rluzinski

No one complains though because he was hitting .424 two weeks into the season. Royce Clayton Effect. Kendall is a great example: First 8 games: .538 / .567 / .731 / 1.298 (31 PA) Rest of the Season: .207 / .298 / .267 / .565 (131 PA) If instead, he had started off with a .207 BA over the first 38 games, only to turn it on over the last 8 games, the average Brewer fan would have a completely different opinion of him. Just the way it is, I guess. His overall production (.268 / .348 / .352 / .700) has been better than his preseason projections (ZiPS said .257 / .332 / .313 / .645), so it's hard for me to be disapointed. Add to that his solid defense and he's been an asset to the team so far. I'll say they've "turned it around" when they're at least 1 game above .500. They have a ways to go before they are even serious Wild Card contenders at this point. Agreed. While they are finally playing like they were expected to all along, they actually have to play above their heads for some time, to get back into this.

If you do think that's valuable you have a really weird metric. I prefer the linear weights approach: Offensive value = (2 x Pitches + 3 x Bunt Singles + groundouts - 1.5 x walks - 10 x strikeouts) / PA I think some fans confuse an entertaining AB with offensive value. I wish the most entertaining ABs were also the most valuable but that's not how baseball is set up. Blame the longball and the fact that a bater sometimes doesn't even have to swing to get on base.

Great "Regression to the Mean" Article: http://www.countthebasket.com/blog/2008/05/19/regression-to-the-mean/

I'm not sure about a colletive sigh of relief just yet, we did leave 18 men on base last night. Down with the LOB stat, at least if it's going to have an automatic negative connotation! http://rluzinski.blogspot.com/2006/04/lob-and-fox-sports-net.html#links To give LOB any kind of value, it should be divided by the total number of base runners. That gives you the total % of base runners stranded. Otherwise, it's just mostly a function of OBP, which means that the higher LOB is, the better!

I think the Sheet-Out is a result of nearly every team having one guy who has astronomical career splits against Sheets, for whatever reason. I don't think so. There is always going to be some batters who have a great splits against every pitcher. Most of that stuff is just small sample randomness. Look at Clemens: http://www.baseball-reference.com/pi/p-pvb.cgi?n1=clemero02#choice=&bats=&minPA2=0&minPA=0&orderbydir=DESC&orderbydirb=ASC&n1=clemero02&as=pitcher&year_game=career&opp_id=&orderby=PA&orderbyb=Name Some batters have done much better against him than their career stats would have suggested and we'd EXPECT that from just luck. I doubt Sheets has more batters that "own" him more than any other pitcher (it's certainly worth investigating, though). Now, Sheets is a fly ball pitcher, so he's going to give up his share of HRs. Because of that, I think there is some merit to the "Sheet-out". About 6 months ago, I tried to prove someone wrong when they said that Sheets, for as good as he is, doesn't get as many shutout and 1 run starts as a comparably good pitcher (ERA wise). I found that, at least for shutouts, that fool was absolutely correct (was it backcatcher? I can't remember).

Fangraphs has some nice "plate discipline" metrics and I looked at them for the Brewers herea littlw ways back: http://forum.brewerfan.net/viewtopic.php?t=12588 You can find Braun's updated numbers here: http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=3410&position=OF This year, Braun has seen about 2.6% more strikes than the average batter did in 2007. Since he's averaging about 3.5 P/PA, that's about an extra strike per 11 PA. The real reason that Braun hasn't walked much is because he is very aggressive at the plate. He's swung at 51.5% of the pitches that have come his way this year, compared to the 07' league average of 45.9%. Even if you adjust for the more strikes he's seeing, that's a lot. He's swung at 33.5% of the pitches outside of the strikezone, compared to the 07' average of 25%. I'm sure he is still developing as a hitter but right now, he's a free swinger. As for the effect Prince has, I wouldn't necessarily limit it to 1 extra strike every 11 PA. Wouldn't we expect Braun to actually see less strikes than average if he is a free swinger? It's possible that pitchers haven't adjusted to Braun's free swinging tendecies yet or maybe it really doesn't work that way. Perhaps Prince adds 5% more strikes, atlhough that is still just an extra strike every 5-6 PA. Either way, Braun hasn't walked much so far and it has very little to do with who has has batted ahead or behind of him, as far as I can tell.

Fastest player EVER to 40 Homers. 352 Days Not to diminish the significance of that feat (and it's a monster feat no matter how you cut it) but wouldn't games played or PAs be more relevant? Games/PAs to 40 HRs: Braun: 149/651 McGuire: 118/481 I remember someone pointing out that there were others as well?

I would be willing to put a lot of money on taking tonights game Gorzelanny is close to a 4.0 ERA pitcher. Bush is maybe a 4.65 one. I'll give the Brewers offense the nod, especially against a LH pitcher but we shouldn't expect them to continue crushing LHers. The Pirates get the home field advantage, which adds 4% to their win probability on average. Vegas thinks it's roughly even odds and I would agree with them. Generally speaking, Vegas knows what they are doing. If you think they are way off, though, you need to put some big cash down quick!

I don't even care about Branyan's AAA numbers and I certainly don't think Branyan is some great solution. I just think it's silly to have no LH power off the bench and I think it would be a travesty if Counsell gets any significant number of starts at 3B (which I doubt he will anyway). It would be an incremental improvement at best to call up Branyan but it's one that should be made, IMO. Counsell will give better defense and will hit for a better average. I will grant you the defense and that could be quite significant. Can Branyan even play adequete defense at 3B anymore? If he can't, it still like to bring him up but wouldn't even bothering with any starts at 3B. The infield defense is bad enough. In contrast his offense value isn't even worth mentioning. Counsell had a .249 BA from 05' - 07' against RH pitchers. In contrast, Branyan hit .240 against them over the same period but crushes Counsell's numbers in every other way. And that's not really a complement to Branyan. It's not hard to do when you put up a .696 OPS even when you have the platoon advantage! Counsell has negative value at the plate, platoon advantage or not. The offensive bar is set so miserably low for him that just about any other hitter is going to be an improvement, offensively. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- These Branyan debates grow so tiresome. They always devolve into this. A: Why do you think Branyon would be a savior? B: I don't. A: Then why do you think he's so great? B: I don't. A: But why do you want him up? B: Because he's better than the current options. A. But he's not even that good! B. I know!

I would think hitting in front of Prince has something to do with that. And I would say, that I highly doubt it. I think that those kind of effects are grossly overstated. I have never really seen any evidence of something like that. It's just always stated as fact. Pitchers don't seem to change their approach very much except if it's a pitcher that's coming up. those averages will get him and anyone else in the HOF if kept up over a long enough period. Who the heck would argue otherwise? Talk about a staw man argument. Some are just questioning whether he can keep up a .316 BA to maintain that nice "career" OBP. It's either that, or his BA lowers to something a little more sustainable and he learns to walk more. I don't thnk that it's unreasonable to assume that he will learn to walk more, but I don't have a wager on it, personally. I don't know. I just hope he becomes more than a Jeff Francour with more power. I'm greedy. I want the full package.

It's not a full platoon. Headlines aren't written by the writers and shouldn't be taken as fact. The article says its an informal platoon, but doesn't elaborate on that. Yeh, the title of this thread and that article headline falls somewhere between misleading and factually incorrect. All Yost said was, "I'm going to have to do it [start Counsell for Hall against a LH pitcher] a little more until some of these numbers come up for Billy". Some people need to take the time to read the article before jumping to conclusions. For reference: Hall's career splits: vs. RH: .254 / .303 / .451 / .754 (1803 PA) vs. LH: .276 / .358 / .498 / .856 (646 PA) That's not a huge sample when you are talking about estimating a player's true platoon split, but Hall just has had such a dramatically large one. As a result, it's difficult to conclude that we should expect Hall to have an average platoon split going forward. I can say with confidence that his true split isn't worth 100 points of OPS, though. He has been with 6 organizations in MLB and failed to become a regular each time. And no one is suggesting that Branyan should be a regular with the Brewers either, so how is that even relevent? If his statistics during that period are considered above average production then I have a differing viewpoint of above average production. First, he doesn't have to be above average, just better than the current options. His line against RHers from 2005 - 2007: .240 / .352 / .496 / .848 (526 AB) I don't ussually look back farther than 3 years but he also crushed RHers in 2004. I don't know if I would expect Branyan to continue having a .352 OBP vs. righties going foward, but I would expect him to outperform Hall and Counsell against them in every way. Wouldn't you? Of course, you may only care about BA and Ks and if that's the case, there's no sense in debating any further.

Now you're getting greedy! Would that be 1 in 4 odds? Good guess. I get about 22%. But I agree. That's being too greedy. Bad karma. I'll stick with BCU's original ".500 by June 1st" goal. Now, about a 43% chance to finish May 6-4 and get to .500, according to my rough calculations. Still not the most likely outcome but certainly more reasonable, at least. A win tonight and .500 by June would be the most likely outcome. With Bush pitching, the offense is probably going to need to score more than 4 runs to get the win tonight.

I was one of the ones who said that we don't know exactly what player we are getting and I stand by that opinion. Is he going to be a very good player (great power, nice average) or a great player (power and gets on base a ton). Either way, the Brewers are getting their money's worth but let's not pretend 638 career AB makes his future performance crystal clear. We still aren't sure.

Well, I'm kind of disappointed that a supposedly sabermetric website would write an article like that. Treating a team that was projected to win 70 games before the season started but is 1 game over as a polar opposite of a team that was projected to win 90 games but is 1 game under is just plain wrong. A team that has gone 20-21 is no different than one that went 21-20, if we know nothing else about them. My approach is the more correct one (IMO, obviously) and while it showed the Brewers had faced above average talent, it wasn't dramatic. If I get a chance I will try to update my SOS for the Brewers, Cubs and Cardinals. If anyone cares. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

Screw .500 by June 1st. I want to be above .500 by the end of the road trip! http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

The reason I didn't include the Pods for Lee deal is we essentially rented Lee And got very nice production from him for 1-1/2 seasons for very little. very solid trade to me. Great list overall, though. Nice job.

A paltry 8805 in attendance. I actually feel bad for the Pirates For their fans, sure. Wow.

Wow, of the 7 pitches Sheets threw to that last batter, 5 were curves. The other pitches were two fastballs that registered in at 95 and 96 MPH!

The Brewers can now exercise two demons tomorrow with a win. Road sweep AT PNC.

Please don't let Sheets go over 120 pitches. Is that too much to ask?

I will start taking error numbers seriously when that is an error. Otherwise, it's worthless.

Hall is having a mental day off. Unavailable! But I really would just like for him to eat a hamburger. Are people really still thinking about that?

Sheets needs tto pitch one more scoreless inning, so his ERA is under 3 again. He's batting again, so he'll get his chance. I can see why Yost wants to get this Counsell guy's bat in the lineup more often.

Carlos Lee's 3 run HR puts the Astros ahead of the Cubs, 4-3 in the 3rd. Prince angers me He was the next Hank Aaron last year and has now "struggled" (he still has a great OBP and nearly an .800 OPS) in 162 AB. Why are people so down on him? What have you done for me lately?

The Pirates are really attacking that first pitch.