Thurston Fluff

Several problems with that estimate. First off virtually all of those six decisions a game are so basic everybody makes the exact same choice. Pulling Mat Garza last night was a choice. Yet very few would not have done so. So your 6 per game number is already on suspect ground. When you break it down to the choices that are actual choices I'd say you are lucky to have one per game. Of that most do not effect the games outcome. I seriously doubt the number of choices that are not garden variety everyone makes the same choice and could effect the outcome of the game it averages out to be one every other game. It's probably closer to a couple a week. but for the sake of argument, not to mention doing math in my head, lets assume one every other game. At that rate you are down to 82 choices that matter over the course of the season. Now even the worst of managers do not make the wrong choice every time. So lets say he makes the wrong choice 75% of the time. That is a lot but for the sake of argument lets go with it. That brings us down to around 60 bad choices per season that could effect the game. Of those 60 bad choices many of them turn out well while some of the good choices don't. My guess is the best of choices have a 60% rate of working vs 40% of the poor choices. So the difference is about 12 choices a year that might actually effect the outcome of a game of a really terrible strategic manager vs a great one who makes all the right choices. If you really want to go there, since no manager makes every choice correctly, we should compare them to good managers, not a hypothetical one who makes every decision correctly. Lets say 75% is a valid number of correct choices to be considered good. That leaves us with 8 games where a good strategic manager makes a difference from a terrible one. But that also assumes those decisions that do effect the game come in the games when they are facing a manager who makes the right choices. What are the odds that the few times a year a bad choice that matters will coincide with the other manager making the right choices that turn out well? While my numbers are not meant to be scientific I think it does show the idea that a manager's choice actually matters around six times a game is suspect at best. All in all I'd say managerial decisions are so far down on the totem pole of managerial success as to be irrelevant.

I don't see his defense as that huge a negative. Routes and jumps on the ball are pretty bad from everything I have seen. He doesn't have the speed to make up for mistakes and it hurts him on a lot. Now whether that slowly improves the longer he plays in RF like it seemed to do in LF I don't know. You also have to consider that his defense will get worse with age. I don't think he will ever become a serious liability, but it still needs to be considered. While I disagree with you on how bad he is in right that isn't my point. The value of defense isn't the same across the board. The corner outfield spots are probably the two of least value compared to offense. So when taking into consideration the overall value of a player you have to take into consideration the weighted value of offense vs defense for that position. An above average defensive shortstop makes up more of the total value than an above average right fielder. A right fielder can be a gold glove defender yet it won't move his value needle much at all if his offense is below average.

I don't see his defense as that huge a negative.

Sometimes you make the "right" decision, it either works or doesn't and you either win or lose the game because of it. Sometimes you make the "wrong" decision, it either works or doesn't and you either win or lose the game because of it. Sometimes the difference is so marginal there truly is no right or wrong decision. Ahhhh, baseball. Doesn't that just lend to the argument that in game managerial decisions are not all the important to winning games? The number of times the right thing works vs the wrong thing not is so insignificant to team talent it renders such things irrelevant. Not that the right thing shouldn't always be done but it just isn't all that important overall. Which is why I think spending 90% of the time arguing a manager's competence by how well they do it is so off base.

His .609 OBP in 2004 just might be the most crazy stat of any baseball player. That almost doesn't seem possible. It probably isn't if you aren't on something.

Just for the record, that same off-season Texas signed Sammy Sosa to DH for them. Coming off a .671 OPS. He was four years younger as well. The difference between 38 and 42 is no small matter in professional sports. Can't imagine they would even attempt to use the productivity card when Bonds lawyer would just show the prior year stats. A player whose productivity the previous 7 years was enhanced by PEDs would probably be wise not use those numbers to show he can still be productive and stay healthy at age 42 without them.

I don't think it is cut and dry as people are making it out to be. If I was a owner I would have serious reservations about what happens to him at his age without PEDs. There would only have been a small number of teams looking for a short term fix at DH and willing to deal with the PR nightmare to begin with. Let alone one that would have serious questions about productivity due to him having to play clean for the first time post 40 years old. The chances of getting even the pre-steroid version of Bands was zero let alone the one who put up the numbers he did on them.

I thought it might be but I didn't want to chance it and butt is funnier anyway.

I was following a big four wheel drive truck today. One of those that are jacked up with huge tires and such. It had two bumper stickers on it. One said bad (butt) boys have bad (butt) toys. The other said real men do it in the dirt. Then we come to a railroad track in the road and he slows down to two miles per hour to cross it. My guess is his music collection is equally hard core. A mix of Justin Bieber, One Direction, Justin Timberlake maybe some Lady Gaga when he gets all crazy. When he goes old school it's probably Janet Jackson or maybe the soundtrack to Flash Dance or something.

Not all 100 have to. Some can tear their Achilles.

Is Doug going to fire himself? Sal Bando did. He had to Wendy wasn't going to. Speaking of Wendy Selig Prieb she also fired herself. AS far Doug firing himself I think it more likely Doug has seen his shortcomings and wants to fix them as opposed to just quit because he found out he had some.

Not everyone uses W-L as the way they evaluate a manager, since a manager can make a good move & not have it work out. Same logic that would be used to determine that a hard hit line drive that happened to be hit right at a fielder was still good contact. Additionally, Maddon's record has been compiled over a significantly longer stretch, & (mostly) in the toughest division in baseball year in & year out. It's disingenuous to suggest that you can accurately compare Roenicke & Maddon simply based on their managerial W-L records. Obviously Doug Melvin used the record as the way to judge his manager. As far as the East being the toughest division the NL central had 9 playoff teams since 2011 compared to the AL east's 7. So I don't think the toughest division in baseball thing is that big a difference. With only one team making the playoffs and the second best record being 84-78 the excuse of the best division in baseball last year certainly didn't apply. Yet the Rays record was 77-85. Funny how the game works isn't it? RRR has a better record than Maddon and Maddon is not only hailed as one of the greatest managers but also gets a new job with a raise. RRR is close to being fired and only lasted one month into the season.

http://www.theonion.com/article/turns-out-craig-counsell-was-actually-best-basebal-6581

The problems with this organization go much farther up the chain than who the manager is, this constantly shuffling of the coaching deck leads to instability. There are very few successful programs at any level of sport in business who have consistent turnover. Exactly. I posted that exact same point a few pages back. If players know the manager isn't going to be the scape goat they may find themselves being held more accountable. Stability is one ingredient necessary for a manager to be able to address the actual problems with players. I don't think it is about hurting each other, I think it is more about protecting your teammates, and sending messages... I don't want guys getting head hunted, but I do want guys getting hit in the leg or butt to send a message that if you come after my guy, I'm coming after yours. I have a funny feeling hitting someone for hitting Segura last night would have lead to more players being hit later in the season. Not to mention fines and suspensions. My guess is teams like the Cards under LaRussa ended up with more players hit on their team because they are always doing the tit for tat crap.

The last three managers were all very different from one another. They all managed playoff teams at some point in their career. I know this is a stretch but maybe the problem isn't the manager. All you get when you change managers every two to four years is instability. All you get when you fix the wrong thing is something that remains broken. Oh well.

I know people like to point to the last X number of games or certain trends as some sort of proof last season's team wasn't actually what their record said they were. Yet the year as a whole, which last I checked was the only one that measured all of that team's success without adding anything but that team's success, showed us to be slightly above .500. I thought to start the year they needed a lot of things to go right to be better than last season. I also thought they would need a lot of things to go wrong to be really bad. I still think if we left the team as is we would end up fairly close to .500 again. At this point that isn't good enough. We might as well trade anyone not in the plans for next year. For bigger names like Gomez or Lucroy I think there is plenty of time in the off season to trade them if we go that route. Melvin would be foolish not to entertain offers for them but I think it would need to be an absolute steal to let them go in season. Melvin has said many times the best offers tend to come in the off season when all the teams are building their roster. I tend to agree with that. So when it comes to in season, let them get what they can for the end of contract guys and take a lopsided trade if someone is offering it for anyone else.

If we follow that line of thinking I guess baseball should have separate players for defense and offense for every position. After all why should we have to watch Kotsay play center just to get his bat in the lineup? Why did we have to watch Rickie Weeks or Prince on defense? It would have been a hell of a lot more fun watching prince hit and Ishikawa field. I can just imagine how great it would be to see nothing but pure hitters hit and pure fielders field. It would have made it a heck of a lot easier to find a first baseman the past two years as well. Maybe also get rid of that rule that says once you leave the game you can't come back. Because nobody is asking for anything like that so it really is no argument against anything. If I ask the city to build more bike lanes they don't respond "why don't we just outlaw cars" and ignore me. I'm not the one who used a football analogy to show how bad an idea it was to have a pitcher hit. All I did was show why the analogy was off base.

If we follow that line of thinking I guess baseball should have separate players for defense and offense for every position. After all why should we have to watch Kotsay play center just to get his bat in the lineup? Why did we have to watch Rickie Weeks or Prince on defense? It would have been a hell of a lot more fun watching prince hit and Ishikawa field. I can just imagine how great it would be to see nothing but pure hitters hit and pure fielders field. It would have made it a heck of a lot easier to find a first baseman the past two years as well. Maybe also get rid of that rule that says once you leave the game you can't come back.

I could see the argument for it if the team was going total rebuild. If we traded him, Gomez and Lucroy we could boost our farm to one of the best in one year. I'm not saying I am for that but I can see the argument.

I thought this was pretty well done. http://www.brewcrewball.com/2015/4/30/8514863/brewers-since-u-been-gone

Nah they use shakers. The only hand picked ones are pick your own.

I might be the only one, but I read the "Worst Contract in Franchise History" part of the title, thought of Jeffrey Hammonds and then immediately threw up in my mouth. Hammonds was the first thing that popped into my mind as well. Personally I think to be the worst contract ever you pretty much have to be useless for the majority of it. That pretty much fit Hammonds' time in Milwaukee. Braun is average being paid like an all star. Not good but not useless. It's only the worst in Brewers history if they don't learn from it. With the price of higher education these days it might be a good deal.

Anyone else wonder if the person who invented the clarinet had two sisters named Claire and Anette?

Two well pitched games in a row. Braun getting going. Lind being all we could hope for. Rogers showing signs he might be the bat off the bench we need. Broxton strikes out the side and K-Rod closes it down. Even a Ramirez sighting. It's turning around.

I don't think this would be very popular with the teams though. With how long players take to develop I think they would much rather take talent with a year or two of experience than a pick. I don't think you'd see the picks traded very often at all. In the NFL and NBA a pick adds value the next year, in baseball it is usually at least 2 years away and sometimes 4 or 5. I think you would see teams trade picks for picks. A team that has major minors rebuild on their hands might like two first round picks instead of one high pick for example.