sbrylski

He knows how motivated Towers is to move him, and he's knows the Cubs are the only suitors right now. I think he's just playing Towers.

Mill Hamb has a line over the last three seasons of .288 / .354 / .458 / .812. That's easily comfortable, as long as we can keep a 3B OPS over .780 or higher.

Sounds like the marketing pitch used for the Segway.

You mean, the sample keeps getting smaller (starting pitchers fail to qualify by pitching too few innings) but the ERAs go up? Basically, if I understand you correctly. If all you know is that a player is a pitcher, you can assume that next season his ERA will rise and his IP will decrease, if they pitched a full season the prior year, regardless of age. Here's a study that demonstrates: LINK Those graphs are great, BTW. Thanks. My favorite part is the visual of how BB and HR spike in 2006, as does ERA. And you can see IP sink their furthest below the trend line because of that.

You mean, the sample keeps getting smaller (starting pitchers fail to qualify by pitching too few innings) but the ERAs go up? Basically, if I understand you correctly. If all you know is that a player is a pitcher, you can assume that next season his ERA will rise and his IP will decrease, if they pitched a full season the prior year, regardless of age. Here's a study that demonstrates: LINK Those graphs are great, BTW. Thanks. My favorite part is the visual of how BB and HR spike in 2006, as does ERA. And you can see IP sink their furthest below the trend line because of that.

And you love watching TV from your hallway?

I don't think any player will be worth $10 million extra in attendance a year. I do agree that if CC = winning the Brewers will be more likely to get more season ticket holders in the short-term. Not in name recognition alone, but name + talent that leads to more wins could. And I shouldn't have said just attendance - merchandising revenue and TV ratings and all of that goes into that $10 million as well.

Tejada hit .284/.310/.724 against righties last year and .282/.326/.743 against lefties last year. It would solve the 3B issue for next year if you swap Hall for Tejada. Let's project a .750 OPS for Tejada next season. If Hall can hit .850 vLHP, which he's been doing: (70% * x) + (30% * .850) = .750 x = .707 We only need to find a 3B that can OPS .708 against RHP to beat Tejada's production.

Maybe Melvin feels the only way the Brewers have a chance at making the playoffs is if they sign Sabathia. I think Mark A views Sabathia as our Ichiro, a player worth more than just his performance. "Sabathia" = "winning" to our fanbase, and bringing him back would mean more to the attendance numbers than bringing in any other player, even if other moves might make us a better team. Sabathia may cost $10 million per year more than the club wants to add to its payroll, but if they're projecting $10 million worth increased attendance with the signing then it would be worth it. I think it appears that Mark A is a big fan of continuity.

I remember someone suggesting a shorter than average opt out clause the other day... Oh, found it: Needless to say, if the rumors are true, I'm happy and think it would be a good move.

Maybe if he was LH, but I still wouldn't give up Salome. Too high a ceiling if he does stick at catcher. And I think Tejada is just about done, his HR/FB rate is declined each of the past two seasons and his walk rate last year was the lowest of his career, as was his OPS. He might bounce back slightly (he did still have a good LD%) and hover his OPS in the 700's for 2-3 more seasons, but its more likely he falls apart than returns to 800+ OPS, IMO.

FYI, half my sample had ERA's under 3, and the average ERA was 3.84. No conclusion along with this fact, just saying. I read an interesting tidbit about pitchers aging curves. Basically, any healthy pitcher will, like hitters, get better into their late 20's and then decline. But because there are so many injured pitchers who never recover or return to form, the average age curve for all pitchers is actually positive sloping at every age (ERA on the y-axis). So I just went with a linear trend line.

FYI, half my sample had ERA's under 3, and the average ERA was 3.84. No conclusion along with this fact, just saying. I read an interesting tidbit about pitchers aging curves. Basically, any healthy pitcher will, like hitters, get better into their late 20's and then decline. But because there are so many injured pitchers who never recover or return to form, the average age curve for all pitchers is actually positive sloping at every age (ERA on the y-axis). So I just went with a linear trend line.

They say he'd be foolish not to shop him, with such a demand out there. But where is this demand going to go between now and next offseason? He'll still be valuable in 2010, and we won't have our own hole at SS for a year.

These three are overstatments: After lackluster seasons by the Packers and Badgers, who both (in my opinion) appear to be headed in the wrong direction after the departure of legends (Alvarez and Favre) Not to sidetrack, but QB play has basically nothing to do with the Packers apparent slip this season. Signing Sabathia would be perhaps the biggest risk every made in the history of American sports. That's strong. Let's say our payroll stays at $90 million over the next six years, and we are paying Sabathia an average of $25 mil a year. Now say Sabathia goes down next April with a career ending injury. We now need to win on a $65 mil payroll, which has been done before. It would be a crappy situation, and a huge blow, but its not like the team would have to relocate or fold if Sabathia fails. By signing Sabathia to that kind of contract, Mark A is basically gambling that he WILL win the world series in the next three years. [T]o repay himself for the risk/investmment in a CC contract, he basically needs the Brewers to win it all and Vault into the #1 spot in Wisconsin sports in direct competitiion with UW Football, and largely the Green Bay Packers. I don't agree. We need to stay contenders, make the playoffs a few times, but winning the WS shouldn't make or break attendance numbers. We just need to be relevant. DM and Mark A got phase one done - get the fans to the ballpark. Now, from ownership perspective, they have to lock in this increased fanbase. What we do over the next 2 seasons is more important that what we do 4 or 5 seasons down the line. Apparently Mark thinks its worth the risk of a 25 million dollar goose on the payroll in a few years if it means we stay in the playoffs the next 2 or 3. ---------- In order for the Brewers to become the #1 draw in Wisconsin, they basically need to secure a national following. How they can accomplish that when they would have trouble making inroads in-state, in northern Wisconsin is beyond me. I agree, somehow generating a national following would probably not be that much more difficult than getting a stronger northern and central Wisconsin following, given how spread out our market is. However, don't forget about the new single A affiliate in Appleton. That could go a long way solidifying a deepening the northern fanbase.

sbrylski, where are you located? If you're in Madison, we should get together some time for a few games. None of my friends will play me anymore because they're tired of losing. But averaging 300+ bodes well for some decent competition. To be clear, those scores are in a two player game. I am in Madison, but will be traveling as soon as I finish my last exam. Sometime after semester break we should meet up.

My scrabble scores have been up over 300 lately, and improving.

And he's 25 with only 15 AAA games under his belt. He had a good season last year, but had a .392 BABIP as well. Anything more than depth sitting in AAA isn't interesting.

Gagne made it known he dislike Milwaukee at one point as well.

My ideas is a device that records your dreams onto a DVD. Incredible idea.

What if the Brewers were to do a contract where CC can opt out after just two seasons. One, we'd be substantially increasing the odds we won't be paying for a goose - he's much more likely to stay healthy over two years, and if he does, he'll probably opt out. And two, our offer becomes a lot more attractive. It could be a good way to disguise a long term contract as a short term contract.

Maddux might very well be in my top 5. Ryan most definitely not.

Mass production of a Gordon Lightfoot mailbox. What are your best ideas?

Just move on and ink Sheets to a favorable contract. Seriously, there are some moves out there that should be staring our club in the face - I'm getting nervous.

To expand on the concept above: I ran a relatively quick study to explore and support how many innings and how much performance can be expected to be lost each year into a multi-year contract. I started by viewing the 2003 pitching leaderboards from six seasons ago, as a five year contract is what C.C. Sabathia was offered by the Brewers, and therefore the timeframe most relevant to this discussion. I selected every player to have thrown over 200 innings that year to be my initial sample. In order to eliminate factors that could have a negative effect on the accuracy of the study, such as player retirement or more extreme talent loss as a player approaches the age of 40, I threw out all pitchers aged 30 years or older. This left 25 pitchers as my final sample, with ages ranging between 22 and 29 and their average age about one year younger than Sabathia's 28. The following is a table of the average number of innings pitched during each season of the 25 pitcher sample. 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- Innings 216.3 185.5 172.0 142.5 125.1 127.5 % Change -14.3 -7.3 -17.1 -12.2 1.9 Geometric Average % Change per Season = -10.04% This result falls in line quite well with other studies I have read on the subject, and the expected loss of 10.04% of innings each season is incredibly close to the generally accepted 10% loss that is often used by baseball statisticians. I also looked at the number of games started each season by my sample of pitchers. Below is the data table. 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Starts 33.0 29.2 27.1 23.0 19.8 20.4 Change -3.8 -2.1 -4.1 -3.2 0.6 Average Change per Season = -2.5 This sample so far has shown that a pitcher's expected number of innings per season should be lowered 9.8% each year and their expected number of starts should be lowered by 2.5. These numbers fit together, as a 9.8% reduction of 200 innings pitched is a reduction of 16 innings, approximately 2.5 starts given an average start is about 6 innings. http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d175/sbrylski06/pic1-1.png While I had the data at hand, I also looked at expected changes in K/9, BB/9, HR/9 and finally ERA. Below are the graphed results. http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d175/sbrylski06/pic2.png The sample's K/9 rates decreased by 0.127 per season, while their BB/9 rate increased by 0.019 per season. So not only must a club be weary of handing out a lengthy contract to a pitcher in fear of injury and reduced workloads, decreases in performance should be expected as well. Not that its surprising, though. Notice the high level of fluctuation in the HR/9 graph. Partly due to using a modest size sample, but it also is merely an illustration of how much home run rates can vary for pitchers year to year, as home runs are a much less frequent occurrence relative to strikeouts and walks. The HR/9 rates for this sample increased by 0.005 per season. Plug the above three average change in rates into a fielder independent ERA formula, I will use FIP, and we can see the expected change in results from year one to year six. FIP = (13*HR + 3*BB - 2*K) / IP 1st Season FIP = 3.99 6th Season FIP = 4.21 That's a loss of .22 points of ERA due to diminished skills. If we look at the actual data, the pitchers lost about .1 points of ERA per season, which is even more significant. 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ERA 3.82 4.06 4.03 4.67 4.26 4.29 Change -.24 .03 -.64 .41 -.04 The difference between the FIP estimates and the actual data is likely due in part to the modest size sample, but could also suggest and support that the pitchers are losing other skills each season, such as the capability to suppress their BABIP below league average.