Oldcity

If you swing at the first pitch, it had better be a real hitter's pitch. Not simply a strike... A first-pitch fastball on the black low and away in the strike zone is not a good pitch to swing at. If you can't drive the ball, it's a bad at-bat. There are many more benefits to taking the first pitch other than the possibility of getting ahead in the count. Seeing what the pitcher has, working his arm, giving everyone else a better look, etc.

DiFelice is what the Brewers wish Green was... a right-handed specialist. He's a big weapon against the Cubs and Cardinals. I say he'll be up within a month because by then they won't be able to ignore his results in AAA. If nothing else, injuries/ineffectiveness happen frequently enough that I'd be shocked if he hasn't been called up by the All-Star Break.

DiFelice should/will be up within a month.

The biggest contribution Betancourt has made is that his presence convinces righties to IBB Kotsay.

I miss Ken Macha.

How poorly does that reflect on Doug Melvin if his manager needs help with things like that? I'm not saying you're wrong, either.

Why bail out Green at this point? I kind of just want to see how many runs he can give up in one inning.

Yeah it probably is dumb. In fact, the save stat leads to two dumb decisions involving closers.

Hey look at that.... A closer is going to throw more than one inning.

And these are all terrible hitters he's facing.

DFA Green

Falling behind every hitter is not a good way to pitch.

Why didn't they just leave Axford in?

Isn't the point that baseball isn't reaching inner city kids as much as other sports? That sure seems like an issue to me.

I honestly think a catcher being crappy at offense helps his defensive reputation.

The Brewers already had him through his prime years at a bargain price. This is a 95 million dollar contract for his age 32-36 years. Unnecessary.

There is also just a lot of concern about the difficulty of accurately identifying the location of balls in play. One area of concern that I've read about is hit location on balls between 2nd and 3rd, when there isn't a base in view. Without a firm reference point, it's hard to know exactly where the ball is. Another concern is the somewhat subjective assessment of how hard a ball is hit. Perhaps you can comment on either?You're right. On those plays, you just have to use your best judgment. There's a lot of pausing to see where a player lines up with the mound, distance from the base, etc, but sometimes you can't see a base, and you have to just based on distance from outfield/infield grass. It's also tough because you want to stay as close to live as possible. They went through a pretty extensive training on how they judge how hard balls are hit. We arrive a couple weeks before the season to work on things like that and passed little quizzes they gave us. It's honestly the best they could do to try to get everyone on as close to the same page as possible. None taken. It's not exactly clear how this information is obtained if you haven't seen it in person.

This may have been lost in the shuffle, but I was one of these "drunk college kids" a couple years ago for BIS. I'll clear up a few things. They only hire graduates. Pretty sobering to work at a minimum wage internship as a graduate. You don't go to live games. All their information is obtained by watching video, so rewinding, watching in slow-motion, etc. is a routine part of the process. The interns are responsible for scoring games, which consists of plotting hit locations, hit types (grounder, liner, fly, "fliner") and whether it was hit hard, medium, or soft. These things account for fielder range. We then had to score on a series of Good Fielding Plays (GFPs) and Defensive Misplays (DMs), of which there were several types (good double play turn, good assist, and several more). We were also responsible for charting pitchers, which included pitch type, location, and velocity. We also marked hit location and velocity while charting. We scored games live (or reasonably live, as we'd rewind and get hung up occasionally). We charted games the day after they were played. There are problems with BIS, as human error is a part of anything, but in my opinion, their setup was just as responsible for error. Almost all of the guys I worked with were sharp guys, so nobody was really slacking off or "chatting up girls" or anything. I'm out of baseball as a career now, so I have no problem telling this story as an example: Their field dimensions were shockingly not to always scale. Obviously each stadium is different, but some were clearly wrong. One that was clearly messed up was Safeco. Their wall on their replica of Safeco was clearly plotted as too far from home plate based on the field's actual dimensions in certain areas. The wall was too far. Therefore, every time a catch was made at the wall, it was plotted as several feet beyond the fence! Take a look at the 2009 defensive metrics for center fielders, which is the year I worked there. Franklin Gutierrez is off the charts. Now, he's certainly a good fielder, but his numbers were seriously inflated. I have no way of knowing whether this model is still used, but I know a couple of us brought up this problem multiple times to the higher ups to no avail. That's just one example. Like I said, I still think BIS does good things overall, but some of their flaws are going to cost them in the industry if they aren't addressed.

Man this guy used to be a stud prospect. I remember him being off-limits in a potential Carlos Lee trade. He's sort of suffering from Alex Gordon Syndrome: Dominating AAA but never doing anything in the Majors. I know his defense was questionable at shortstop, which caused his move to third. I'd still take him over Betancourt, and I would guess the Angels will still have plenty of suitors.

Possible they just gave Braun the rest of the day off?

The reason in this instance is because he has a humorous mustache.

Nice job by Kintzler and the rest of the pen outside of Axford. Pitching really was great today.

My God Betancourt!

It doesn't stop. This defense is a circus.

Wow did you see that lineup card? It looked like it was written in calligraphy.