rluzinski

My largest fear will apparently will not be realized. My first baby is due October 7th and for those keeping score at home, if the Brewers make the playoffs, their first two home games will be October 6th and 7th (and I have tickets!!!). Lucky for me, my wife was kind enough to grow an 8 lb baby while having slightly high blood pressure. Looks like she'll be coming into this world by late next week at the latest. I have tickets to to Thursday's game, so I'm hoping for a Friday inducement but I haven't had a chance to talk to the doctor yet. I also have tickets for Saturday's game, so the delivery better not take very long. Just have to figure out how to fit some Halo 3 time in there...

We definitely need "good Bush" tonight. I'd like to think a quality start by Bush would get the Brewers the win but you never know.

I'm just saying, moving forward with issues such as how much we should be willing to pay if we'd like to extend Sheets, this stuff can't be ignored any longer. I don't think any injury should be ignored, nor should it be labeled as simply a generic injury. Each has to be analyzed independently, IMO. Would a doctor agree that a bunch of seemingly unrelated injuries suggests an athlete is more prone to injuries in the future? I don't know but I don't think anyone else here does either. I wouldn't think so but it also wouldn't surprise me if studies have been done on that very subject. I think that any team that might be interested in signing him, including the Brewers, should certainly not just ignore them, that's for sure. I thought the same. It is probably blasphemous to think that but it almost "seemed" like that. Is the theory that Sheets faked an injury to get out of the game? Did I miss something that would suggest that or is this just a blind conspiracy theory? What happened in the first that makes anyone think he was pitching especially bad anyway?

Every injury is a concern, certainly. I just don't consider them all equal. Like everyone, I'd rather Sheets never get hurt. FWIW, Jenkins said that he thinks Sheets will be fine and that is seems to have been only a cramp.

You pretended to start this thread as a response to a comment I made but it's pretty clear that it has nothing to do with my orginal comment. The topic of this thread is ambiguous, anyway. A person could define the phrase "having a down year" any number of ways, just like you can with the term, "ace". We can all pretend to not agree with each other, when in reality, we are all arguing different things. Semantics.

Two threads with very similar topics were merged.

Once again, I see the Brewers winning only 10 more games this year to finish at 75-87 in 5th place behind Cincy and Pittsburgh. How can anyone put a rosy picture on what has happened to this team? At least this prediction didn't come true. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

I thought we were talking about Sheets having a down year This Year? Now we are talking about future success? I'm very confused. With repect to the indicators that are the most projectable (Ks and walks), he's having a down year. With respect to win%, he's having a great year. With respect to IP, he's having a below average year. With respect to LOB%, he's having a great year. You can look at whatever you want but since you started this thread based on a comment I made, I'm telling you what I meant by him having a down year. And I even qualified my oringal comment in the chat with "when he has been healthy" to make it clear that I wasn't factoring in playing time. If you are trying to morph this into just another, "I don't care what the pitcher has done, if he's winning games he's pitching great" argument, let me know, so that I can extract myself from it.

You can cite rate stats all you want, but when a guy misses that much time, then it's a down year. Can we ever move beyond arguing semantics? I'm trying to analyze his performance while on the field, not trying to peg the net value of that performance.

The Cubs are as like to lose 8 games as to win 8 games in my opinion, they are a .500 team playing against teams who have given them trouble in the past. You don't seem liek the kind of guy who'd pay attention to small sample, team vs. team splits for a season.

I would be very surpised if they lost a game at Wrigley again this year. I would be very surprised if you aren't very surprised soon.

Sheets in 2007 VS. 2004 - 2006: GS K/9 BB/9 April 5 3.90 1.50 May 6 6.74 1.93 June/Jul 7 8.77 2.29 Aug/Sep 5 7.10 4.48 04' - 06' 73 9.38 1.22

87 wins might be enough for the WC (assuming they win at least 3 vs. Padres). Of course if they do that, it's likely they'd beat out the Cubs anyway, but you never know I think the WC is a pipe dream, at this point. Even if the Brewers beat up the Padres, Philli and the Dodgers are still way ahead of them. The WC winner will most likely have about 89 wins. The only way the Brewers are making the playoffs is by passing the Cubs.

This whole thread is really silly, since it was my comment that inspired this thread and it was misconstrued to begin with(despite my attempts at qualifying the statement). If I want to project future success of a pitcher based on a relatively small sample (less than a season's worth of stats), I don't care about a pitcher's win/loss record, or a very high or low LOB% (left-on-base percentages) or BABIP (batting average of balls in play). I simply look at the stats that are most consistent from year to year, Ks and BBs. The fact of the matter is, Sheets' K rate is way down and his walk rate way up this year: http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs/710_P_season_full_1_20070917.png http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs/710_P_season_full_2_20070917.png We can talk about how other pitchers can do well pitching to contact but hese two stats are why Sheets has been so dominating in the past and why he's not dominating right now. That's not to say he isn't still pitching well but I've come to expect a healthy Sheets to have a sub 3.5 ERA and the present Sheets isn't that kind of pitcher right now. Should we expect that trend to continue? I don't. Sheets' K rate and walk rate weren't very good in April (coming back from injury) but he turned it on after a slow start. He's also been slow to come back from his most recent injury, which really isn't that surprising. Hopefully, he still has enough time to put it back together this year but I'm very confident that he will be good to go next year. When I watch him pitch, the first thing I always look at is the pitch speed. When his fastball is topping out in the low 90's, I'm concerned. Remeber opening day? I seem to remember he was hitting 97 late in the game. I don't know if he's done that since. Sheets has always needed an inning or two to get his velocity up but he only hits 96 or 97 when he wants to (not very often, unless it's an all star game). He usually sits around the 93 or 94 MPH mark. You have to be carefull about reading too much into the readings on TV. They are very innacurate (usually in the OMG, 102 MPH!!! direction).

FWIW, I've got the Cubs winning 85 games, so my guess is that it would take 86 wins. A 9-4 finish would be a tall order, obviously. I think the Brewers are at the point that the Cubs will have to underperform a bit for the Brewers to make the playoffs.

BP calculated the Cards' chanced at 3% before their loss today and the Cub's win. Call that what you will.

His K:BB rate is still around 3:1 where it always was. His K/BB is way down this year.... 1.86 http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs/564_P_season_full_3_20070912.png That's not to say I think he's not a good reliever. When you are talking about 65 IP, anyone can have a down year and bounce right back. Brewer scouts thought he was still fine, so it's probably nothing too obvious (loss of velocity, for instance). The way Melvin was talking up the 2 draft picks he'll get from someone else signing Linebrink, it sure didn't sound like he was going to resign him, although thinks change somethimes. Hall's offense in a corner outfield spot has little value and TGJ's defense will probably not make up for his below average offensive skills. A move like that would downgrade two position. That said, I don't really want to keep Jenkins around either. $9 mil for a guy who is barely north of a .800 OPS with the platoon advantage the majority of the time is not worth that kind of cash. I'd be fine with a Gross/free agent platoon.

On that note I was wondering how Russ is handling the impending birth of his first child. I seem to remember he mentioned something about a due date around the playoffs and how he could make it to the games. Due Date: Oct 7th Date of home playoff games in first round: Oct 6th & 7th Talk about irresponsible!

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a345/rluzinski/melvinrusssmall.jpg

As frustrating as that game was, I'll take a .500 roadtrip anyday.

Good defense would have gotten Bush out of it. Story of the year.

Comments on game events should include opinion or factual information that wouldn't be generally available in the numerous game logs around the internet. Howe about the following comments: * Player A sucks! * Well, looks like this one is over * I have a feeling the Brewers are going to blow this lead * Another missed opportunity. Why do the Brewers always do that? I challenge the IGT crew to refrain from using any of these!

PNC Park should be a good place for Bush. He's a flyball pitcher who has a tendency to give up HRs and PNC Park gives up 10% less HRs than an average park. And while I'm not sure if this is completely true, Bush seems like the kind of starter who has 8 good starts and 2 horrible ones, so his ERA gets all jacked up on a couple of terrible starts. I'll take that over a 5.0 ERA pitcher who's exactly the same every start. 3 runs, 6 IP sounds great to me. EDIT. Out of Bush's 27 starts this year, he had a game ERA of 4.5 or less 13 times. In a third of his starts (9), he's had a game ERA of 3.53 ERA of less. Here are his best starts of the season: 1 ER, 7 IP (3 times) 1 ER, 6 IP (2 times)

Nice job making assumptions on who the casual fans are. I don't see why we can't post anything negative when nothing positive is happening. It has nothing to do with it being negative. If all you are going to post is, "This game is over" or "player X sucks!", why even bother to post it? It's been written a billion times already this year, hasn't it? I could write a program to auto-generate 95% of the posts in a typical IGT. I swear it didn't used to be like that around here. If that's what the IGT thread is supposed to be about, I'll just stay away and let you guys enjoy.

The Pirates are on pace for 72 wins. They aren't good but they aren't embarrassing either, especially at home.