monty57

OK, here's an interesting situation which came up today. As we all know, Kotsay started in CF. During the 6th, Boggs pinch hit for Mitre, and singled. Kotsay came up during the same inning, and the Padres brought in a lefty to face him. Roenicke kept Kotsay in, who drew a walk. Roenicke then replaced Kotsay with Gomez on defense the next inning. I understand that Kotsay's PA resulted in a positive result (a walk), but if you were going to replace him with Gomez defensively anyway, why not bat Gomez, the righty? Prior to the AB, that would seem to have a better chance of having a positive result. Also, instead of putting Gomez in defensively, why not just put Boggs out there, and put the pitcher in Kotsay's spot? That would seemingly improve the defense, while saving Gomez for a potential PH appearance later. With our depleted bench, using both Boggs and Gomez meant that only Counsell and Lucroy remained for any PH needs later in the game. This leads me to believe that Roenicke feels that (1) Kotsay is a better hitter than Gomez, even against lefties, and (2) Boggs cannot play CF

I was thinking of Kendall as well. It seems that Kotsay has the same voodoo power Kendall had, which makes managers playing him more than they should. I didn't like Kotsay making the team out of ST, but he could have some use if used correctly. He can still hold around an average OBP, he just doesn't have any power anymore. He has played multiple positions, so he has some versatility, he just doesn't have the range to be someone who should be played in the field regularly. While I'm not up in arms over Kotsay playing CF/batting #2, it seems that Boggs would be the better choice for CF this game, and Hart should be the #2 hitter, as he's the better player. The more often players are used in what seems to be the incorrect fashion, the more likely it will cost us in the long run.

I agree, and I have been on the Boggs bandwagon for a while. However, to start the season, Boggs was left off the roster by Melvin in favor of Kotsay and Reed for some reason. Paired with Almonte, Nieves and 0-for-the-first-month Counsell, and that didn't leave Roenicke many options. Regarding my earlier post, I don't want to come off as a Kotsay supporter, as I'd gladly like to see Boggs get a shot, and there's no way Kotsay should regularly start over Hart. However, to this point in the season, Kotsay has been decent offensively, and his getting one or two starts in CF over Boggs won't make much difference. If Gomez went down, and Kotsay became the regular CF, then I'd be very worried.

At least they have plenty to sell: Fielder, Grienke, Wolf That would be wonderful... we emptied our system for two months of Greinke. Really, if they're sellers, I think Prince is the only big player to go, and they'd probably look for long-term help at SS/CF and probably high upside minor league pitching. Trading Prince when you already have your 2012 MLB rotation set would allow us to get much more talent than we were offered last season when we were looking for a young, MLB-proven starter. I doubt we'd throw in the towel on the 2012 season by trading Greinke and/or Wolf, when we should still have a great starting rotation and could very well field a good team. At the very least, we will need to see how the AAA guys are pitching before we make a trade. That said, it's really disappointing that it's May and we're thinking about selling, when I figured this would be a playoff season. We really need to get this ship turned around quickly.

How many balls does Gomez get to that Kotsay doesn't throughout a game? One, maybe two. To RR that must be worth it to give Gomez a day off. Pretty much sums it up. Putting him out there once or twice wouldn't kill us. His quote made it sound like he really didn't want to do it, but since Morgan's hurt, he may do it once or twice. I would prefer Boggs, but I'm not going to get too bent out of shape unless he makes it a regular occurance. he decides to bat Gomez 2nd for nearly a month based on some meaningless spring training games ...and the other options were?? I'm sure everybody would've been thrilled putting Yuni there. Maybe Wil Nieves? He should've played Morgan more, but he seems to get a LOT of flak for batting Gomez #2 when he really was hamstrung by injuries and didn't have many options. As to the Gomey thing, it is pretty common to put a "y" on the end of names. However, for Gomez, who doesn't appear to be the most "heady" ballplayer around, I think "Gomer" would be a better nickname. To make Roenicke look like more of an idiot, Kotsay is starting for the second day in a row in RF I was pretty shocked to see this as well. Hart may be struggling, but he is clearly the more talented of the two players, so he should be getting almost every start in RF. Good thing Prince has been hitting, or maybe Roenicke would be starting Kotsay twice a week at 1B. Yes Kotsay has a .362 OBP but take away the 3 IBB and it drops down to .333 and projects at .315 going forward. Once again, the old "I don't care what he's done, the 'predictive stats' said he shouldn't have done it, so it couldn't have happened" arguement. If you take away Rickie & Prince's HBP numbers, and Prince's IBB, then their OBP go way down as well. The thing is, the IBB and HBP did happen, so you can't take them away. Opposing managers felt the right thing to do was to walk Kotsay to get to the next guy in the order, so Kotsay has to get some credit for that. I don't think Kotsay is a good player, but he hasn't been as bad as advertised. The angst over Yuni is "I don't care if he makes good contact and hits the ball hard, he doesn't walk, so his OBP is low, so he sucks." Now apparently the arguement over Kotsay is "I don't care if his OBP is high, he doesn't hit the ball hard and his walks don't count, so he sucks." As I said above, Hart should now be starting over him regularly, but people came into the season mad at Kotsay being on the roster, so whetever he does won't be good enough to overcome the critics.

I really don't see a better situation opening up for Boggs, so I would be pretty surprised if he doesn't jump at the chance to head back to Milwaukee. That said, the injury bug has certainly hit the Brewers hard this season. Hopefully that turns around, as we'll need all hands on deck if we want to have any chance at the playoffs this season. Morgan isn't a star, but he has been a bright spot on what's certainly been a dreary season, and his skillset fits in nicely with this roster. I hope he makes it back soon.

Last season: 0 runs - 14 games (8.7%) 1 run - 12 games (7.45%) 2 runs - 18 games (11.18%) 3 runs - 26 games (16.15%) 4 runs - 24 games (14.91%) 5 runs - 13 games (8.07%) 6 runs - 14 games (8.70%) 7 runs - 10 games (6.21%) 8 runs - 14 games (8.70%) 9 runs - 3 games (1.86%) 10+ runs - 13 games (8.07%) I don't know how that stacks up to teams historically, but scoring 3 or fewer runs in 43.48% of your games and still having a top 5 offense based on runs scored don't seem to jibe unless you figure in the multiple 20 run games the Brewers put together in 2010. Note: they only played 161 games last year, due to a late rainout that wasn't made up.

I now remember what I had blocked from my mind watching the Brewers last season. When the team is struggling to score runs, it appears that everyone on the team tries to hit a monster home run with every swing, leading to a lot of wild swings & misses, high strikeout totals by opposing pitchers, and no runs scored. In my euphoria at the offseason trades for Greinke and Marcum, I pushed my negative feelings about the all-or-nothing offense right out of mind. What I found (to my surprise) was that the teams that scored a lot of runs, but did so with a lower slugging percentage actually were more to the extremes, having more games where they'd score 0-3 runs, but also more games where they'd score 8 or more. Roco, that may be true about teams in aggregate, but look at the number of high run & low run games by the Brewers last year. I remember looking at the results near the end of last year, and if I recall correctly, there was a ridiculously high percentage of games where the Brewers scored in the "extremes."

Fielder has always been a bad fielder (no pun intended), but this year he has potentially been the worst 1B I've ever seen. He can't scoop the ball, has no range, has no reach, balls bounce out of his glove, and now he can't even throw the ball straight. His defense has single-handedly cost us quite a few runs already this season. He will be missed when he is gone, but it wil be nice to see someone with a clue defensively at 1B in the future. Essentially, we have two good defenders on the team in Gomez and Morgan, and unfortunately they rarely play at the same time because they play the same position, and our manager feels that Kotsay should start in RF over Morgan when Hart's not playing. The only real defensive upgrade that has any chance of happening this season (barring injury or falling out of the race) would be to pick up another SS.

I don't put much blame or credit on the hitting coach's shoulders. Our offense has been overly reliant on the HR for the past few seasons, and it probably will be this year as well. That leads to periods where we score a lot, and periods where we have a hard time scoring, depending on when the big bats are hot. I think the big thing right now is that Braun & Fielder got hot & then cooled off at the same time. We looked unstoppable when they were hot, and now we're floundering. Either of them is capable of carrying the team on their own, so hopefully one of them will heat back up again quickly. My biggest concern for the offense coming into this season was which Corey Hart would arrive... the All-Star from early 2008 & all of 2010, or the guy we wanted to lynch late 2008 & most of 2009. If he is able to perform at a >.800 OPS level, and fit into the #2 hole, then our offense should be fine. If he's around .750 OPS like 2009, then we have some worries. With healthy Weeks, "good" Hart, normal Braun & Fielder and 2009-10 McGehee, our offense will be above average. If one or two of those don't pan out, we don't have the depth to cover for it. Playing Morgan more vs. RH pitchers, both in CF as a platoon, and occasionally in RF (especially to keep Kotsay as a bench bat) should help the team's OBP. Limiting the amount of PAs by Nieves and doing something to get us another MLB-quality bat on the bench will help the offense as well.

With our lack of IF depth, he would definitely be someone to look at, but I'd be surprised if he isn't a Cardinal by the end of the week.

I thought it was kind of a foregone conclusion that Estrada would be sent down to make room for Grienke, meaning that if we keep 13 pitchers, Green would still be one of them. I agree that it is very likely that Boggs is the one who will go. I guess my question is... If you were GM/manager, how would you handle the roster as we have players coming off the DL (Morgan, Grienke, and Almonte should all be off this week). If we cut Boggs, our bench will be Gomez/Morgan, Counsell, Kotsay and Nieves. Is it worth keeping a "right-handed specialist" who hasn't been that special over an extra bat on the bench? And, when Almonte's healthy, will he just be let go, or will he be the one to replace one of the bullpen arms?

It looks like Morgan will be back today, and according to this article, Roenicke wants to keep the 13th pitcher, which means that one of our bench players will likely be sent packing. I just wanted to get your opinions, giving the current state of the team, as to who you would replace when Morgan returns and why. To me, it seems the 13th pitcher would have to be Green, while the "last bat on the bench" probably belongs to Boggs.

We could get the mods to authorize a Cliff Notes version of the thread. That way in the future kids can do reports on the thread without actually having to spend a week reading all the posts.

This year, they both suck. BetAncourt, probably a little less so. He's provided a few doubles and sacrifice flies, whereas Escobar's offensive 'contributions' over in KC are pitcher-esque. What's arguable (to some) is how much the difference in defense offsets. However, my argument is predicated on the fact that predictively, the Brewers would have been better off with Escobar than BetAncourt. Not many would have predicted Escobar's offense, to this point, to be so rotten. Predictions only go so far though. My argument has never been that we should have kept Escobar however. But that again goes back to the ongoing theme of this thread. Betancourt seems to have been better than any other option available to us, but people still hate him because of preconceived notions and the belief that he probably won't be good going forward. I hope at some point, production outweighs predictions, but I've been told that this will never happen, as what Betancourt does this year for some reason will not matter. Betancourt is probably at best an average all-around MLB SS. However, we need to look at this in terms of relative value. Relative to all other options which appear to have been available to us, Betancourt has a good chance of being the best of the bunch.

I'm with RoCo on this. Even if all "luck" balances out, and we "suck no more than everyone else," who's to say that it will balance to even for the Brewers? Maybe the other teams' bad plays occur with 2 outs and no one on and don't lead to a run, or maybe they occur in a game that's already a blowout. Or, maybe the other teams' bad plays don't occur against the Brewers, so they are far & away the "unlucky" team in the games they play. As RoCo pointed out, all teams make bad plays, but just because we make a bad play which directly leads to a loss today, it doesn't mean someone else will make a bad play which directly leads to a Brewers' win in the future. Some of our "bad luck" would go away if we would get healthy. Some would go away if we would stop throwing guys like Green out there with the game on the line. Some will go away when we finally decide the Hart is "ready to hit #2" and "ready to play everyday" over Kotsay. Some will go away when Yo remembers how to pitch. Some would have went the other way if Saito would have admitted he was hurt before giving up the game. In other words some of our "bad luck" isn't really "bad luck." Hitters will have bad streaks, pitchers will have bad outings, and even the best closers blow saves. We've had some bad outings at inopportune times, and over the last few days we haven't hit well. We need to limit our losses and get on a bit of a roll, and we have the horses to go on a nice winning streak that will erase a lot of our worries.

...it certainly doesn't mean people expect him to be better than YuniB this year, but that's really, a completely different discussion. Not really, they were involved in the same trade. The involvement of Esocbar in the trade is the reason we didn't have a shortstop and KC had an extra SS, and therefore was the reason we got Yuni back in the trade. The biggest arguement I've seen about Yuni is that we have a playoff caliber team, and Yuni is the weakest link. If Yuni is actually better than Escobar this year, then his added value over what we would have had with Escobar will actually help us in our playoff hunt, regardless of how he plays vs other SS in the league. His relative value has to be compared with our other options going into the season, not against some mythical "replacement player" or even against the "average SS."

Good post, mkm13. While there have been great strides forward in statistical studies in baseball over the past decade or so, I think many take them far too seriously. Remember, Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" was written in 1776, and some of the greatest mathematical minds of the past 200 years have opined on the study of economics, and it's still far from an exact science, and often strikes heated debates as to whose methods (mostly based on mathematics and statistics) are correct. The so-called "advanced defensive metrics" have only been around a few years and will likely look very different ten or twenty years from now than they do today. To attempt to put an exact figure (down to the tenths or hundreths of a run over a season) on defense, when most of the data is subject to individuals' opinions is hardly going to be exact. It is interesting and helpful, but statements such as "Betancourt allowed 15.125 more runs than Player x" are laughable. Maybe 100 years from now, the John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman of the SABR universe will have great debates as to why the Cubs still haven't won a World Series.

I dont have time to add anything, but here: http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=8585&position=SS Under plate discipline. Thanks for the link! I've compared Yuni to Braun (who is obviously a better hitter, and walks more) and the aforementioned Gomez. Stats are this season (career) Yuni swings at 74.2% (68.5%) of the strikes thrown his way and 37.3% (32.2%) of the balls. He makes contact on 97.4% (94.2%) of strikes and 66.1% (74.2%) of balls. Braun swings at 58.6% (66.3%) of strikes and 29.7% (31.3%) of balls. He makes contact on 85% (88.4%) of strikes and 72.4% (62.1%) of balls. Gomez swings at 73.9% (67.5%) of strikes and 26.1% (35.4%) of balls. He makes contact on 87.2% (86.6%) of strikes and 65.2% (60.2%) of balls. League averages for 2007-2011 show players swinging at around 64-66% of strikes and 25-29% of balls, making contact on around 87-88% of strikes and 60-66% of balls. All three of the Brewers players I looked at swing at more than their share of pitches out of the strike zone. What really stands out at me is how good Yuni is at making contact. If a pitcher throws him a strike, he is making contact 72.27% (64.52%) of the time, compared to league average of around 56.55%. That could go a long ways toward figuring out why he doesn't take a lot of walks... if the pitcher throws him a strike, he is very likely to hit it. Additionally, he makes contact with 23.89% of the balls he sees vs. around 17% for league average.

So he's in a position where it is VERY likely that the pitcher will groove a BP fastball right down the middle of the plate, and when he swings at it and achieves a positive result he should be up for capital punishment? Is there a site which shows how often a player swings at pitches out of the strike zone, and how often they let pitches in the strike zone go by? To me (note that this is a "naked eye test"), Yuni swings at strikes and makes contact a lot, leading to very few walks. A pitcher would basically need to throw four straight balls to start the AB in order to walk him, but doesn't necessarily mean that he has poor plate discipline. This is in contrast to someone like Gomez who swings at pitches well out of the strike zone on a regular basis.

I'm with Stevo. Gross was traded mid-season where we were in a playoff run. Hart had a .831 pre-All-Star-break OPS, and .659 OPS after the break. Many here lamented that we didn't have a LH RF to platoon with Hart, if not replace him entirely. Gross had a .776 OPS post-All-Star break that year. Not a great player, but we sure could've used him after he was traded.

Never!! You look at what he did years ago to predict what he will do, from which you can determine down to .001 of a run how valueable the player will be over a one year period, but what a player is doing right now is never important.

Lowe got thrown out of Boston because he couldn't handle his drinking. I knew they drank a lot in Boston, but I didn't think they threw you out of town just for not being able to handle your booze.

His defense has still been bad on the year, BIZ has him negative now as does UZR. He just has no range and that is going to make him a bad defensive player no matter what he does. The best they can hope for is that they can hide it some with the shifts. Ummm... That was a joke. I don't really think they threatened physical violence on Betancourt if he doesn't hustle.

True, but without the PED's, he also won't put on the extra weight a la Bonds which caused his knees to become worthless so he couldn't move in the field. I'm not too worried about signing him through age 36, as he's in great shape. He's not likely to age like Fielder.