rluzinski

Bill Hall drives me insane. He gets a lucky broken bat bloop single and erases it in seconds. And of course, hardy walks anyway. Now we get suppan leading off next inning. Bill Hall has no baseball smarts.

Awesom DP on the bunt, I assume... FSN strikes again If FSN just stayed on the "behind home plate" view and got rid of the announcers completely, I think I would enjoy these games a lot more.

good to see billy starting....a slumping billy hall is better than a russell branyan IMO With the bat, glove or both?

Wow. Stubhub takes a 15% on the sellers end and then charges a 10% fee to the buyer. They ALSO charge at least $15 to mail a piece of paper.

The whole point though is that there aren't that many #5 starters. They are often swingmen, or veterans who make a few starts and get cut, or young guys who come up to make a few starts for injured players and go back down, etc. Well sure. Some of those #5s will get hurt or will under-perform and get demoted, which is when a guy like Vargas might step in. That's precisely why I would consider him more of a swingman, especially after you consider that he can't really be counted on for 5 innings, much less 6. If Vargas could go 6 innings, I wouldn't even bother arguing whether he's a #5 or a #6, since ERA-wise, you could easily argue both ways.

I've heard the argument that you should look at the ratio of K/(K + BB), not K/BB. And as joepepsi said, a guy with a great sinkerball can get away with low K rate. That's because he's most likely an extreme groundball pitcher (the kind of guy who isn't going to be giving up very many extra base hits).

In case you didn't see, I edited my post to link the thread that I am basing my knowledge on. Thanks. I appreciate the link. If you read the comments, you can see that many have the same objections as I did here. Jest because Vargas projects to be a 5.0 ERA pitcher and an average #5 pitcher has an ERA of 6+ (or whatever the study found) doesn't necessailry make Vargas a good #5 starting pitcher. Quick and dirty, I took the Marcel projections for 2008 and looked at all the NL "starters" and their projected ERA (I removed any pitcher who was projected to have a save or pitch less than 80 innings). The highest 16 projections where designated #1 starters, the next 16 were the #2, etc... POS ERA #1 3.69 #2 4.07 #3 4.37 #4 4.59 #5 4.79 #6 5.06 Vargas 4.95 Vargas projects as a good #6 for what it's worth. Of course, I'm ignoring park factors (Miller Park is pretty neutral overall, though) and many other things , so if someone wants to say he projects as a #5 starting pitcher, I can't call them wrong. I'm still suspicious that Vargas's 5-1/3 average start is below average even for a #5 though, which would further reduce his value. Maybe I will take a look tonight. If anyone is curious, here are my #5's: Lohse Kyle 4.69 Loaiza Esteban 4.69 Jennings Jason 4.71 Morris Matt 4.72 Rodriguez Wandy 4.72 Lieber Jon 4.74 Hendrickson Mark 4.79 Marquis Jason 4.81 Wolf Randy 4.81 Pelfrey Mike 4.83 Reyes Jo-Jo 4.83 Reyes Anthony 4.84 Olsen Scott 4.85 Belisle Matt 4.87 Carlyle Buddy 4.88 Moyer Jamie 4.9 I'm sure there's a couple of mistakes (Jennings is in the AL this year) but liek I said, it's a quick and dirty look. Hey look, Jo-Jo!!! And #6's: Tomko Brett 4.92 Hanrahan Joel 4.93 Vargas Claudio 4.95 Hernandez Livan 4.96 Livingston Bobby 4.99 Bacsik Mike 5 Williams Woody 5.01 Lopez Rodrigo 5.01 Albers Matt 5.03 Trachsel Steve 5.05 Pineiro Joel 5.13 Fogg Josh 5.13 Armas Tony 5.13 VandenHurk Rick 5.18 Wells David 5.24 Milton Eric 5.24

He is a 5th starter as I have seen it demonstrated in threads at bbtf. What methodology did they use to define how good a #5 starter should be in in terms of both ERA and average innings/start? The only attempt at defining ERA by starting rotation I've ever seen is from Jeff Sackmann a few years back: http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/how-good-is-your-4-starter/ While interesting, I don't think you start matching those results up with a pitcher's projections and call it a day. The biggest problem that I see is that you are going to see a larger spread in ERA by spot in the rotation because of random variance. There's also the issue of injuries turning a #6 pitcher into a #5 one, which in turn defines what an acceptable #5 supposedly is. You run into that problem when you say an average 2B hit so-and-so for a year and then comparing that to player x's expected performance. Shouldn't you really compare him to only players who were projected as starters before the season started? A better way to approach a study like that is to see how teams set up their starting rotation during the first week of the season and track only those players for the year. You could also just look at preseason projections for starters, calling the 30 best a #1 the next 30, #2, and so forth. Heck, maybe that's exactly what those BBTF threads did? I think that if an NL pitcher is projected to have a 5 ERA, he's closer to someone who would fall into the #5 spot at some point in the year, as opposed to earning that spot out of spring training. I reserve the right to be proven wrong http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

While there is some statistical evidence that batting the pitcher 8th is the right move, there is no way that 50 games is going to prove or disprove the theory. Did it help the Brewers? Did it hurt them? Does anyone really know what the net effect was? I sure don't. I don't think it's nearly as simple as just seeing how many times Kendall scored. In the end, I think it makes little difference either way. If it wasn't so "controversial" to dare do things a little differently in baseball, it would have barely even been mentioned in the first place.

He is a nice guy to have around when a starting pitcher goes down Isn't that basically the definition of a #6 starter? ZiPS projected him as a 5.0 ERA pitcher for 2008. Furthermore, Vargas has only averaged about 5-1/3 innings per start over his 113 career starts. In over 22% of his career starts, he failed to even go 5 innings. He's kind of falls somewhere between a long reliever and a starter, really. Let's compare that to another bottom of the rotation starter, Dave Bush. He's averaged about 6 innings per start over 112 career starts (some have come in the AL, so that might not be complately fair?) and he's failed to go at least 5 innings in about 15% of his starts. Would I like to have him around right now? Of course. Considering the circumstances at the time, I just didn't think it was a travesty when they got rid of him, so I'm not going to use hindsight to revise that opinion.

Here? Milwaukeebrewers.com? Ebay? Stubhub? It's a weekend interleague game, so I'd like to think I can get face, at least.

That's just win epectency stuff. In its simplest form, you just look at how often teams have won in certain situations. For instance, it's good to know that the home team has won 54% of the time.

If you remove a single for every CS and add a base for every SB, I don't think it would be the worst way to try and combine the two. You are still going to over value the average SB, though. Remember, though, a stolen base attempt is different than most batting events since a runner can decide when to try one. Context is absolutely critical (base/out/inning/score/batter/pitcher) in determining the potential value of a SB and the potential cost of a caught stealing. Here, you can see how the base/out situation affects the run value of a SB and CS: http://www.tangotiger.net/RE9902event.html

I guess I don't see how you can say this team is not going to make the playoffs. Other than Braun, Hart, Kendall, and Sheets, none of our players have really played up to their potential, or even average expectations. It's a fair assumption that the Brewers should be expected to perform closer to their preseason expectations (minus Gallardo) than how they have over the first 52 games. The problem is, they'd probably still not even be close to making the playoffs if they did. Even assuming that Melvin finds a direct replacement for Yo tomorrow (which is not going to happen), even the most optimistic projections had the Brewers winning about 89 games. They start playing to that level right now and they'll win 85 or 86 games. That's almost certainly not going to get them into the playoffs. The Brewers are going to need to play great and get a heap of luck. With 110 games left, there's time for both but it's a long shot. I don't see how that can be true. Maybe theoretically, but in practice the away team in an extra inning game must be at a disadvantage. It's true that, from the start of any given extra inning, the home team has about a 52% chance of winning (they lose about half of the home field advantage in extra innings, for whatever reason): http://winexp.walkoffbalk.com/expectancy/search/?start_year=1977&end_year=2006&team=V&inning=+&outs=0&expectancy[bases]=0&scorediff=0 Had Kapler struck out with the go-ahead run at 3B and ended that inning, the Brewers would still have had around a 1 in 3 shot of winning, however: http://winexp.walkoffbalk.com/expectancy/search/?start_year=1977&end_year=2006&team=H&inning=+&outs=0&expectancy[bases]=0&scorediff=0 And even after the go-ahead single, the Nationals still had around 18% chance of winning.: http://www.fangraphs.com/plays.aspx?date=2008-05-26&team=Nationals&dh=0&season=2008 That AB was huge but it wasn't a 100% vs. 0% chance of winning kind of AB.

I think Russ was saying his injury affected his 2007 numbers. I can't believe this thread was active. Actually, I was posting to the IGT last night and it mysteriously posted in this thread, instead. I just tried to think of something even semi-relevant to edit my post to. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

Statistically speaking, one year's worth of any split is basically irrelevant. Better of assuming a league average platoon split.

Do we really have any reason to believe that a manager who yells at an umpire long enough and with enough anger and disrespect that he's thrown out of the game should expect to get better calls going forward? Tell that to a non-baseball fan and he'd probably roll his eyes at you. But I'm supposed to just assume that it's true? No thanks. When Yost thinks an umpire is wrong about a call, he let's them know it and moves on. If a manager can have any influence over future calls (and I'd question whether a crew would ever be biased in favor of a particular manager), I would think that's the way to try and do it. Play the victim and hope that it creeps into the umpiring crew's subconsious. It's what you see football and basketball coaches do and I think it's the right approach. Be a jerk and you might have the opposite effect. I also refuse to just accept as fact the notion that a manager getting thrown out should result in better on field play by the players. Why? Because the players were apathetic towards the outcome of the game until the manager showed them that they should care about it? These are professional ballplayers who have excelled at every level that they've competed in! I think it would be more fair to assume that they are largely self motivated to begin with. To me, a manger getting booted just looks like an act of desperation and frustration, more than anything else. I see no tangible benefit to it with regard to wins and losses. I suspect that frustrated fans just feel some sense of satisfaction from seeing the manager show frustration as well. Just like a frustrated fan likes to read an article tearing into their team when times are tough.

Bush actually looked a little better yesterday. While he's typically thrown 2 strikes for every ball, not including last night, he's thrown only 469 strikes vs. 301 balls in 2008. Last night, of the 92 pitches he threw, 57 were strikes and 35 balls, so some improvement there. The velocity on his fastball also improved last night. According to Pitch f/x, he averaged 90.3 MPH last year vs. 88.6 this year. Last night, however, he threw 57 fastballs with an average velocity of 90.2 MPH. All was not rosy last night, though. He still gave up a ton of flyballs, which has been an issue this year and is a big part of why his HR rate is so high (although his HR/FB is also up). He's going to have to drastically cut down on that HR rate for any chance of salvaging his season.

Before the hit, the Brewers had around a 50/50 shot at winning the game, so let's not get crazy. It was a big hit but there's a lot of big hits in a season.

Looks like we're stuck with a loss every 5 games unless we score 10 runs! And as I keep pointing out, that just isn't true. Even a very pessimistic estimate might peg Bush as a 5.5 ERA pitcher going forward. A 5.5 ERA pitcher gives up around 3 or 4 runs in an average 6 inning start. An average team will still win around 40% of the time with that kind of performance from their starting pitcher. Don't get me wrong, that's a terrible win percentage but people need to stop acting like it's zero.

Um.. wow. That turned out to be a great game. Bush vs. Hudson. That's why you play the game! http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

Stop teasing me, Brewers.

Why don't you go take your 'stats' & 'numbers' and have a seat! http://david.sudarma.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/macys_couch_450.jpg Wrap that sofa in leather and I just bought that. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

1-2-3 inning AND he didn't start a fist fight. Great start, Julian Tavarez!! http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

Memo to Yost: Counsell can't even hit RH pitchers anymore. he can't hit anyone. He should be a defensive replacement and that's IT. Another Weeks rip... right at the dang fielder. Just like his last AB tonight! That's what drives me crazy about baseball. If he had found the gap with that it would be a tie game and Weeks would be clutch. Since he randomly hit it right at a defender, inning over. ARGHHHH.