coolhandluke121

Yep. That's why you carry guys like Perez in the first place. Gives you far more options in double switches and using more relievers. They'll probably need Sogard more than they'll need Aguilar, too. You can't just carry a bunch of DH types in the National League.

Aguilar is more than a little bit of a fluke. He hit 3 homers in 6 pa's at Coors field, benefited from playing against LHP's a lot, and still only managed an OPS slightly north of .800 when slugging is literally the only thing he might be able to do at replacement level at 1b. He has an OPS of .800 in over 4,000 MiLB pa's, and rarely played as a young prospect for the leagues he was in. He had some clutch homers last year, but that's just being in the right place at the right time. I think fond memories of some of those at-bats are clouding our judgment on what type of player he is. He's likely to be DFA'ed for the second spring in a row when he should be in his prime. If you're asking him to do anything more than be a AAA 1B who can come up and be the RHB 1B if/when Braun gets hurt, you're not doing your job as gm.

Yep, dime a dozen. Matt Clark and Jason Rogers too. And who can forget Chris Carter? Most of them end up in Asia or being career minor leaguers. Sometimes it seems people are angry that you have to keep guys like Perez and Sogard instead of Choi and Aguilar, which I don't get. We'd all love to see Choi, Thames, Aguilar, Santana, and Braun in the lineup for offense, but where are you going to play them? That said, it would be nice to have him in AAA for Thames insurance, but I'm sure there are other options. Aguilar would be nice for Braun insurance too, but you can't use roster spots for guys like that.

Comparing the last two years isn't that relevant considering Braun is clearly well past his prime and Santana is just beginning his. Recently you could have found a 2-year period where Pujols and A-Rod were better than basically every other hitter in baseball, but father time is undefeated. Even Braun is openly making tons of concessions to his age and injury problems. I don't understand why so many people here are having trouble doing the same thing. I don't disagree with the general premise that Santana is the one guy you could make a case should sit to get more playing time for Braun in the outfield. That doesn't change the fact that, based on the moves they made and asking him to play 1B, they obviously don't see Braun as the team's star player at all anymore.

Whoa. I admit I wasn't up to date on his recent work. I guess I'll just wait on Realmuto. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the type of thing they're considering, despite all this hype about pitching.

The rules of supply and demand might beg to differ.

It's probably wishful thinking to think you could get him for Broxton, or Aguilar + a throw-in. Just because Boston doesn't have a spot for him doesn't mean there won't be other teams wanting to trade for him and driving up the price, and that's all it takes. Would be cool to get him though, obviously.

I've seen this notion of Villar being a better LHB too many times to count this offseason. How did that get started? He is significantly better as an RHB for his career. ~120 bad pa's as an RHB last year does not change that. I think it's far more likely that Sogard and Villar will share 2b starts against RHP's, with Villar getting most of the starts against LHP's. Perez will get some too just to stay involved, but will need to get most of his starts against LHP's at 3b and LF, and 1B when Braun is hurt or DH'ing. I'm looking forward to Perez not being a ~400 pa guy this year, even though I like him a lot in the right role.

I think it's partly hatred for Arrieta and Boras, but the concerns about Arrieta's trajectory are legitimate. Might be worth the risk for Philly though. I don't think they would have lost a 3rd-rounder. They already gave that up for Cain. Everyone in the media always says they would lose a 4th-rounder if they signed Arrieta or Cobb. I will take them at their word, but I don't understand how the CBA causes that. As a revenue-sharing recipient, you're supposed to give up your 3rd-highest pick when you sign a guy who rejected a QO from his old team. You give up your 4th-highest pick if you sign another one. But the Brewers' 3rd-highest pick is a comp round B pick right before the 3rd-round, and I didn't think those were exempt. So they should have given that up for Cain, and then would give up their 3rd-rounder (their 4th highest pick) for Cobb. Is it possible that Cain signed before the comp round B pick was granted, when their 3rd-rounder would have still been their 3rd highest pick? That would be pretty shrewd of them to keep their top 3 picks if they did have hopes of signing two guys who rejected QO's.

Technically the void doesn't just kick in though. Philly gets to choose whether to take that risk instead of giving Arrieta a chance to opt out. I very much doubt he pitches well enough for Philly to choose to pay him $20m+ in his age 34-36 seasons. Even if he's solid for 2 years, it's very possible they'd rather risk missing out on his age 34 season than commit to 3 more years. And he would pay taking a risk by opting out of $20m in 2019 as well. Just ask Mike Moustakas about leaving that kind of money on the table. I'm really glad the Brewers didn't do this. I don't think it's the end of the world for Philly in that market though. I don't think they did enough to compete for a wild card, but the East is really weak this year, so I guess an average team could easily win 85+ there. Still think the Brewers are much better than them though. The main aspect of this deal for the Brewers is that the Cardinals didn't sign him - not that it would have been a good move for them long-term, but it would have made it a little tougher to compete in the central this year.

A good lineup will have a higher OPS with RISP because the pitcher is in the compromised position. On the other hand, you might often be facing team's better relievers in pressure situations, bringing OPS down. Or maybe you have more RISP when you're facing inferior pitchers in the first place, so it stands to reason that you have better RISP stats simply because more of those opportunities come against bad pitchers. Who knows. To me, hitters are always trying to do their best. It's not like they concentrate more or dig down and decide to hit better just because there are RISP. That doesn't make sense. Every plate appearance counts for a lot, and they're always trying to get on base. They know any at-bat can start a rally, and they only get 3-5 per game in general. It just doesn't make sense that some guys would be "cluch" hitters. It does make sense that being a good contact hitter is more important in those situations, but that doesn't make you a better hitter in the clutch than it does in any other situation. It just gets you more RBI's, which aren't part of your OPS and are just as much a credit to the guy who got in scoring position in the first place, if not more so. I'll buying anti-clutch/nervousness, but I'm not buying clutch. It's not being a better hitter in the clutch, it's being just as good as you normally are despite the pressure. I think the same thing applies to "closers", which is not some kind of special skill or anything. Any talented reliever who performs well under pressure can do it.

Amen. http://e.lvme.me/hn7qbup.jpg

You should probably be questioning whether that person understands so much about baseball that they would be capable of outside-the-box innovations that are met with such incredulity. It's perfectly fine to break camp with 4 starters for several days when you have so many capable pitchers with more options than you need, who are arguably likely to be better than all the retreads anwyay. It would be a wise move considering some starters have no business going much more than 4-5 innings. They can call up a 5th starter when they need one. It's just laziness and not wanting to work hard on the details that makes some teams want to establish more of a routine right away, before it's even necessary. The Brewers are set up to do a lot of experimenting with their rotation and bullpen use this year. Piggy-backing, lack of true 4/5's, shuttle service, 13 pitchers, more long relief, etc. I think it was part of the plan all along. If you're resistant to trying new things, you're not going to enjoy this season as much as you could.

I'm not sure what you're getting at, but I don't think you read my post carefully. I said there's no statistical evidence of "clutch" hitters, but there is such a thing as an "anti-clutch" hitter. It's not the same thing. There's no statistical evidence of some guys consistently being better hitters in the clutch than they are in other situations (it's all just within the normal expectated random fluctuations in data), but I'm willing to bet there are some guys who are consistently worse because of nerves and other observable variables. "Anti-clutch" has some theoretical backbone, and anecdotal evidence in the form of guys like Thames who look lost under pressure. Clutch does not. As for the evidence you posted about the Brewers, I would say it's exactly the type of evidence I'm suggesting is out there, but you have to be careful to only use it in conjuction with thorough observation of guys like Thames and Weeks who visibly looked like worse hitters in RBI situations. Otherwise you're just measuring more normal randomness in data and making a story out of it. A proper test might be to have scouts watch a random selection of 100's of players in 100's of random at-bats and try to find those who look like significantly different caliber hitters in the clutch. Then see if any of their stats support your observations. Not many of the players would be deemed as clutch, and those that are would probably lack the stats to back it up, because it's just a matter of staying calm and doing what you know how to do - i.e., in general their performance would be about the same as non-clutch situations. But I'm willing to bet players like Weeks and Thames would be flagged and would also have the RISP stats to back up those observations.

Fixed. Not that I love either of them, but then why have they said Braun won't play RF even when Santana sits? If the plan was to trade Santana, that means they traded all those assets for Yelich to play RF. That seems more than a little sub-optimal as far as team-building goes. I mean it was certainly an option, but again, if they were really that high on Braun this year (some people here are regularly still calling him the best hitter on the team, even last year), it sure seems the offseason would have been dramatically different.

This is an unrelated point here, and I agree that Hosmer's gonna end up being a bit of a burden in a few years and probably nothing special short-term, but just ignore the marketing Hosmer move and what have they done to screw up their future? The Padres have been one of the more future-oriented teams out there since they got past that stupid Upton/Norris/Kemp/Middlebrooks/etc. offseason. I was referring back to those moves, which set them up to have no other choice but to think about the future. You don't get credit for thinking about the future if you gave yourself no choice. If the first thing you do when you've started to turn around your long-term outlook is sign Eric Hosmer for $120m, you haven't figured it out yet. All I'm saying is I'm not giving them the benefit of the doubt. More importantly, they might have made themselves just competent enough to steal games against their far superior West rivals once in a while, which is my salient point about how difficult the West is this year. It's going to be very hard for SF or Colorado to win more than 80, and hard for Arizona to end up with a better record than the Brewers even though they're the better team IMO.

It makes perfect sense. Yelich and Cain are borderline superstars, unless all you care about is slugging and RBI's of course. Cain just had arguably his best year, posting his best OBP ever and playing 15 more games than he'd every played before. He showed no signs of declining athleticism, remaining one of the faster outfielders in baseball and stealing 26 bases while being caught 2 (2!) times. They had ample reason to believe both guys will be ~5 WAR players for a couple years, with Yelich up there for as much as five years or more. On the other hand, Lynn and Cobb had lucky seasons with questionable peripherals after Tommy John surgery, and Arrieta was basically terrible with declining velocity in a year in which most pitchers gained velocity because they measured it differently. Darvish's deal was too lucrative/long. Their moves are evidence of smart, reasonable projections in all cases of high-profile players who were available. It was a great offseason. Not every move is guaranteed to work out, but at least they made the smartest moves based on available evidence. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that they expect Miley and Gallardo to be effective. They invested basically nothing in them. That's not a sign of being committed to them or thinking they'll be effective. Neither is staying out of the free agent pitching market. It's just a sign that they correctly saw that it was a bad market and were willing to take their chances on someone emerging from among the in-house options.

But those were 3 of the worst teams in baseball last year. Anything is possible but they have so far to go, and they still have a lot of the same problems they had last year. I think they made terrible short-sighted decisions (though I can't really blame the Giants because they might turn back the clock one more time) just to give themselves a chance at being .500, but they won't be much better than that. And even the Giants play in such a tough division that I can't see them winning more than 80. The West is incredibly deep this year, with the Giants getting Cutch and Longoria and the Padres doing their usual desperate attempt to remain relevant and screw up their future, all so they can play spoiler once in a while. I basically see just a whole bunch of teams in the NL moving closer to mediocre. For a lot of them, that means moving up a little, since there were so many bad teams last year. But those extra wins will come at the expense of mediocre teams that were kind of flukes last year (Cards, Rockies) and the new bottom-feeders (Pirates, Marlins). I would have put the Brewers in with the Cards and Rockies as flukes last year, but they made enough improvements to remain a wild card favorite along with the Diamondbacks IMO. By default, someone in the weak east will have a surprisingly good record compared to last year just because the competition is arguably even worse.

There is also adrenaline, levels of confidence, concentration, etc. I think "clutchness" or whatever word you want to use, can exist. "In the zone" is a phenomenon many basketball players claim is real whereby performance is elevated. It's possible, but I think the fact that some players simply aren't as nervous as others in critical situations is a much simpler explanation. Being nervous is observable if you watch closely, and there are measurable physiological differences. Being money in the clutch lacks that. As for confidence and concentration, the same thing that makes you great in the clutch should make you great in other situations. Also, the guys who get credit for being clutch aren't the same from year to year. They've studied this quite a bit. There's not really such a thing as a clutch hitter. The guys you want in those situations are just great hitters who stay cool, but there appears to be nothing special about the situation that brings out the best in them. There are other things, like being more aggressive with RISP, but that's not clutch - that's just good strategy, because fly balls and ground balls often advance runners in those situations. Again, you just have to be a good hitter to execute, which "clutch" guys are in the 2nd inning or the 9th. As for being in the zone, I don't think that has anything to do with "clutch" situations. It's just from being really good and putting in tons of practice hours, and it's no more likely in the clutch than in any other situation. It's possible there is such a thing, but at this point there's basically no statistical evidence supporting it, and limited theoretical/logical explanations at best.

Weather is pretty irrelevant in baseball anyway. I think a lot of people would rather be in Milwaukee than Florida in summer to be honest. But the one thing that comes up over and over is being closer to family. Even if you're busy, your family can visit you, watch you play, and have dinner after the game. Stuff like that. It's why Aramis Ramirez signed a bargain deal with the Brewers over much more lucrative options, for example. I could easily see Cobb choosing Baltimore for that reason. He's from Florida and played his whole career in TB. Even his minor league career was mostly in the southeast.

All true. And even if it's not, I'm not even saying that Santana is or will be better than Braun this year, or that Braun won't start in LF on opening day for posterity and possibly earn a little more playing time than Santana. I'm saying that the moves they made this off-season reveal that the front office is far more skeptical of Braun's value to the team moving forward than many fans here are.

He also asked for mental days off and all but admitted that the pressure of his early success had gotten to him and contributed to prolonged slumps. He bounced back when they fell way behind in the playoff chase and the pressure was off. I like the guy, but that's something to watch going forward.

It was my general impression that the offense started to tank as it became clear they were a contender in the central. That's when the pressure started. I look at a guy like Thames as the poster child for this. You may be right about fatigue. However, we shouldn't have seen these problems steamroll out of control right after the break if it was just that. It's probably impossible to find the right stats to support this notion, but it was my general impression. It's also true that their RISP hitting was not significantly worse for the whole season, but the way the offense bombed just when people started taking them seriously is hard to ignore. ETA: Again, there's no such thing as clutch hitting because the concept lacks sufficient theoretical/logical background to explain it, other than ordinary statistical fluctuation. However, there is such a thing as anti-clutch hitting, because there are observable explanatory variables like nervousness to explain it. The only explanation for clutch hitting is the absence of nervousness, but that doesn't make you any better in the clutch than in any other situation. There is such a thing as choking, and the Brewers offense did it in spectacular fashion after the ASB last year.

I usually would dismiss exceptionally poor hitting with RISP as a random statistical aberration, but the Brewers had many characteristics of a team that systematically under-performs in those situations. 1. I don't believe in "clutch" hitting but I do believe in "anti-clutch" hitting because there's an observable explanation - nervousness. There were a whole lot of guys on the team who desperately wanted/needed to prove themselves, and that can lead them to press in those situations. 2. Statistically, most batters get more aggressive with runners in scoring position. That's not a bad thing. Ground balls and fly balls can score runs in those situations. But if you have holes in your swing, as many Brewers did, you're going to get an awful lot of k's by being more aggressive. 3. This is a bit of a reach, but opposing teams were probably aware of the Brewers' tendencies and willingly gave them more pitches to hit (especially guys like Thames, who had a ton of solo homers) without RISP, knowing that if guys got on base, they could dance around batters more and get the strikeouts you so desperately need when opponents have RISP. 4. Base-running/steals - #1 in the NL. They got a lot of RISP without really having the plate skills to support their "expected" run totals. Bottom line: they were 10th in the NL in runs, OBP, and OPS. They were #1 in steals (but worst in caught stealing) and #1 in strikeouts. I don't think they really "under-achieved" just because they didn't score more. I am looking forward to dramatic improvements on offense this year, even though I think the pitching will regress.

I could live with that too. Makes perfect sense. I don't think the market is dead for Cobb at all though. It's not like Moustakas or Lucroy. There will be competition. He won't get Arrieta money, but it might not be that far off.