dixieflatline

To answer the question about Salome vs. Gillespie I have little doubt that Gillespie will make it to the show at some point in his career and probably have a 3rd or 4th outfielder role for several years. He basically does nothing poorly and while he isn't great at anything he will be a useful piece of the puzzle to some team. Salome is a huge boom or bust kind of prospect. His ceiling is extremely high as any catcher who can potentially hit .300 with power is a very valuable player. The problem is he has kinks to work out in basically every part of his game. He doesn't block pitches well, he doesn't throw out runners consistently, Don Money said that his game calling still needs some work and he said that Salome didn't frame pitches all that well either. At the plate, the stepping in the bucket really scares me. Few players can do that in the majors and even fewer can be a quality player while doing that. It may be that Salome is one of those guys but his nice offensive numbers should have a small red flag attached because of that. Escobar, for instance, is also having a good year offensively and I would trust his numbers going forward a lot more than Salome. I don't want to be that negative on Salome though because he has all the talent in the world. He was/is a perfect mid round draft choice and how teams win in the majors is with star players not a bunch of ok/good ones. Salome has that opportunity where Gillespie probably doesn't. If you ask me which guy I would rather have I would take Salome over Gillespie all the time (though not over Escobar or Gamel). I hope that explains the situation a bit better. josh kalk

My code has gotten a bit unwieldy and no updates have occurred for the past week. That should change tomorrow however. Hopefully I will have updates a couple times a week after that. -josh

It hasn't really been looking at usage rates though. I am glad you liked it. -josh

I did toy with some different samples and yes the further you go out the more likely it is a good pitcher pitching. Besides the Arroyo piece last week at THT I have been trying hard to push the envelope on what we can do with PITCHf/x. The aging curve analysis a couple of weeks ago is a good example. It certainly has issues but I really wanted to show that this data is the now not the future and some pretty nice hard core things can be done. Look for more of that in the upcoming weeks. I am glad you guys liked the brewer specific stuff as well. Obviously it is early in the season and you can see the large errors on the points. Still, it does shed some light as to what is going on with the starters. I really wonder just how much things like that are known to the front office and how much isn't. I wonder if they really care about things like that study actually. -josh

I've added another post focusing mostly on Braun. Thought you guys might be interested. I'm looking for input on which players to profile in the upcoming days so if there is a player you would like to see (brewer or otherwise) please let me know in the comments section. Here is the link.

here is the link to sheets pitches. You can use parent directory and play around from there. As for your comments Russ thanks for the kind words. I guess you are right about those two pitches as they certainly could be changes. I expected to see them at a slower speed but Sheets never was known for a good change. As for comparing with other starts that is one of the biggest problems with pitchFX right now. None of the parks report the data accurately in comparison to each other. So you see people plotting only home games of pitchers and things like that. And don't worry I will be doing a lot more with pitchFX. In fact I just added a plot for Prince Fielder now. edit: the pitch speed I was using for that were at 55 feet from home plate so not quite when it leaves his hand. I could run the numbers back and I probably will need to do that to normalize everything when I look at his overall numbers but this was close enough for now.

They had the pitchFX system turned on at Wrigley last night so I made a few plots of Sheets stuff over at my blog if anyone is interested. (added tag --1992)

Hey guys. I was at the WV Power game last night and wrote it up at my blog. It is too long to copy and paste here but you can check it out if you want.

Sickels has a breakdown of Braun's game vs Brandon Wood. Some nice info there including: "Some scouts believe he'll have to play the outfield eventually, but personally I think he'll be able to handle third base if they are patient with him, granted he'll never be a good glove." Since I posted the BA comment last month about him not being able to handle 3rd I thought I would post this too. The full article is here.

Cubs v. Reds going on right now. Zambrano against Harang so good pitching matchup. Cubs announcers said that Ramirez is not in the game today and seeing a hand specialist for his wrist that the cubs reported as "swollen" yesterday. I love how they always seem to way underreport their injuries. Anyway, something to pay attention to.

1-0 cards in pittsburg. Surprise, surprise, Pujols doubles Rolen singles to get on the board. Little offense from the cards if those guys aren't doing it. I really hope we don't give Pujols much to hit this weekend.

This is really bad news. Greer stadium is in terrible shape IMO and if a new park can't be found then the brewers should move their affiliation. I have been to several A ball stadiums that are far superior to Greer.

If Capellan chooses not to report and forces a trade I wonder if this would be a good fit. Milledge has been overrated IMO in the past but he is only 22 and certainly has the tools to become an all star. Menchkins could both be gone next year and Milledge could be ready to step in then. The mets are looking for pitching and he is blocked with their recent signings.

And the game has been rained out. Any ideas as to if the crew will mess with their rotation because of this?

Raining in texas.

I hate starting a new thread for something this small but none of the other threads on teh first page seemed to make sense. Anyway, BA talked to a scout about Braun who had this to say: Scout?s Take No. 1: on Brewers third baseman Ryan Braun: ?Braun has had trouble throwing the ball in the area code of first base, but the bat is lethal. He?s still prone to above-average stuff in, but if you miss your spot, it?s not coming back. I still think he?s going to be a destructive middle-of-the-order guy as a corner outfielder?and not a third baseman.? From the free BA blog. Nothing earth shattering same stuff we have heard before but another person who thinks he will end up in the outfield.

Hey Al, There was a study done by BP (i think) when Mauer was drafted talking about height and catchers and they showed that, for reasons they couldn't completely identify, that both really tall and really short catchers didn't make it. They were guessing that too tall players had to crouch too far and the too short ones got too physcially beat up. Now, Salome is built like a tank so if they were right that might not apply as much to him but it definitely is something that scouts recognized as well.

Not sure where to put this but BP's top 100 just came out. 12. Ryan Braun, 3B 14. Yovani Gallardo, RHP 75. William Inman, RHP 87. Jeremy Jeffress, RHP In his chat Kevin Goldstein said some nice things about Jeffress. He also mentioned none of the other brewers came close to making the list and the talent drops off quickly after the top 4.

While I generally agree with you that drafting HS pitchers early in the draft is a bad idea when you put the cutoff at recent first round picks you do leave out Yo who was drafted early in the 2nd round. Certainly, most of these guys are going to fail but assuming Yo lives up to the hype and becomes a #1-2 starter then I think that more than balances out all the failures you listed (and Rogers isn't toast yet). There are times when drafting these guys make sense. From what I read Jeffress was top 10 talent and fell to the crew. When that happens then I don't have a problem with the pick. And not to beat a dead horse but if I was drafting I would have gone HS pitcher but it would have been Bailey not Rogers (and I, and others, posted this at the time). Some of these guys do pan out and can become stars. Saying that you never should draft one is going to far IMO. Leaning twoards a college bat if things are close though does make sense.

Yes, in fact take a look at practically any team in the division other than us and you will see reports of extremely thin farm systems. The astros in particular now they got rid of Hirsh basically have nothing. The only other top prospects in the division are with the Reds (Bailey and Bruce) and I am not nearly as high on bruce as most. When I saw him live against polished Kane County pitchers this year he looked lost. I am predicting a tough time for him as he reaches higher levels. Bailey though is a stud.

Great post by colby as always. I just want to reiterate that unlike Rogers, Jeffress's delivery won't need to be completely reworked. IMO this is a huge plus and reduces he chance of injury. That doesn't mean he won't get injured at some point but it is a positive.

BP has their top 10 brewer prospects up. You need to be a subscriber to read the whole article but you can view the top 10 and some discussion here. This was compiled by Kevin Goldstein formerly from BA. He really like Braun and Yo and is pretty high on Jeffress, Inman, and Rogers. Not much love for the position players besides Braun and he isn't impressed with Braun's D either.

Ask and you shall receive. Cappy II in hte game now.

Assuming the cubs bench the lefties again tonight you have to love facing a lineup with Perez in the lineup and Walker and Jones out of it. Hopefully that will help Jackson out as he really seems like he could use some more AAA time. I think he will be solid in the future and I love how stingy he is with the walks but a little more seasoning would help. On the offensive side tonight, Zambrano has already walked 65 guys in just 119 innings. Be patient at the plate and get his pitch count up. Make those walks turn into runs and they will be fine tonight.

BTW, winning 1 out of 3 might not drop us any further behind the Reds. They are at home against the tribe but won't have Harang or Arroyo pitching this series. The flip side of that is we will be seeing both of those guys next week.