coolhandluke121

True, but this criticism isn't really wrong per se. They don't have great closing speed on the perimeter, and it could be an issue against the Warriors. I think a better way to phrase this criticism would be "the Bucks don't do a great job closing out on open 3-point shooters and this might be the biggest reason they won't be the 12th team in NBA history with an average scoring differential of +10 or more or win a finals match-up against the Warriors, who incidentally own 3 of the 11 previous +10 seasons." ETA: DJ Wilson will be surpass Brook and Ersan for crunch time minutes by the end of the year and this won't be as much of an issue.

Guerra sort of. And "openers"?

Huh. Thought the Brewers would have more interest at that price, but can't blame them for believing in their young guys. Miley threw a ton of cutters last year and I'm under the impression that can wear out a pitcher's arm. Maybe the Brewers think he sold his arm out for one more payday and won't be as good next year.

I'm not sure how much of a role Jordan has in the modern NBA. Gaudy numbers can run hollow. I think he's gonna be run off the floor a lot, or hacked off of it. Lopez is a better fit, and they have 3 pf's who can play center. Matthews is intriguing, but I think foot speed and athleticism on the perimeter are bigger needs right now. They're just not missing what Matthews would give them. I'd gladly take either of them but I don't see it being a huge boost. Lol at the Knicks though. Dolan is the absolute worst.

Nope, Braun and steroids are forever linked. A large part of it was obviously his own doing with all the grandstanding proclamations of innocence and how he was victimized by the system. If some people want to cheer for him, that's perfectly fine. If some people want to make snide remarks about him until the end of time, that should be fine too. Exactly. And referring to a previous post: no, I don't think it's at all a given that he only cheated once. The leaked transcripts referring to the "Braun Advantage" were supposedly all about how to regularly beat tests with careful timing of when to use fast-acting testosterone and have it out of your system quickly. Braun's advantage was rumored to be the fact that his baseline testosterone was very high, making it harder hit the threshold of 300 or 400% of a player's baseline level or whatever it required to flag a sample for further testing. I think it's fair to say that he didn't cheat in the same way Bonds or Sosa did, but rather just to heal faster. He could have been MVP without cheating if he could have regularly stayed healthy without cheating.

He makes more sense - but less cents. I make this joke every year with my advanced algebra students when they're learning about compound interest. They just plug in numbers and write down answers without thinking about how many digits to include, so I tell them to "round to the nearest penny because it makes more cents... get it? Cents?" Nobody has ever laughed. That's what makes it such a good joke.

It's different in how much it affects small markets. When you consider how important stars are, the fact that small markets have trouble retaining them is a huge disadvantage. Baseball has a bigger problem in the sense that they don't even have a salary cap, but players are under team control for a long time and other teams have to overpay to poach them in free agency. Not true in basketball. Also, baseball players have often already hit their peak before free agency or soon thereafter, whereas NBA stars are routinely doing this with their best years ahead of them. Experience matters a lot in the NBA, and 28-30 are often the best ages even if athleticism is declining a tick. I think the biggest issue is that there's so many rules in place to prevent this, and those rules are for the good of the league and for competition and parity, but they're still able to circumvent those rules. And it's happening under the table, in a sense. No reason AD should be able to choose to go to LAL and still get all the supermax benefits designed to help NO keep him.

Having high year-to-year BABIP variance and utilizing great shifts are not at all mutually exclusive. It would still make Keuchel a good fit for the Brewers. The shifts would just lower the long-term mean BABIP, but the variance around that mean would still be very high. I like the idea a lot. I used to really want him on the Brewers but wasn't as keen on it after the last few years. However, if that means his price drops, I'm all for it. I think this would be another remarkable example of the Brewers knowing when to pounce and, more importantly, knowing when not to (so that acquisitions like Grandal and Keuchel remain financially possible in the first place).

I hate it too, but the weird thing about it is that the NBA actually has decent rules in place to prevent players from having this level of control. If teams made full use of the rules at their disposal and played hardball a little more, it wouldn't be nearly this bad, but everyone is too scared of alienating star players and their powerful agents. In this case, for example, they could tell AD that he screwed them over and now they can't get fair value for him in a trade, so they're going to keep him until his contract is up and therefore he won't be eligible to sign a supermax contract with anyone. If one NBA team had the balls to do that to one of these players, it would make others think twice. Yeah, they'd risk missing out on any trade return, but they might also make trade offers better if they stick to their guns. At worst, players would learn to keep their trade requests between themselves and their team (a measly $50,000 fine doesn't do jack towards that end) so that teams can arrange a trade on their own terms, without the pressure to trade them and the weaker offers that come with a public request. All that said, AD should have tried to get out a long time ago. This isn't just a case of a small market team victimized. New Orleans is a joke and they should be sued for having football trainers work with the basketball team. That's likely a big part of the reason they have such a bad injury history. It's a disgrace. You're right about small market teams often getting screwed, but there's much more at stake here.

It would be hard to bring Khris off the bench, no doubt. I kind of disagree about the starters doing fine though. They're actually starting slow an awful lot. They have weird synergy and don't play with the best energy. It's the lineups with a good, balanced mix of starters and reserves that are winning games for them. Not sure who the NBA equivalent of Costanza is on offense, but on defense it's probably Jabari.

They have at least 4 guys on the bench who can do that (Hill, Ersan, Brown, Snell). The problem (?) is they all play team ball and don't chuck, so no one comes in and shoots the ball 8 times in 4 minutes. It should be easy enough to stagger minutes. It's not unusual to see lesser players start. For example, you can get more productive minutes out of a guy like Snell by always playing him with Giannis. They have good timing together, and all Snell has to do is stand behind the arc and take kick-outs and hand-offs. They usually have really good splits in lineups together. Then you could have Brogdon on the bench in a Manu Ginobili role. However, Brogdon wasn't as effective in that role, and I think part of the reason he's starting is because Bud realized he would be much more effective with better scorers taking attention off of him. Therefore you could make a case that Khris should come off the bench, since Snell is better at sf and has better synergy with Giannis, while Khris has proven he can carry an offense as a go-to scorer but doesn't have the same chemistry with the other starters. His mid-range isoball and slow-it-down game doesn't mesh with them, but would be less infuriating (and more needed) with a bunch of role players and glue guys on the bench.

http://bloguin.com/wezenball/wp-content/uploads/sites/113/2010/05/grifftonic.jpg

Honesty it's hardly like baseball at all. Small market teams are just as likely to go way over the cap as large market teams. There's enough revenue sharing. Also, you can only go over the cap to retain your own players (with Bird Rights), use one exception salary slot per year, and sign draft picks and minimum contracts, all except the first of which are roughly equal to the average player salary or far below it. Basically, you can't just sign a bunch of free agents from other teams without the salary cap room. Players still force some trades to desirable markets, but that's their prerogative. That's player preference giving big markets an advantage; the CBA isn't helping them at all. It helps teams retain their own players but doesn't allow teams to go over the cap to sign major free agents. OKC is way over because they've been a playoff team for so long. It's normal to try to keep a contender together. The Bucks can do the same thing, and should. Anybody who fully understands their CBA should just be hoping they go $45m over the cap. When your window is open, you usually want to spend as much as the CBA allows. If you let any of your free agents walk, the right to go over the cap walks with them. Other than avoiding absurd luxury tax bills and debilitating long-term contracts for truly mediocre players, there's no reason to balk at going way over the cap if you're a contender.

Strawman... Strawman... Strawman... I think your working understanding of what "strawman" means needs some fine-tuning. Go look at what Murphy, LeMahieu, and Lowrie signed for. Go look how often they've been mentioned in threads since the off season began, and even before that.

True, but that ignores how the Brewers will use Perez/Spangenberg, vs LHP, RHP respectively: .277/.304/.479/.783 .261/.332/.393/.725 (in a pitchers park BTW) Every reason to believe this platoon can put up above average numbers at 2B, and .750ish is actually very realistic. Yep. Both theoretically at their peak, too. Will both turn 28 just before the season begins. Much rather them at rock-bottom price than committing $15-25m to some 33-ish ticking time bomb who has not been consistently good in the first place. Once again, I think the opportunities they don't pounce on will eventually say even more about their competence than they ones they do. (See the starting pitcher free agents last year as an example.)

Was hoping this would involve a slightly shorter bat and more hitting for singles and doubles. Sounds like the exact opposite. I think he could turn himself into a high average guy again if he sacrificed some power and laid off the low outside stuff more, but I'm not holding my breath.

That’s a little dramatic he did sign a 4 yr /11 million dollar deal. I understand him wanting to play more but my point is that Lopez is only here this year. Who knows what could happen next. It's not dramatic at all. Taxes take a lot of that money, agent fees, don't know if you can trust financial advisers, don't know the financial game yourself, no other marketable skills, want to help your family too, never had any money before, inflation between now and old age... by no means is he exempt from having to work some crappy job at some point. And even if he was, why should he accept sitting on the bench when one impulsive or desperate gm could double or triple his career earnings? Regardless of what $11m does for him, how much more would a raise do? How does sitting on the bench for a good team compensate him for that? It may be a moot point because he doesn't look good, but gm's have a long history of over-paying for flashes of potential. There's absolutely no reason he should just sit there and be content to trade that opportunity to play for a contender. He's not a late-career guy who's already set for life - not even close. And regardless of what happens with Lopez, they're still going to try to have better options than Thon. If you want to blame anyone, blame the gm's who hand out bad contracts based on potential, because they're the ones who make this a no-brainer move for Thon and his camp.

I don't get the logic of expecting him to be happy to be on a winning team. What's he supposed to do, brag about sitting on the bench for a contender when he's selling used cars in 30 years? Some gm will probably take a chance on him if he gets minutes and shows more flashes, but that's not gonna happen in Milwaukee. It would be kind of stupid of him not to ask for a trade.

I mean that says an awful lot about the WPA stat, doesn't it?? This speaks to my point about it being a circular process by manipulating relief appearances to create a self-fulfilling prophecy of their greatness. In other words, just give them all kinds of juicy WPA opportunities and then use WPA as evidence of their greatness. Imagine leaving a really good hitter on the bench until you had someone in scoring position in a close game, at which point you use him to PH. I bet his WPA would be pretty high, but that would obviously be pretty stupid. You would never use your best hitters that way when you can get so much more value out of them by starting them. A good analogy might be if teams all had a more consistent Thames/Aguilar type on the bench and used him to PH for the Arcia/Perez/Kratz types with runners in scoring position in close games. Clearly that player should not be in the HOF, at least not if the HOF is going to have any dignity left, but I bet they'd have tons of high leverage hits and clutch RBI's and WPA. There's also the issue of the ridiculous advantages closers have, particularly with regard to cutters (and some other pitches like extreme fastballs) that starters can't use much if they want to last more than a few years. I think there are literally hundreds of starters not in the hall of fame who would be if they had had the good fortune of not being quite good enough to start but good enough to have a clean inning 2-3 times a week and spend their whole career doing it. Rivera was far enough ahead of other relievers to be a reasonable choice, but again, how hard is it to be better than a bunch of other pitchers who weren't good enough to pitch 150+ innings per year? Relievers are still almost all failed starters. No amount of coddling them to inflate their glory and WPA stats can change that. Some manipulation of leverage is fine, and a good reliever is plenty valuable, but they're by far the least valuable players in the hall of fame and they're very lucky to be there.

He's better off getting minutes on a bad team. He doesn't play winning basketball per se, but he does sometimes put up stat lines and make plays that would get stupid teams to overpay him. Can't do that on a team gunning for a title though.

Yeah, he's pretty valuable. I mean obviously I'm biased, but then again I think you could argue that we don't have metrics for measuring his value. WAR probably punishes versatility in the sense that a guy like Perez is compared to 3B's and OF's for his innings there, and WAR certainly doesn't account for the value of roster flexibility. I don't think it even pretends to. If they measured the statistical significance of the double-switches and all that, I bet Hernan would be seen as a much more valuable guy. As for his number of appearances, obviously we're all hoping everyone stays healthy and they can minimize his appearances, but they absolutely need him and therefore have to keep him sharp. I'm fine with how they used him last year.

I like having Perez on the team, but I think he's a bit overused is all and I think you feel the same. Frankly, Perez should probably see some time in most games...but primarily in double switches and as a defensive replacement. And with his versatility, once he enters the game he should almost never leave the game. If everything is going right, he should almost never start. He really shouldn't be the 2nd guy in line to start at any position besides SS if there's an injury. At the moment, he's probably 2nd in line to start at SS and 3b...and is in a soft platoon with CS at 2b. I don't disagree about his ability, but how is it realistic to have him on the 25 as a utility guy and not be the primary back-up at multiple positions even if everyone is healthy? Especially if you are one of the people saying they should often carry 13 pitchers? The numbers just don't work out at all. There are 8 positions to back up and only 4 back-ups. You can cover outfield with one back-up, but catcher takes one and only one of those spots. That leaves 2 players to back-up 4 infield spots. Who are you signing to be ahead of Perez at all 4 of them?

Because most pitchers are RHP's and the Brewers already have enough guys who hit RHP's better. I still don't understand why many are obsessed with getting better against LHP's at the expense of getting worse against RHP's, who are the overwhelming majority. Braun, Aguilar, Perez, Pina, Cain, and Arcia are better against LHP's. Shaw, Gamel (barely), Thames, Yelich, Grandal, and Spangenberg are better against RHP's. Pina and Arcia actually have reverse splits and are better / much better versus RHP. Less than 500 combined MLB plate appearances. Pina was better against LHP's in the minors, which is probably a much more representative sample. Also, Arcia's splits are actually pretty even overall throughout his professional career, and his MLB tOPS+ actually leans ever so slightly better against LHP's. Also, pointing out their recent splits just proves my point about how their struggles against LHP's were a fluke last year. Besides, even two borderline cases doesn't come close to diminishing the larger point. It doesn't make sense to prioritize how you hit LHP's any more than they have. There are about 3 times as many RHP's. It's more than worth it to add a good LHB like Moustakas even if it means having to start one guy who can't hit LHP's well. You can move that guy down the order and he might even get as many pa's against RHP relievers as he does against the LHP starter in the same game anyway.

Yep, that's a good point. I would love to see more low-scoring games to be honest. I wish it was more defense + balls in play, as opposed to so many k's, but either way it's better than inflating offensive numbers for the type of fan who considers baseball boring without lots of runs. I don't think it's boring at all. I'm going to lose it if they try to ban shifts. Let offenses adapt. Evolution is a huge part of baseball. Take away the game within the game and you alienate a large chunk of your core fan-base.

I could see that. GS is still built for the playoffs because they can tighten their rotation. However, I do sometimes get that weird 2014 Heatles/2004 Lakers vibe from them. In other words, I think the right team can exploit all the depth they lost to add and retain stars.