ninth is to have two lead off men. Not something I'm in agreement with to begin with but now we have three leadoff guys in a row? Just when the heck is someone supposed to drive in that ever extending string of leadoff guys? Prince can hit lefties andif it leads other managers to putting in a loogy and takingout a better overall pitcher I think that can be a benefit as well.

I have and am only so so with it. Not bad but not as good as Civ so I just play civ.

That's a lot of confidence in Fukadome considering he has yet to play a major league game. Hopefully it backfires.

Once you purchase Civ IV, get ready for a lot of this: "Just one more turn!" (Like twelve times a night) If you only say that 12 times a night you aren't really a civ player.http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif Civ has an end. It can be played with multiple characters with their own unique abilities and you can adjust the victory conditions, terrain, world size, and multiple other aspects to make each new game it's own. It also has senarios to play out like the revolutionary war that ahve their own set of conditions. You can even chose to play a completely peaceful game which is more like a sim city type game for a change of pace. If you want all out war you can do that. Overall if you want one game that will challenge you Civ is it.

I've never gotten that either. The major reason to worry about handedness is to get the platoon advantage. If a batter has the platoon advantage and still is bad, it's worthless. Or pinch hitting. Had this been any other position than catcher handedness would probably have been more significant. Ned seems to prefer to give a starter the day off when there isn't a game the next day so they get two full days off. Who the opposing pitcher is has little to do with it so a lefty, righty tandem is even less significant.

It appears Vargas had no trade value. Trading Cappy would have meant everything would have had to work out as it did or the rotation would have been weaker than it is. If Cappy stayed healthy and pitched to his norm and Parra or Villy were not as good as they appear we would have been covered. Given the status of all the postion players that has as much value as any guy Cappy alone could get. All Cappy could have got us is another average pitcher to compete in an already overcrowded field of average pitchers. What good is that? If we had traded Bush then it turns out our starting rotation would have been weaker. Unless we traded for another Bush type pitcher. But why trade Bush or Cappy for Bush or Cappy type pitchers? After thinking about this over night I guess we should look at this as a good sign. The Brewers are now good enough to cut actual major league caliber players simply because they weren't good enough to make the team. Perhaps we'll have to get used to this as the team gets better.

This is minor and probably way out there but... I wonder if his slow working approach combined with the Brewers desire to be better defensively have anything to do with this odd move. It's small I know but you always hear guys talk about how much easier it is to play defense behind a quick worker. I just don't understand why they would let someone go when they don't have to. No one claimed him on waivers and he had an option left. SO maybe they just don't like his approach and feel they can find some other guy with similar talent with an approach they like better. not sad the brewers waived him. What i'm more sad about is that the brewers could have traded bush, Cappy or vargus at the winter meetings, and used the pitcher not traded to fill in the gap. The brewers could have traded one of their surplus starters 3 months ago, and gotten something, but we elected to stand pat and ask for too much in return. We could have acquired a crede or Glaus, or rolen or blalock, or feliz or somebody. That assumes there was any interest in Vargas in the off season or that the Brewers could get what they felt Bush or Cappy was worth. If they were that down on Vargas it wouldn't make much sense to trade Cappy or Bush and be stuck with someone who truned out to be less than a waiver wire pickup because of an injury. We certainly couldn't have got Glaus or Rolen type players for any of the three alone. I think our starting depth will be ok unless we have a 2005 run of injuries to the staff. Even then we have better options than two years ago. IIRC Zach Jackson was one of the guys who didn't totally flop like JDLR, Eveland or Hendrickson did. With another year or so of work I'd suspect he's at least as capable now as then. After YoGa comes back I'm sure we'll see Parra go back down to help reduce innings. He'd obviously be the first back up. I was surprised but not alarmed by this move.

Let's see - Saturday: 1 IP 3 batters 2 K's - Sunday: 1 IP 3 batters 2 K's Yeah I agree - He's done. No offense inteded but if you need to use 2 innings of spring training baseball to make a point it really shows how weak the point is. I agree these back spasms are nothing to get all worked up about. What I'm not sure about is how is a guy who has poor mechanics and a long history of arm problems going to handle the rigors of the bullpen? For my part if I was a Cub fan I'd hope they used him like the Brewers used Grahm Lloyd or Matt Wise. Never two days in a row and very few bullpen warm ups without getting in a game. Then they might expect him to pitch for a major portion of the season. As it is I'm very skeptical. You don't have to be a fan of another team to see the potential for problems with Wood as the closer.

I tend to think Dusty's message sounds differant to us than it does to his players. We get sound bits and quotes a reporter feels like adding to his story. It sometimes get's used without added clarification given to the context of the comment. If Baker means he wants his players being more aggressive with close pitches because he'd rather the person who is presently batting to try and drive in the runs vs leave it to the next guy who may not be as good a hitter I don't really see the problem with what he's saying. It is fun to mock the dude because some of the quotes that gets filtered through really do sound stupid. If one wants to understand what he really means or what message his players are actually taking from him we'd have to know the entire converstation not just what reporters cut up for public consumption.

When it comes to spring stats one thing that gets overlooked is nobody worrys about scouting reports or review of the up coming team. The pitchers work on their stuff regardelss of what type of hitter they are facing. So if Soup wants to work on his fastball he's more concerned with that than the fact that he's throwing fastballs to a fastball hitter. I'd suspect guys like Soup who rely on those tpye of things more than pure stuff would have a harder time putting up good numbers in spring than someone like Sheets who can throw a fastball past a fastball hitter. (On a personal note, my blood pressure went up when I read this. I swear to god, I really really hate Ned Yost. I just can not stand him. How can you even think about not having Villanueva in the Brewers rotation? Send Ned to the minors instead. Or better yet, designate him for assignment.) There is this guy called Doug Melvin. His job title suggests he is the one who has final say. At this point in spring I think there will be a lot of things said by both Melvin and Yost that should be taken with a grain of salt. Nothing is set and both of them have mentioned possibilities that seem to be taken as probabilities.

I don't think Miller wants to go there. He only seemed interested in playing for a team closer to home. At his age I don't blame him.

Fix what ever problem there is to fix, and get him back to where he was. If it takes a year so be it. Isn't this his sixth year in the big leagues? If it is then he's eligable for free agency after this year so taking a year to fix him most likely means he'll never pitch here again.