Bucky Rules

It has been argued that the addition of CC Sabathia to the rotation will result in a net gain of two wins over the remainder of the season. You honestly believe that testing something like this with our #5 starter will completely negate the positive impact of adding a Cy Young award winning pitcher to our rotation? I'm sorry, but that doesn't pass the sniff test.

The plane is going down. We're losing altitude. 20,000 feet, 18,000 feet.... HELP! Somebody do SOMETHING!... "Good evening passengers. We're sorry to inform you that the plane is crashing. But, we're working diligently to find out why the plane is crashing. In the meantime, sit tight while we do nothing to try and right the ship." http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif ...I thought I'd jump in to the bad analogy foray.

If you can look at his game logs and still come to the conclusion that this seems to be what is going on, I'll concede the argument. I don't see how anyone that is being completely honest can make that argument after viewing the logs. You can say that there's not enough data. But, I don't think you can honestly make the argument that Bush's road numbers are consistently getting better since he started pitching better overall.

I only threw Bush stats at you because you made a false statement. That's the only reason. You said his numbers were skewed by poor early season results. They weren't. He's been horrible all season on the road. I don't need to examine McClung's numbers. I'm not arguing that McClung should be pitching. I merely said your argument was fufu.

I agree. It seems pretty senseless. I think the idea with the long reliever might be that you want to save him for situations where a three or four inning stint might be necessary. The thinking being -- he's used to handling longer outings. I don't know. It doesn't seem that situation comes up often enough to waste a guy out in lala land. At least. Yes. I know, and I'm sorry to be a part of it. I just couldn't help myself when someone makes a point that even the few starts does nothing to support. One can argue that the numbers this season mean nothing. One shouldn't argue that the results of this season are something other than what they are. Bush has been awful on the road all season. He has been very good at home. Whether or not that means we should try a platoon is another question. But those two facts are undeniable (I would think).

Corey Hart's '08 OBP: .327Rickie Weeks' '08 OBP: .326 Corey Hart's career MLB OBP: .336 Rickie Week's career MLB OBP: .350 I'm not sure why anyone would think we'd be better off flipping Hart for Weeks in the leadoff spot.

FTJ and end... I'm interested in hearing your take on this. I seriously don't know what to make of it, but it certainly does suggest that there may be something more than small sample outlier (results) to his poor pitching on the road.

So you don't think he's been pitching better lately? Fair enough. Sorry... I couldn't resist.

He has pitched better at home. He has not pitched better on the road. He's had five starts ont he road since he started pitching better at home. You chose to only include three of them in your data. Then you muddied it up further by mixing them in with SIX home starts -- where nobody is denying he's been fantastic. I'll do the math for you. Since May 12 (when he started pitching phenomonally at home): Home ERA: 1.62 (7 starts) Road ERA: 6.66 (5 starts) Even if you choose to ignore a big chunk of the available data of an already small sample and start with May 27th, the splits look like this: Home ERA: 1.64 (6 starts) Road ERA: 5.06 (3 starts) Still looks like a big difference to me. And it sure was convenient of you to mix 6 home starts with only 3 road starts to demonstrate that he's pitching better now. Especially when the question was -- how is he pitching on the road? But you're right... 5.06 (with one stellar start and two awful starts) is better than 6.66. Congratulations, I'm now convinced. It's completely disingenuous to pretend that he's been anything but awful on the road this season. His numbers were NOT skewed by poor early season starts as you suggested. And he has shown no signs of getting things corrected on the road save for a seemingly isolated good start in Atlanta.

Do we really need to even get into how completely distorted these stats are because you not-so-arbitrarily chose May 27 as your starting point? Come on. Run the numbers since May 12 (when he had his 1st good home start) and show the difference between home and road, and then we can talk. Or AT LEAST be intellectually honest enough to show the difference between road and home numbers in the skewed dates that you did choose. I don't even disagree with your desired result, but the method you choose to demonstrate it just looks like you're manipulating the data to prove your pre-determined conclusion.

I'm not trying to bait you. His road numbers are simply not skewed by bad starts early in the season. Every road start he's had all season (except one) has been bad. In spite of him getting right for his home starts, he has continued to be dreadful on the road. Your statement was untrue, and I don't think it should be left out there unchallenged.

Your point is clear. I don't even disagree with you for the most part, although I fall far short of calling it idiotic. I'll remain skeptical. But, as long as they're open minded to dumping the idea, I'm OK with giving it shot. Having said that... IMO naivin was jumping on you for your much more general comment of how the Brewers win in spite of Ned's idiocy. That comment seemed to go beyond the boundaries of this one decision -- since clearly this decision has had no impact on the Brewers record to date.

That statement is completely untrue. Bush has had quality starts in every home start since May 12. Since that time he has had five road starts and four of them were awful.

One more sign that the apocalypse is coming for the Cubs. This is a small sign, but a sign nonetheless. They will fall, and they will fall hard. Muahahahahahahahahaha.http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/devil.gif

Do you guys really believe that Yost makes a move like this on his own? Do you really think he hasn't run this by Melvin? Do you really think that Melvin hasn't run it by his own stat guys and scouts? Do you really think that this idea even originated with Yost? Come on. You guys aren't that... well... I'll let you choose the word.

I'm with shelmark. This deal wasn't about Weeks, and I think he'll start more than 3-4 times a week. I think it's more like 4-6 times a week with Durham getting 1-2. Durham is the LH veteran bat (and actually a bonus as a switch hitter) off the bench that they were looking for. And they were able to get him cheap.

I think where he was picked is irrelevant at this point. If that's the criterion you want to use, I can spin that and say that he's had a better career to this point than the #1 pick in that draft. I agree that the press conferences are a waste of time. But, he has to attend them, so he's going to continue to defend his players. You might as well get used to it. Then I guess I'm a moron. Because I really don't want them to do that. Not now anyway. Durham is some nice insurance, and a nice bat off the bench (to go with his probable 1-2 starts per week). I don't want to see Weeks benched just yet.

Rickie's at a .405 OBP clip for the last two weeks. He might already be starting his big 2nd half (from a glass half-full kind of perspective). I love the pickup of Durham, though, for two guys that were apparently unlikely to ever see the Brewers 25 man roster.

I think there must be a better analogy than that for this situation. It's not like we get one spin of the wheel, and if we lose there's no turning back. The Brewers still get to pull most of their chips of the table. Did you ever try doing that at a Vegas roullette table?

I'm skeptical on this one as well. However, I saw a post from rluz that quoted a study that suggested that Bush actually DOES pitch much different in the ballparks not named Miller Park. I'm willing to give it a shot for a short period of time. But, if it doesn't work well from the start, I'll be very tempted to pull the plug on this experiment.

Today is a pretty good example of why I'm choosing to give Yost the benefit of the doubt, until I witness misuse. Stetter came in to face 5 batters. The splits will show that it was 4 RHBs and 1 LHB. But, they actually were 1 LHB, 3 SH (switch hitters), and a pitcher. There's not a single guy he faced that I had a problem with (as you generally prefer switch hitters to bat right handed). Yet the splits (in a vacuum) suggest he shouldn't have faced four of those five batters.

I thnk that's true. And when he helps bring a World Series championship to Milwaukee his price will go up even more. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

Tbadder -- a little harsh for the most important players on a team 9 games over, don't ya think?

Fair enough, TLB. It's something worth keeping an eye on going forward. For now, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that the vast majority of those RHBs faced were probably either switch hitters, pinch hitters replacing a lefty, a "sandwich" guy between two lefties, or non-critical situations -- or something along those lines.

This is in response to TLBs comments in the midseason player grades thread, but I thought my response belonged more in a Yost thread. So, I'll hope TLB finds it here... Are you troubled by what Yost said in the press conference about Shouse? Or are you troubled by how they're actually being employed. I know you cited the number of RHBs faced, but in a vacuum, that may not be the fairest way to view the situation. I don't have a great answer of what the best way to assess it is, short of looking at every individual appearance that they've made this season - which I'm too lazy to do right now (maybe at some point I will because there's not THAT many). But, I don't recall instances where they've been in critical situations against RHBs that seemed out of line to me. And I also don't recall instances where they weren't available to face LHBs in critical situations because they were used at times that they shouldn't have been. Maybe Yost has just been lucky in that regard where he hasn't been burned by it yet, so I missed where it could've potentially been a problem. However, if the criterion is that they should be facing almost no RHBs, I don't think the Brewers are afforded that luxury. I don't think we can afford to have two guys in our pen be (essentially) one-batter pitchers. At least we couldn't in the first half. The addition of the ultra-innings eater (no pun intended) CC should have a HUGE (no pun intended part II) impact on the bullpen, I believe. Of course, having Mota (who can't seem to get anyone out), Gagne (who I thought might've turned the corner, and now I don't trust again), Riske and Villy (who are still more inconsistent than I would like) as the other options aren't exactly comforting. On top of that, Torres has shown a couple of chinks in the armor lately -- that hopefully is just a sign that he's not perfect, but not necessarily that the apocalypse is coming. I guess what I'm saying here is... all things considered, I'm skeptical (without further evidence) that they've been misused to this point.