monty57

I don't want to start another thread on this, but is there any word on Braun's status after getting beaned in the elbow last night?

John, I've never been in Tropicana, but I've talked to people who have been there, and I think you summed up their opinion of the park pretty well. They said they would never, under any circumstance, go back. Meanwhile Milwaukee has Chicago 90 miles away, with two teams that each have been around continuously for over 100 years. I think this is an often overlooked point. I've lived in the Beloit area for a long time, and much of the population are Cub fans. I think the "old days" when the Cubs were on WGN every day, while we only got to see a few Brewers games a year on TV had a lot to do with this. The Brewers should draw heavily from cities like Beloit and Janesville, but probably don't get the support they should due to the proximity of the Cubs. They also don't get to expand their fan base south, and many Wisconsin residents are too far away to visit Miller Park more than once or twice a year. That said, it really shows how die hard the Wisconsin sports fans are that they continue to fill the stadium. I do, however remember a lot of empty seats for a lot of years, and Attanasio & crew have to continue to build excitement around the team, or we could go back to those days. It wasn't so long ago that there were people across the country wondering why Milwaukee had a team, and wondering where the Brewers would move.

Well, during last night's game, Bill & Briand said that Macha planned on using different line-ups during the Florida series because there are no playoff consequences. I don't want to go off on the tangent of how meaningless other team's playoff chances are to the future of the Brewers, but if the announcers were right, we should see Gamel a lot this series, as well as some starts for guys like Cruz and of course Mark Rogers.

I was given skybox tickets to the Cubs/Cardinals game this Saturday. With the Cardinals as the opponents, and the chance for the Brewers to gain two draft spots, I'll be pulling for the Cubs while I'm there. I won't be able to outright cheer them on, but I can hope they'll win, which I haven't said in a long time.

I understand the rationale, yet I can't help but think, "Right, because Bush, Cap, Narvdog, Wolf and Yo are 100% solid and have never given up a bunch of runs this year." Exactly. If we had the Yankee's rotation, then I wouldn't care about getting Rogers any starts. Of course, if we had the Yankee's rotation, we'd be in the playoffs, but that's another story. The only people who should be assured of finishing out the year in the starting rotation are Yo and Wolf. I understand that there is a possibility of re-signing Capuano, and Narveson is still trying out for a spot in the 2011 rotation, but Rogers is a potentially huge part of our future, so we need to do what is best for him. It is possible that they feel having him get a few innings and 1-2 starts is in his best interest, but it just doesn't feel that this is why they're making the SP decisions. Rather, it seems Macha's looking much more at getting an extra win or two this year rather than looking at what's the best plan for developing Rogers.

The Brewers seem to be like to minor leagues of announcers. We've been fortunate to continue to get good play-by-play guys to team with Schoeder, but unfortunately, they keep getting plucked away by bigger networks. I look forward to another year or two of BA at the mic before he moves on.

I doubt we'd be "worried the other team will be mad" for starting a rookie, they probably would welcome it. It's probably because we want to ruin another team's playoff hopes, and starting Rogers could possibly hurt our chances of winning. I do think that part of the reason they don't start him against a playoff contender is that they want to beat the playoff contender for some display of bravado of being a "spoiler," I also think that they don't want the teams competing for that playoff spot to be upset with the Brewers for not fielding their 'best" team. For example, if we started Rogers and Rivas against San Francisco and they scored 12 runs a game against us, then San Diego would be mad that we didn't throw more experienced starters on the mound. There is probably also some desire to finish ahead of the Cubs and Astros. To me, none of these are a compelling reason not to start Rogers if the Brewers believe that starting him is the best way to prepare him for the future. What does hurting another team's playoff hopes bring you in the long run? The only thing the Brewers should be worried about regarding Rogers is what is in his (and the team's) best interest for the future. If they believe that putting him in the rotation for 3-4 weeks is what would be best for the future, then I really don't care about "playing spoiler" or about what any other team thinks about us. I can't believe that they think the best use of a young, injury-plagued arm is to juggle him between the bullpen and rotation, and tell him that he doesn't give them a good chance to win, so he can only start when games don't matter. Way to build up his confidence Kenny. Could it possibly be that Macha wants as many wins as possible in an attempt to build up his lifetime winning percentage for his resume, and he really doesn't care about the future of an organization he's probably not going to be a part of?

How is it that the Brewers, who are fighting for 5th place in the division have to take on the top three teams in the AL East? Shouldn't we have Baltimore in there somewhere? On a side note, what are the odds we're playing against Fielder in one of those AL East series?

I keep reading quotes of Brewers staff saying Rogers will get starts "...as long as the game doesn't have playoff ramifications..." Who cares if the game has playoff ramifications for other teams? If we are feel that starting Rogers is the right move, we should start him regardless of who we're playing. If we feel that it is best for Rogers' development to come in from the bullpen this September, then fine, but keeping him from starting because you're worried that some other team will be mad at you for "not playing your best players" is a terrible reason for not giving Rogers more starts.

especially if you're a parent of ben hendrickson. But he was just a tool. I wouldn't judge all parents by his actions. That's like calling all baseball players crazy after watching a Milton Bradley meltdown.

So if Mark will be starting, and he'll be activated on Friday, does it mean there's a good chance he'll be starting on Friday? Something tells me that his mother's word that he'll be a starting pitcher is not equal to the Brewers' word. I'd love to see him get some starts, but I highly doubt that he will. Still excited to see him pitch, though.Not only did she in no minced words say that he'll be a starter, but she said that they'll be there when he pitches, which seems to imply that they have already been told when he will have his first start. From my limited experience, players' parents are kept in the know of what's going on. This is pretty exciting news, and I would guess that Bush will be the first man out when it comes to Rogers and possibly Rivas getting some starts. Bush is undoubtedly gone after this season, so he'd be the easy choice to lose his starting role. Capuano will be a FA as well, but he's been pitching well and will probably be pretty easy for the Brewers to sign in the offseason if they feel he can be a starter, so they'll probably give him and Narveson more reps to fight for next year's #5 spot.

Even if we pick up a #1/2 and a #3/4 this offseason, we'll still need a #5, and Narveson probably leads the pack in that race right now. If he's the worst pitcher on the staff, I'm not too worried. It's when he's one of the top pitchers on the staff that we have problems.

It seems odd that a flamethrowing former #1 pick with serious injury history wouldn't have had these "motion anaysis tests" done earlier than now.

Gomez definitely chose his words better in the recent article. It seems that being benched with the threat of AAA next year may have been what it took to get through to Gomez. I hope he is serious, and does what he says, which is to spend the winter in the Dominican Republid working with the Brewers AAA hitting instructor on developing better plate discipline.

Well, if Melvin was telling the truth when he said he wasn't going to call someone up simply to sit the bench, maybe this can be the straw that broke the camel's back and we can at least rid ourselves of Macha.

Yeah, as much as I'd love to see Braddock as a starter, it isn't very likely to happen. That adds to the reason I want to see Jeffress converted back to a starting role. If a pitcher is forced by injury (like Braddock) to a bullpen role, then you grin & bear it, but it doesn't make much sense to voluntarily lower a player's value by putting them in the pen when they don't have to be there. That would sort of be like bringing up Koshansky and starting him half the time at 1B while letting Prince sit on the bench. You understand it if Prince is hurt, but it makes no sense if he's healthy.

It also probably would have helped if the unpire immediately tossed the pitcher out when the pitch went behind Morgan. Morgan took a second before charging, and I'd bet that if the ump had yelled "you're outta here," no fight would've occurred.

MLEs are not a projection system. They don't claim to be predictive at all. You type in numbers and they give you a number of how that would translate to another league. In other words, they project how stats in one league would have played out in another league. How is that not a projection system? They (MLE is a tool, so can't really translate into a "they") may not claim to be predictive, but if you give someone a number which projects how the player would have done in a different league, some people will use that to assert that the numbers actually show something more than a projection. That's what I was arguing against. MLE's are fine for what they are. They try to illustrate (if you prefer that to "project") what a player's stats in one league would have been in a different league. They take aggregate stats and project the mean on everyone. Of course that will be hit and miss, as individuals are going to be individuals and aggregates can't account for that. They are fun & moderately useful projections, but don't really tell anything that really happened. Katin never OPS'd .706 in the majors, no matter what the MLE's projected. I'll stop now, as this thread shouldn't have been hijacked into the validity of a SABR tool.

Yeah, two young, front-line starters seems pretty steep. No wonder no deals were made prior to trade deadline. I agree with Al on this. Prince will probably bring back one pitcher for our rotation in 2011 plus a high upside minor leaguer or two. I'd guess we'll look for two new pitchers from outside the organization, so the other one will either have to come from trading other players or picking up a FA. Obviously, Cliff Lee would be wonderful but not probable.

MLE's are a projection tool that don't say what anyone has actually done. I've heard/read many people say they're very imprecise, so I haven't really bothered to look into them as much more than a baseline guess as to what someone could possibly do. When there is a statement such as: A guy with the ceiling to be a reserve probably is not much of a reserve, he's more AAA depth. If Hart goes down for a month and you have a guy unable to get on base 30% of the time as his backup, he ain't much of a backup. His MLE is .272/.434, which again, is passable if he's a C or 2B, but not in LF/RF. It's just too many outs. To me, that puts way too much emphasis on MLE as something more than it is. The seamheads.com (http://www.seamheads.com/...r-league-equivalencies/) article goes into how they're calculated. They're based on a simple premise that takes the aggregate stats based on numerous factors and assumes the regression for all players in the league will match the mean. This of course can't be true, but it seems to be a base premise for most predictive stats in the SABR world. Simply put, Katin has never posted a .706 OPS in the majors, so to make statements that would seem to imply that he has is a mis-statement. It would be much more appropriate to say something such as "even though Katin's OBP is .375 this year, MLE's say his OBP in the majors would be .272 and even though that seems utterly ridiculous, since I believe the MLE is a good predictive tool, I don't think he'd have a high enough OBP to be a suitable MLB backup."

Just a quick search led me to this excerpt from seamheads.com: "...Of course, creating MLEs at all is a bit of a fool’s errand. We can’t really know how any player would have played in a different environment, especially one that is drastically different regarding its level of competition. Some players can adapt and adjust their playing when faced with different settings, and some have difficulty. Nevertheless, it can be a fun and enlightening exercise..." According to MLE, Alcides Escobar should hit for a .261/.299/.347 .646 OPS which isn't too far off of what he's doing. .251/.302/.343 .645 OPS But how did they do with Casey McGehee? He was expected to post a .241 avg / .284 obp / .338 slg/ .622 OPS last year. Not really close. Based on Corey Patterson's 2009 Nashville stats, he should post a .290 avg / .323 obp / .495 slg / .818 OPS. Based on MLE, we never should have let him go. I think the people of seamheads.com got it right. It's a fool's errand, but can be a fun and enlightning exercise.

Could you please answer the rest of the paragraph I wrote: How does .280 avg / .376 OBP / .563 SLG at AAA translate to a .272 OBP / .434 SLG in the majors? If a .939 AAA OPS translate to a .706 MLB OPS then a .900 OPS MLB player must have hit for around a 2.000 OPS at AAA. If someone who posts a .939 OPS in AAA is expected (per MLE) to post a .706 MLB OPS, then what would someone have to do for the MLE to project them to be even a halfway decent player?

Yeah, I thought it was funny that Wes Helms suddenly became Florida's resident expert on how to play the game the right way in order to respect the integrity of the game. Maybe he should learn how to test the integrity of a wet ramp before stepping onto it.

While I don't like how Arnett pitched this season, I'm not ready to write him off. From what I read, he put way too much pressure on himself this season trying to be perfect, and that messed up his game. He needs to step back, relax and come back next year doing what everyone knows he can do. I also think (purely opinion) that the Brewers are instilling Peterson's methodology to every pitcher in the system. This includes changing the mechanics of pitchers, some pretty drastically. It seems that a lot of our pitchers at every level started the season pitching worse than expectations, coming on stronger as the season progressed. I hope that over the long haul this move will turn around our historically bad track record at getting pitchers from the draft board to the majors. However, in the short term, it could have some negative effects. Maybe Arnett was effected by this, maybe not.

I don't think this shows Gamel as a whiner. However I do think it shows that all the people who treat Gamel, Hart and McGehee as interchangeable defensive parts are probably understating the difficulty of changing positions, especially when you are expected to play the new position at an acceptable major league level. Even though Hart hasn't played 1B in around eight years, he has played it, so our best bet barring a trade would probably be Hart at 1B, Gamel in RF, McGehee at 3B. I think what will probably happen is one of Gamel/McGehee will be traded for pitching (in addition to Prince being traded for pitching). We will then sign one of the many FA 1B on the market, leaving Hart in RF with the remaining player of Gamel/McGehee at 3B. No one will have to change positions, our offense will remain above average with the addition of the FA 1B, and we'll have much better pitching.