rluzinski

Just when I started to worry about Braun, he told me to shut the hell up.

- Weeks P/PA, wow! That's really good, even for a leadoff hitter. While it's better than being a free swinger, I'm not sure if higher is always better. As I mentioned in my thread, I consider what he does "fake plate discipline" as he just swings at less pitches overall. He's swung at 9% less pitches out of the strike zone than average but also almost 9% less balls in the strike zone. Maybe Weeks should spend more time worrying about what he thinks he should do to increase HIS chances of a favorable outcome for his PA. Braun is still among the lead leaders in swing% of balls outside of the zone (although it's improved a bit): http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=100&type=4&season=2008

Huge, huge game. 3.0 games back sounds a hell of a lot better than 5.0 games back. I just wish the Brewers didn't also need the Cubs to lose in order to gain ground.

Even the optimistic preseason projections gave the Brewers a coin flip chance of making the post season. With the loss of Gallardo and the hot start of the Cardinals and Cubs, the chances are much smaller now. 20% maybe? I hope?

I looked at that stuff a couple weeks ago here: http://forum.brewerfan.net/viewtopic.php?t=12588 Someone should update that table. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

Despite the lopsided pitching matchup, Vegas only gives the Cards a 54/46 edge over the Brewers tonight. At this point, I'd be happy with 3 runs in 5 IP from Bush but you can't just pull a starter if he's going good.

Did anyone think that having expectations of a division winner was an overreaction? What about the overly optimistic crew that hangs out here--was that a bit premature? The Cubs were the clear favorites to win the division even before the season started. With Gallardo going down early, the Brewers current situation shouldn't be surprising to anyone. I mean, how many wins SHOULD the Brewers have right now? One or two more?

Not really knowing anything else, the Ray were actually projected to be a decent team this year (a hair above average), so I'd take them over the Marlins.

Counsell vs. Righties (2005-2007): .249/.337/.359/.696 (976 AB) Counsell vs. Righties (2008): .286/.348/.381/.729 (42 AB) If you are going to give Hardy a day off, make sure it's against a RH pitcher but nothing to really get excited about here, IMO.

It's an interesting question. Even an average reliever only gives up multiple runs in an inning less than 14% if the time, so I'm not sure the guy would be worth very much. I'd have to think about it more.

Can we just stop trying to slice and dice small samples altogether? It doesn't prove anything.

Frank Thomas was cut this year, he will make $8 million. It doesn't happen often, but it wouldn't be unprecedented. His option would have vested with enough AB, so that $8 mil wasn't the only money on the line. Gagne shouldn't be expected to be the worst reliever on the team, so DFAing him at this point doesn't make sense, IMO.

Melvin has made plenty of mistakes, just like every other GM. All I think you can do is look at the financial resources a GM has and see what he's done with it in the short and long term. For around $84 mil, Melvin constructed a team that was expected to win around 85 games and contend for the playoffs this year. Obviously, things haven't started off as you might have suspected but I can't fault Melvin for most of the offense doing as bad as they have so far. this past performance suggested much better things. Long term, he still has a bunch of these guys for several years, so that's a nice foundation. If average is a C, I'd give Melvin a B-. Above average but not dramatically so. I certainly wouldn't be calling for his head.

Picking the last 162 games isn't really trying to create evidence. I mean, it's not even an arbitrary number... it's the number of games in a season. It's not like everyone just woke up today and said, "I wonder how the Brewers have done over a season's worth of games, but actually over two different seasons? Wow! That completely takes out the hot start!" That's not arbitrary, it's using a selective starting point to coherse the evidence towards a predetermined conclusion. For a sample (outcome of games) to fairly represent a population (true skill of the Brewers), it has to be randomly taken.

Its 162 straight games. And including the 24-10 start is 196 straight games with the same players as in your sample. It's not like we are arguing that you should include the last 34 games of the 2006 season (which would be at least as silly as not including the first 34 games of the 2007 season). Are you trying to say that your sample should be expected to be more representative of the Brewer's true talent than mine? What would be the logic used to support that argument? People use selective end points when they: 1. Wish to point out something because it's interesting and/or surprising 2. They have a conclusion and are trying to create evidence to support it. I have no problem 1. but shake my head at 2.. It's just not objective.

If we want to objectively assess the team's talent based off of their record over the last season plus, why would we start by subjectively choosing to leave out the best part of it? There's nothing magicaly about 162 games.

Are fans overreacting with regard to what the current stats (individual and team) telsl us about the true talent of the organization as a hole? I think so. Are people reacting about the significance of Brewer's current record, relative to the Cardinals and Cubs? Probably not. The Brewers have dug themselves a decent hole and probably can't afford to lose 3 of 4 to the Cardinals this weekend. I still think the Brewers are the better team but not so much that they should be expected to catch up to a Cardinal team with a 7 game lead. They really can't afford to fall too far behind to the Cubs, who are the better team on paper to begin with. I hate to say something like this in May but this four game series against the Cardinals has the potential to make or break the team (barring a simple series split).

This is the one thing i hate about Baseball stats guys, you go with projections over production. You say that like projections ignore production. That's the only thing they look at! They just use a statistical approach to ensure that the most recent, small-sample performances aren't weighed too heavily. If you think Bush is a true 7 ERA pitcher based only on his terrible results this year, you've fallen into that trap.There's nothing magical or controversial about projections. I don't have any problem with people being skeptical with the conclusions certain methods come up with. I do have a problem with people arguing against the method itself when they haven't spent the time to learn about it first.

Marcel the Monkey's ability to forecast accurately: about 65 percent by most accounts versus about 70 percent of more complex competing systems. Of course, the definition of accuracy will bend greatly in order to sell the product. That's why I say "best guess", not "great guess" or infallible guess". No one, not even Bush, knows how his performance will be for the rest of the year. I'm not sure if there's even a 5% difference between the most simple and complex projection systems, although it depends on how you define accuracy. Surprisingly, there isn't much difference between them: http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/community_forecast_2007_preliminary_results/ The fans actually did the best, since they can presumably combine performance analysis of with other, less quantifiable factors. There's a thread in the sabermetric forum at bf.net with an attempt to do the same for Brewers players: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pyk99ZuXWKqcy9elt0DYyJQ&hl=en&pli=1 Bush was projected to have a 4.39 ERA, which is probably a little low. There might be a "homer factor" to consider with them in general, though. We'll have to see. And some might think that since Bush has started off horribly, his projections should be thrown out completely. Not really: http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/article/what_do_good_and_bad_starts_by_pitchers_tell_us/ He found that, unless you are a young starter (less than 27 years), as long as you throw the current season's sample back into the projection, it all adds up, whether that start was drastically good or bad. No dramatic change in expected future performance. Unless we know something has specifically changed about Bush this year from previous years (injury being the big one) his projection still is our best guess going forward. Even then, it's just a guess. During his first year with us when he had his great secondary numbers, i remember Bush usually sitting around 88-90 with his fastball. Last year his numbers were much worse, but i forget if his fastball had lost any velocity. This year, more often than not his fastball is in the 84-86 range, he's not throwing as hard as his first year with us. Good call. His velocity was way down the first two starts but rebounded the next, so I stopped paying attention. His fastball averaged only 86.3 MPH: http://gd2.mlb.com/components/game/mlb/year_2008/month_05/day_07/gid_2008_05_07_milmlb_flomlb_1/pbp/pitchers/433657.xml That's way down from his average last year: http://baseball.bornbybits.com/plots/Dave_Bush.html I wonder what his average has been this year. Now i don't claim to know if a few miles per hour would really matter all that much given a 88-90 mph fastball like his first year with us is hardly something that big league hitters struggle to catch up with. I would think it matters to some degree, certainly. hardballtimes.com tried to take a look: http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/how-fast-should-a-fastball-be/ Not sure if there's any conclusive evidence there.

Turnbow had a Marcel projection of 4.39 ERA this year with a pretty big statistical uncertainty (all relievers do, since their IP per year are relatively limited). He was also completely destroyed in the 6 1/3 innings he pitched this year. The average NL reliever had a 4.06 ERA, putting the projections for Turnbow firmly in the below average category. The Brewers also only had the rights to Turnbow though this yeara anyway, so even if turnbow got his stuff together and surprised everyone by being average, you aren't talking about very many innings anyway. The Brewers have McClung to be below average anyway (yes, I hopehe proves me wrong), so no big loss anyway. Bush had a Marcel projection of 4.55 ERA going into this year, with the average NL starter having a 4.65 ERA last year. Bush has also gotten off to a horrible start but with the injuries to Gallardo and Capuano and the dismissal of Vargas, there are no decent options (IMO) left to take over for him. Weaver has a Marcel projection of a 5.33 ERA, so a couple nice AAA starts is not going to convince me that he's gotten control of whatever troubles he's had over the last few years. Bush is by no means an option to get excited over (or Villy, Parra or Suppan right now). I just don't see any option better and I'm not compelled by the theory that if something isn't working, you just try random things until it does! In baseball, a couple starts tells you next to nothing with regard to expected future performance. As a result, you HAVE to rely heavily on past performance when making your best guess of future performance. but wouldn't each outing be considered an independent event and, thusly, not guarantee a regression to the mean? Nothing guarantees regression to the mean. It's only a "best guess". For a person with 0 IP, the best guess is league a league average player, so we regress him all the way to the mean. For a player with a lot of innings, while we still don't know his actual skill level with 100% certainty (we only would with an infinitely large sample) but we have a much more confident view of his true talent. As a result, we still regress his expected future performance towards the mean 9average pitcher), but to a much less amount than a player we know nothing about. That's all just performance analysis, though. If a pitcher all of sudden starts throwing 5 MPH slower, we'd be foolish to assume he has the same underlying skill. Same goes for a young pitcher who starts having a lot of success with a new pitch. True talent isn't necessarily static but we have to have a good reason to assume that it isn't. When Bush started the season with bad velocity and terrible command, I was concerned that he was injured, which would throw out all the previous performance expectations I had for him. While I haven't studied him too closely, he seems to be the "same old Bush" (for better or worse). As a result, I am forced to rely on his projection as a best guess of future performance. That's probably somewhere around a 4.6-4.7 ERA. While that's nothing to get excited about, I'm not sure if that even makes him the worst pitcher in the rotation right now. Rluz, can you give the math behind Bush having a 40% chance of winning when he pitches? What are you basing that on and what is the scale of ERA to chance of winning a game? What is Sheets chance of winning when he starts? I'm not sure if it's completely right but I'm simply plugging in a league average offense and bullpen into the Pythagorean equation. A 6 ERA pitcher has about a 40% chance of winning with that approach. That passes the smell test, since a a team with an average offense and bullpen have to have very bad starting pitching to still lose 60% of their games. What some don't seam to realize is that a team having a 40% chance to winning IS already very low. An entire team comprised of AAA players would still win something like 30% of their games. Here's a link to the Marcel projections with a brief description: http://www.tangotiger.net/marcel/

He's not going to win games because of "regression to the mean" which makes no sense in that context. It makes complete sense. And yes, he is a 6-7 ERA guy. It's ironic that a person trying to pretend that he knows what the meaning of "regression to the mean" is, is saying that Bush is a legitimate 6-7 ERA pitcher. I appreciate that statistical analysis is completely boring to the majority of the population and don't blame ANY baseball fan for ignoring it altogether. People watch baseball for entertainment, so if that stuff doesn't add enjoyment, be gone! Just don't ignore it AND argue against it, please.

If hes available, Ned should have put him in, instead of TGJ It's important to keep Gwynn fresh. Plus, he had the platoon advantage, so he should be expected to do better there than Hart. Plus he's some qual---- Ahh hell. I can't keep a straight face. There is absolutely no explanation whatsoever. Yost is insane.

Ha. Hall says, screw you to the stop sign at 3B. Run #2!!! 3 more runs and it gets interesting! http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

So, with 2 outs and no one on, a walk on a pitch that looked like strike 3, a check swing infield single, a bloops RBI single and a bomb with the pitcher on deck? Did I get that right? WOW.

One run in 4.1 IP against a guy who couldn't find the zone all night. Maddening. Better than getting mowed down by crappy pitchers. At least SOMETHING has been happening.