rluzinski

I predict that the Brewers will be no hit and the whole team won't even care!!! Opps, I'm only supposed to do that after a rough patch?

Computer games may just be trying to simulate how a good rising fastball might feel to a batter. A batter intuitively knows that an average fastball doesn't drop as much as one without spin. Then they see a Sheets' fastball and have to adjust to one that hops a bit more than average.

As a general rule, if someone presents something as fact without giving any evidence to support it, they are wrong. It's the first rule of messageboarding. The second rule is to ignore any post that starts with... 1. Hmmmmm 2. I hate to break it to you.... 3. I don't know what you are smoking but.... Etc... Rules 3 though 10 all have to do with Nazis, I think.

Zambrano overproducing? Did you ever think that maybe he finally got IT? His strikeouts are way down as well as his walks and his ERA. You think he's strikeouts being down is a good thing? First of all, lowering your K rate does not lower your pitch count. Tango's pitch count estimator: Total Pitches =3.3 x (3 x IP + H + BB) + 1.5 SO + 2.2 BB A K takes about an extra 1.5 pitches than a BIP out does, but a BIP results in a hit about 30% more often than a strikeout does. It's a wash: http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-kazmir-conundrum/ If his pitch average pitch count is lower, it's because his walks are way down. I'd be willing to bet that Zabrano's walk rate, HR rate and ERA are all going to raise before the year is done. Probably his K rate as well. His nice start might be a signal that he's returning to his 2002-2005 form but even then, we might be talking about a 3.6 ERA pitcher, going forward. That's excellent, obviously but he isn't a true sub 3.0 ERA pitcher. No starter in the league is. And let's not act like the Cubs having a couple winning streaks this season suggests that they might have as losing streak coming up soon. All that matters is the win TOTAL after 162 games. It also doesn't matter that the Cubs have done against the Brewers in 6 lousy games.

Are implying that the ball flys on an inverted arc? For the second time, of course not. It's why I took Mythbusters to task for "busting" something (rising fastball) that most baseball fans know isn't supposed to be taken literally in the first place. but again a pitch does not rotate fast enough to produce lift Sure it does, just not enough to completely overcome gravity. Each exhibits a force on the ball (magnus force due to spin and gravity). An average fastball drops about 9" less than a pitch with the same velocity but no spin would. The naming conventions for pitches seem to ignore the effect of gravity on the pitch. A rising fastball doesn't actually rise. Conversely, while a changeup does curve, no one calls it a curve because it's simply a result of gravity and not spin (the average changeup "rises" as well but not as much as a fastball). Average Fastball Movement (No gravity): All Pitchers, 2007: 8.9" rise, 6.2" toward RH batter Sheets, 4/29/08: 11.2" rise, 4.5" toward RH batter.

O, I think the Brewers are lucky to be .500 right now, considering the individual performances. If they continue to play as they have over the first 38 games, it won't matter what any other team does. I also appreciate that Gallardo going down made it pretty easy to be pessimistic about the future. My point was simply that, based off of what we knew about this team in March and what we knew about their early season schedule, no one should be surprised that the Brewers are at .500 right now. They are about 1 game behind their preseason expectations. If you want to be surprised about the current standings, it should be because: 1. The Cubs are on pace for 98 wins 2. The Cardonals are on pace for 93 wins 3. The Astros are on pace for 91 wins Lucky for the Brewers, "on pace" is generally a pretty worthless way of looking at things when you are trying to project the future.

Even if projections were perfect in predicting the true collective talent of every team (and they certainly aren't), they wouldn't be able predict the outcome of a season very well well, anyway. There's just a lot of random uncertainty in 162 games. Even if you knew that a team had literally a 50% chance of winning each game, that team is still only going to win between 77 and 84 games about half the time. That's a cold, hard, undeniable fact. Anything could literally happen between now and the end of the season but the Cubs are all most likely winners of the division. It's no slam dunk though, certainly. I know sports fans are obsessed with predictions in a "yes or no" fashion" but that's how the real world works. A realistic prediction is that the Cubs will win the NL Central in 2008 about 75% of the time. Not as much fun I guess. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

O come on, no one mentioned one of his favorite: "That one was too close to take with 2 strikes." Get a lot of walks when you played, Bill?

Until I run into a sports radio personality that knows more about the Brewers than the average bf.net poster, they have nothing to offer me. And, heck, I don't even mean that in a condecending way. There probably still isn't a market for that kind of indepth Brewer analysis. Sports radio guys will get better ratings screaming about how Gagne sucks and Yost needs to be fired. If that's true, good for them. Seems to me that the average Packer fan generally requires better, more objective analysis. Is that an inaccurate generalization? I don't really listen to sports radio at all, so perhaps I'm off base there.

The Cubs may be overproducing (they are on pace for 98 wins, so that's a very good assumption), but even if they play like an 88 win team the rest of the year (their preseason projection), they will finish with 90 wins. There's certainly a reasonable chance that another NL Central team bests that but I don't think it should be expected. Preseason projections had the NL Central finishing basically: Cubs Brewers ... Cardinals/Reds/Astros ... Pirates Now, it's probably more like: Cubs ... Cardinals/Brewers Astros ... Pirates/Reds I still think the Brewers are a slightly better team than the Cardinals but I'm not sure the gap is large enough to objectively expect the Brewers to overcome the Cardinals' current 3 game lead over them.

After you take out the head-to-head matchups (Brewers vs. 2008 opponents), the weighted average win% of the Brewer's opponents (weighted by how many times the Brewers have played them so far) so far is .548. Being only 38 games into the season, however, that number does not do a good job representing the actual talent level of each team. A better way to estimate a true teams' talent is to look at the current year's record AND the preseason expectations. For instance, Florida is not going to win win 98 games (their current pace), so why should we pretend that they current record represents their true talent? Even though the Mets are only 2 games over .500 right now, we expect them to do better than that going forward because we expected them to do very well going into the season. What I did was take each Brewer opponent's adjusted win% (win% after the Brewer games were removed) and regressed that 80% towards their preseason projected win%. I called that the "true talent win%" The weighted true average win% of the Brewers opponents so far this year is .500 on the dot. perfectly average. The Brewers have played 21 of their 38 games on the road, though, so their schedule so far has been a bit harsher than average. Wow harsh? If we thought the Brewers were a perfectly average team, we'd expect a 18.8-19.2 record from them. Some other expectations ("wins" just means how many wins the Brewers should get with a neutral schedule. Their true talent level): 81 wins: 18.8 - 19.2 81 wins: 19.1 - 18.9 86 wins: 20.0 - 18.0 90 wins: 20.9 - 17.1 Based off of preseason expectations (offense being able to hit, Gallardo in the rotation, Gagne not being terrible), the Brewers should have about an extra win. I have no idea why I'm supposed to act outraged that the Brewers are 19-19 right now.

not to bust balls, but a pitch cannot rise, unless thrown at an upward angle. There isnt enough spin on the ball to give it lift. See Mythbusters for the evidence. I saw that mythbuster episode and thought the whole thing was semantics, as I didn't think any baseball fan ever thought a fastball literally rose. Pitch f/x and common sense tells us that. It will forever be called a rising fastball because it correctly describes what the rotation of the ball is doing to it. Do we call a changeup a 12-6 curve?

Much as the Cubs have Zambranao and a bunch of guys, and the Brewers have Sheets and a bunch of guys, it seems the Astros have Oswalt and a bunch of guys. You need to go into a lot more depth than that to make any meaningful comparisons. Not all "bunch of guys" are created equal. As Ender said, the Cubs are handsdown the favorites. Anything can happen, obviously, but the Cubs are a cut above the rest.

Why do I have a feeling that the Cardinals just spent their last day in first place for the season?

Skipping as many starts as possible from our worst pitcher and running our best pitcher out there as often as possible seems like the best way to win games. You mean Bush/Villy/Parra? With Sheets' tricep thing, I don't think the extra days off are a bad thing right now. Give it a month and if one starter is obviously performing worst than the rest, go for it.

Sheets throws a 4-seam fastball with no movement Less so in the horizontal direction but it rises more than an average fastball. I agree though, vertical movement doesn't break bats as easily. That said, I have to agree with end. Sheets was making a joke and Olney missed it. An inside fastball with no movement breaks bats just fine. Someone needs to check the archives, I guess.

Not in the Cards for St Louis Early Luck Running Out For Surprising Cardinals Sounds like a nice start to an article.

A little more about the fans: To be fair, when good things were happening on Saturday, even smallish things, they were cheering wildly and were really behind the team. They just have to learn baseball a little more and realize not to boo over every little thing, IMO.

Gagne just has NO control right now. It's like Turnbow 2.0. He needs to figure this out pretty darn quick.

And our wonderful Brewer fans are already booing Gagne. That'll learn him.

So much for the "Cy Young short list" that Brian and Bill were touting for him at the start of the game. They were also acting like Looper had been some great starter for the Cardinals this year and LaRussa was a genius for putting into the starting rotation. A little early to make a call like that, guys? I enjoyed Looper leaving that game with an ERA north of 4.

OK, kind of weird to pull your starter with a 7 run lead when he has less than 100 pitches. With the no days off for the next 27 days, don't you want to save your bullpen when you can. And no, I've never said Bush or any other starting pitchers should have the length of their starts artificially limited.

Wainwright just getting CRUSHED. Poor guy has an ERA of 3.0 now. This is FUN!!!

Bush has 90 pitches through 5 2/3, so I don't see more than 7 innings from him today. Not that I would complain over that! http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

I'm kind of surprised Cameron couldn't run that down.