rluzinski

This is like looking at two homes you end up liking and then being asked which one you like better.... without knowing how much they cost. Greinke will almost certainly cost more money because he's the better pitcher but tell me how much more and then I can answer. As for how much " bad luck" played a role in Greinke's ERA/FIP disparity last year, it's not 100% but I think it's obvious that it played a significant role. We all went over the evidence that supports that already, so anyone who doesn't agree is never going to.

No way is Greinke the 5th or 6th best starter among these three teams. In fact, ZiPS has Greinke as best: Name ERA IP Greinke 2.98 199 Wainwright 3.12 173 Latos 3.38 192Gallardo 3.46 195 Carpenter 3.49 201 Marcum 3.51 151 Garcia 3.58 184 Cueto 3.63 173 These numbers are obviously not gospel but I think people are once again undervaluing Greinke and overvaluing Gallardo. http://www.baseballthinkf...jections_cincinnati_reds http://www.baseballthinkf...tions_milwaukee_brewers/ http://www.baseballthinkf...ns_-_st._louis_cardinals

I realize that a career split is not a projection but it's a place to start. Hart career vs RHP:.268.319.473.793 Your league minimum claim suggests a replacement level player (unless you were alluding to a player the Brewers already have?). Even if you consider Hart's below average defense, I don't think even a LH replacement level player would be expected to hit near that. EDIT: Didn't see your follow up post before I posted: "Every year some LH poor fielder signs for very little money. You pay Hart for what he does vs LH pitching, he is just good enough to keep him on the field vs RH pitching but he isn't much of a plus against them." Give me an example of a LH batter that projects to hit around a .800 OPS against righties that was available for league minimum this year. More than a few backup lefties will do that over a few hundred AB but that doesn't mean they were projected to.

According to this: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/a...6&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb it is Off the top of my head, didn't Manny Ramirez sign during Spring Training?

It's definitely imprecise over one season. It's not necessarily inaccurate, however. That is a very important distinction: http://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/magazine/tct/tct_side1.html As I mentioned earlier, if the underlying batted ball trajectory and speed data that UZR uses is biased (and there, is some evidence that it is), that would decrease it's accuracy. Lower sample size decreases precision.

You'd prerhaps want to regress UZR but you can't use multiple years if you want to tell you how that player did in a particular year. Really, though, Fangraphs breaks up the WAR components. Weight them as you see fit.

It's not unprecedented for high profile players to sign this late. I still think Fielder will end up with a pretty darn good contract.

Let me try to address a few of the topics discussed here. Some of this has already been said but I will repeat it: WAR is LITERALLY trying to estimate the wins a particular player's performance over a certain time was worth over an average replacement level player. It is just a framework, however. That framework can be implemented in any number of ways and Fangraphs and BF have come up with two such implementations. I am sure there will be more and hopefully they will continue to improve the methodology. WAR is attempting to estimate the value of performance, not the skill level of a player. If a 9 year vet with a career .200 BA throws up a .300 BA in his 10th year, we say he was a .250 batter last year but we estimate his actual skill level at something much closer to .200. We know that a player does not always player at their true skill level and the most significant reason for that is the uncertainty associated with sample size. UZR has a much larger uncertainty over one season than the offensive component of WAR. Two reasons. First, players get significantly less defensive opportunities than offensive opportunities over a given season. Lower sample size equals higher uncertainty. No metric can remove that uncertainty. Second, offensive metrics record what actually happened, play-by-play defensive metrics (like UZR) attempt to estimate the likelihood of an average defender making a particular play. That is based on a somewhat subjective estimate of ball trajectory and speed. Even if that estimate is unbiased, it will lower the precision (not accuracy) of the UZR estimate. If it is biased (and there is some evidence that it might be), it will lower both. In summary, WAR probably represents the best framework available for estimating the value of performance that is publicly available, and Fangraphs and BR offers a reasonable implementation of that framework. There will be more, probably better implementations of it in the future and the WAR framework will probably be supplanted altogether by something better someday. Combine that with whatever observational (scouting) based evidence you think yo have on a player and that's going to be your best guess.

This isn't a SABR thing. Scouts and stats have agreed for years that Betancourt is terrible. And yes he is among a handful of the worst players the Brewers have ever started for an entire season.And that fact has been pointed out about a BILLION times over the last 12 months. Some people just ignore what they want to ignore. BTW, Perez's defensive value was pretty high.

I hope they had good taste in music!

Some people have been predicting his demise for years. When it doesn't happen, they just continue to predict it. Hart is a very good hitter and a little below average defender (who makes occasionally very ugly plays). He's easily worth his current contract. That said, I will trade any player who can get more in return that he's worth. If it's Hart, so be it. Just don't tell me the Brewers should trade Hart because he's going to fall apart... any day now.

Man, Melvin does not care about defense even a little. If it's 3/$36, it's probably a decent deal but it would be nice to not have to watch the infield suck at fielding.

I can't be happy or sad about about any signing until I know the dollar amount.I have concerns

Good point. Sorry I missed it the first million times you made it. Got it Didn't mean to be condescending. It's just frustrating when a metric is criticized because of a misconception or misapplication (I'm referring to another poster's comment).

Most Brave fans who watched him last year though say he's a much better fielder than his last year UZR would indicate. UZR says he was a very good fielder from 2006 until 2010. I guess I'm having a hard time trusting UZR lately anyway ever since it indicated that Casey McGehee was a very good fielder in 2011. I've said this a million times and I'll say it again, one year of UZR tells you very little. It's as accurate at representing a player's defensive talent as about 300 AB worth of offensive statistics. It's not a trend. Average the last 3-4 years of UZR and adjust a bit for age. Gonzalez is still most likely an above average defender and his stick is comparable to Yuni's. Although unexciting, he is a clear upgrade.

I don't believe Ben Sheets is even trying to get back into baseball yet (if ever).

Anything is possible but I don't see Gomez's offense making a huge jump. He's young enough that we can still expect him to improve but with a lifetime .243/.291/.357 line, he'll never even be average offensively. His excellent defense is what makes him a nice option as part of platoon though.

Maybe I'm too much of a traditionalist. But I do not see any way that this would be a positive change. Change just for change sake isn't usually good.It is not a change just for change's sake. The reasons have already been laid out in this thread (different sized divisions and strength of schedule discrepancies within divisions being the two big ones I think). That's fine if you don't think they justify realignment but no need to ignore their existence. As for change, I grew up on the NFL, so I'm used to things getting tweaked as time goes on.

The theory is that Hart is too lazy to run hard for 90 feet? I think he gained weight, got older and slower, like pretty much every baseball player.

I don't think Hart is even an average defender but he is not among the worst either.

What's the over/under for when he gets fired? Mid-season 2014?

People have been saying this since he got to Milwaukee, but he pitched very, very well in 2010 AFTER his lousy May & first part of June (remember that his 12-run outing was taking one for the team b/c the bullpen was so shot) AND his 2011 was pretty darn solid, too. I'm not saying there's no way he regresses, but I believe it's hardly a given. Wolf had a 3.69 ERA last year. He won't project to have an ERA below 4 so yes, he will be expected to regress.

With Greinke and Marcum only signed through 2012, Melvin might feel pressure to upgrade more than that next year, though. That or just trade one or both and rebuild in 2012. I just don't know.

Why does everyone assume that they just melted under the spotlight and pressure? As I love to play sports psychiatrist, I will take a stab at answering that. When our sports teams fail, we search for a way to vent the inevitable frustration that it results in. Part of the venting process involves assessing blame to the individual players. It's more emotionally satisfying to blame an athlete's poor performance on a character flaw than luck or fatigue, so invariably that is what the fan determines caused the poor performance. Or not. I don't really know.

Betancourt is a funnty guy. For a SS, he either does things well or bad. Nothing in between. Good: Power (for a SS), strong arm, catching pop ups over his head. Terrible: Plate discipline (.271 OBP this year!), range (I've never seen a SS so slow!) Add it all up and you have a SS who will never even be close to average, though. I'd he'll play for $1 mil in 2012, he'll start for someone though. "But if you allow for the fact that the first half of 2011 he was adjusting to a new league, it's reasonable to expect him to hit .270/.290/.400" He hasn't done that since he was 25, so I would consider that more of a pipe dream than reasonable. And batters that move from the AL to the NL typically do better (weaker pitching), not worse.