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rluzinski

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Everything posted by rluzinski

  1. rluzinski
    This is all you need to know: http://ciepley.com/images/blog/icon_kapler_lg.jpg Well, that and he's considered a good defender who can play all 3 OF spots but can't hit a lick. His 2008 ZiPS projection: .263 BA .310 OBP .397 SLG .707 OPS Gwynn's projection: .260 BA .325 OBP .328 SLG .653 OPS At 25 years old, Gywnn has the better chance of making that jump and beating those projections by a wide margin (.280/.350/.375?). At 32 years old, Kapler is what he is. On a side note, assuming a 2/1 split on a strict Gwynn/Kapler platoon in CF, here's the projected performance by the Brewers from CF: .261 BA .320 OBP .351 SLG .671 OPS That is just terrible.
  2. rluzinski
    On paper the two teams are even so I have no problem with anyone picking one over the other. Every statistical projection I've seen gives the Cubs the slight edge.
  3. rluzinski
    I'd guess that when the polls close on April 2nd, the results will be posted for all to see.
  4. rluzinski
    Last I heard before my vacation he was just faking it and "an inside source" said the team told him to do it. I don't buy it. I'm supposed to believe that the Brewer's head physician is part of the conspiracy? I realize that teams lie all the time about injuries but "tired arm" is all you have to say. To imagine up Tommy John surgery is unbelievable, IMO.
  5. rluzinski
    You can't just look at last year's record, analysis off season moves and call it a day. Often, you are going to get a distorted view of a team's true skill if you do.
  6. rluzinski
    Soriano embarrassed himself when he was first moved to LF but you should expect as much when you are learning on the job. I'm sure Braun will do the same thing for some time.
  7. rluzinski
    As the poster said, Bush was far more likely to have that big blowup than Suppan was. Say that like it is a bad thing. Comparing two pitchers with identical 4.5 ERAs, I'll take the ERA with a couple big blowups over giving up 3 runs over 6 IP every outing. The less consistent pitcher will win more games. Giving up that 6th or 7th run has little consequence since you probably aren't going to win a game in which your starting pitcher gives up 5 runs anyway. Obviously, Bush and Suppan didn't have the same ERA and Suppan actually had a pretty decent year (as End pointed out). I just think there's some serious misconceptions over how you want your starting pitcher to distribute his runs given up over a season. Heck, who wouldn't want their starting pitcher to give up ALL his runs in his first start, while throwing shutouts for the rest of the year. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif
  8. rluzinski
    Same reason tennis is quiet...both sports are concerned about decades of tradition and not about making the game fan-friendly. Letting fans stand a few feet away from the action seems pretty fan friendly to me. Let me stand in the on deck circle while Prince Fielder is AB and I would be as quiet as they want me to be.
  9. rluzinski
    Who cares if Munson bats lefty? He still hits like garbage, so what's the difference? I've never gotten that either. The major reason to worry about handedness is to get the platoon advantage. If a batter has the platoon advantage and still is bad, it's worthless.
  10. rluzinski
    Why spend $42 mil for playoff experience when you already have Counsell for that at a fraction of the cost? Yes, Suppan is better than Vargas but he is probably a league average pitcher. I hated the signing then and I hate the signing now.
  11. rluzinski
    Yes, 168 IP is a somewhat small sample. That's a very small sample with a lot of uncertainty attached to it. I'm not saying to ignore it but no way you start deriving absolutes from it. If Villy has a bad 200 innings this year, I can guarantee you that someone will use it as proof that "Villy can't get people out when it counts" or something else along those lines. I like Villy as does the majority of Brewers fans. I just don't see much difference between, Villy, Bush or Capuano. Certainly not enough to have been "shocked" by whomever made it into the starting rotation among them. People sometimes have very strong opinions on players knowing too little to justify it, IMO. It's why public sentiment can shift so drastically from year to year for some players (Cappy and Hall being two good examples, IMO).
  12. rluzinski
    I think that gives you an idea of the subjectivity and ridiculousness of the list. This guy can't even be consistent between his own articles. You need to read the introduction to the list.
  13. rluzinski
    Probably because most don't agree with any projections that have Bush as good as Villanueva this year. Villy is the kind of player that seems to give fans unrealistic expectations He's had some success but it's been over a short period of time and his periphrials haven't been anything great. What ERA do people expect from Bush and Villy this year? Off the top of my head, here's mine: Villy: 4.40 ERA Bush: 4.50 ERA We can argue about the exact order but they aren't worlds apart, like some seem to think..
  14. rluzinski
    I'm not 100% endorsing this list by any means but they reason this list looks so absurd to some is because what it's trying to do is being misunderstood. People aren't used to seeing positional players values include defense. People don't sometimes consider the effects of having a lot of offensive talent at some positions (1B, COF) and little at others (C, SS). The average fan doesn't seem to realize that by the time a player hits the age of 30 or 31, their skills have often already started eroding. Looking at that insidethebook link I posted earlier, it looks like many there agree that Melky shouldn't even be on the list (among some other marginal talents) and also agree that starting pitchers are underrepresented.
  15. rluzinski
    I wonder how quickly Prince jumps to top 5 status when he signs with Boston/New York? I bet the national (read: New England) media won't stop talking about how great he is when that happens. Again, I think Prince was ranked so low because of Neyer's apparent concerns over his weight, not because of where he plays. Neyers is/was a Royals fan. And as I said earlier, I think weight will play no part in hurting Fielder's value over the next 5 years. Here's some sabermetric commentary about this list: http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/the_next_5_years/#comments
  16. rluzinski
    If you ballpark the 2008 payroll at $80 million the $900k is just over 1 percent of the payroll. $2.9 mil is only 3% but it was enough o motivate Melvin to release Vargas.
  17. rluzinski
    At spring training this year, I was sitting next to a Brewer fan who lived in AZ. Alcides Escobar was playing SS. She was talking about him and how he also played in the Fall League in AZ. Baseball prospectus states that his glove is "Major League ready", so I said to her, "I hear he's a pretty good fielder". She responded, "Not at all, I'm nervous every time the ball is hit this way." So, either BP got some faulty scouting reports or the "wisdom of this particular fan" is pretty acute. There are always going to be outliers but as the theory goes, they should cancel themselves out with a large enoughs sample size. Come on people, make sure you fill this out. It should be fun to see what Brewers the fans select but if it's only 10 fans, it's not so fun.
  18. rluzinski
    If the Brewers are projected to win the division 30% of the time and have the 2nd highest total, does that necessarily mean that they are projected to finish in 2nd? I think that just means they are projected to finish 1st 30% of the time. It's a function of each team's average win total and its standard deviation but no other team is even close, so it's easy to eyeball the Brewers being the favorites for second place. The Brewers are expected to win about 7 games more than the third place team, which is a huge margin: Cubs: 88.2 Brewers: 85.0 Cardinals: 78.3 Reds: 76.9' Astros: 74.6 Pirates: 69.8
  19. rluzinski
    Mota is in the last year of a multi-year deal. Hence, the Brewers have to pay the salary no matter what. They can cut Vargas and cut his salary. They might simply be close to equal but cutting Vargas saves money. First of all, they cut 75% of Vargas's salary and the remaining $900,000 isn't insignificant. Second, I'm familiar with Mota's history. The Brewers didn't have to pay Mota's salary because Melvin didn't have to trade for him in the first place. It's quite clear that Melvin never had any intention of keeping Vargas when he decided offer him arbitration. Melvin bet that he'd be able to trade Vargas and he bet wrong. He could have at least hedged his bet by not signing Mota (who just like Vargas, had negative value) and in very light pencil, marked Vargas down for that role if he couldn't move him. Instead, he has at least two guys with less value in the pen (Mota and McClung) and no real long reliever. I'm still a big fan of Melvin but I think he screwed this up. I suspect that he would agree.
  20. rluzinski
    For what it's worth, here's what the simulations say: http://www.replacementlevel.com/images/blog_images/NLCentral2008.jpg The 2008 Diamond Mind Projection Blowout Pt 2 It's hard to argue with the the first two picks.... unless you want to make a cute pick for the sake of selling magazines.
  21. rluzinski
    Melvin keeps getting his spring training bluffs called and it keeps costing the team money. Melvin may be waiting to pick up another Dave Burba off waivers, releasing McClung when he does. I can't imagine counting on McClung in that role. And the notion that Mota is apparently worth more than Vargas hurts my brain. If you look at it all as a whole, none of it makes sense.
  22. rluzinski
    Sure, he's taking everything into account, but according to Win Shares (which do that as well and which he helped develop, iirc), Prince was the 15th best player in MLB last year and the 3rd youngest player among the top 25. 5 win shares from a SS is much more valuable than 5 win shares from a 1B, though, so you can't just say that Prince is the 15th most valuable player. Does he deserve to be as low as he is? Probably not.
  23. rluzinski
    You have to keep in mind that he's considering overall value, which includes defense. Braun and Fielder play at easier defensive positions. Value should always be relative to typical replacement player and there are a lot less potential replacements if you are playing one of the harder defensive positions. The offensive bar is set higher for corner outfielders and first basement than for catchers and middle infielders. Braun is the first corner outfielder listed and (I glanced quickly, so correct me if I'm wrong) the only 1B listed before Prince is Pujols. I think Neyer's concern about Prince's weight is pretty silly however. I have no doubt that Prince will keep his weight at a reasonable level over the next 5 seasons. Neter's list might be wrong but it probably has little do with any percieved ESPN bias.
  24. rluzinski
    My problem is that it depends a lot on the situation. If its a man on third two outs, tie game and a single will win it, then Fielder and Gwynn are pretty even. If its no outs, no one on tie game, Fielder and Braun are pretty even. For your first example, a single will win it but an out will end it, which is why I would much prefer Prince. As for yours second example, While their production was similiar last year, I'd still prefer Prince over Braun, since I feel that his production is much more established. In the end though, the survey's instructions are vague enough to justify more than a few interpretations. And when it comes to the clutchiness over overall skill debate, some fans might ignore clutchiness altogether, some might use is as a tiebreaker (probably my preference), some might think it's a strong enough force to propel Counsell over Prince.
  25. rluzinski
    It's interesting that you ask a question like that, Rluz, since you are a hard core stats guy and out to prove that there is no such thing as clutch. I'm not "out to prove" anything. I don't have some underlying agenda to dismantle the grand ol' game, one regression at a time! I just prefer statistical evidence over conjecture or anecdotal evidence. There have been studies that have found evidence that certain players do have a "clutch" skill. What they found was a pretty small effect so far, however. Tango is a huge fan of the "wisdom of the crowds" theory, though. He has shown that as a group, fans can value defensive skills of individual players pretty well and can also project offensive numbers very well. He's done a lot of work coming up with a way to quantify clutch ABs and he's now giving the fans the chance to identify the players they want up in those high leverage situations. If the fans select an inferior batter over a better one, he's going to conclude that they feel that player is more clutch. Knowing that, he can test to see if that batter had indeed performed better than expected in clutch situations for 2008. You believe in clutch and think some Brewers perform better or worse when the going gets tough? Rank them as such. If you don't, just pick who you think is the best overall hitter. It's up to you. I'm not sure who that is because I dont' have the data in front of me. I hear that the internet has that kind of stuff.
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