rluzinski

Do you really want to gamble with what you've got going right now by rocking the boat? This is may be the only shot some of these guys have at ever having a season like this again. CM and YB aren't great, but do you want to risk a change and then end up with the relacements not making the cut and the demoted guys now out of synch with what's going on? Yes, other REAL team sports add and subtract starters all the time. Why in baseball, do we have to treat these guys like they run the risk of falling apart emotionally? I genuinely don't understand it. I think this kind of stuff is just WAY overblown in baseball. Macha was apparently the worst "player's manager" ever and Roenicke the best. That supposedly translates into some meaningful difference in player performance. Which specific players are performing better? Give me SOME evidence that it's just not something for the talking heads to talk about.

The Brewers offense after Braun and Fielder isn't particularly good. There seems to be a consistent underestimation of Hart's offensive talents around here: 2010: .283/.340/.525 2011: .286/.359/.512 Updated proj.: .273/.341/.506 That's certainly good for a corner outfielder. The way I see the offense (considering position): Fielder, Braun (great) Hart, Weeks (very good) Morgan, Lucroy (average) .... McGehee, Betancourt (very bad)

I should have been more clear. I meant the difference between the two percentages is 10%, . I great player gets on base 40% of the time. I bad one, 30%. That's a difference of 10%. What percent increase of a percent that represents doesn't really tell us anything useful I don't think.

I think it was fair to have assumed that Green would have had more than 1 AB and 0 innings at 3B at this point. Even if RR is scared of hurting McGehee's feeling, Green should still get one start a week and not be behind Kotsay and Craig friggin' Counsell as a pinch hitter.

UZR is a player specific stat that ignores positioning. Of course, you should be able to add together all the infielder's UZR to see how they've performed as a team. UZR tries to take into account ball location and speed): 1B: -3.5 (no surprise)2B: 6.1 (no surprise)SS: -7.7 (no surprise)3B: 7.5 (???)---------------------------+2.4 You can dig into that curious 3B total here: http://www.fangraphs.com/winss.aspx?team=Brewers&pos=3b&stats=fld&qual=0&type=1&season=2011&month=0&season1=2011 McGehee has a negative UZR from errors (no surprise) but has a a very good "range UZR" Since he's obviously not fast, perhaps this is a result of poitioning? I don't recall him making a bunch of plays against lefties shaded towards SS. Has he? Anyway, 2.4 runs is around 3 extra outs over average. If that is true (and this is a small sample for defensive metrics), that would be very good considering Betancourt and Fielder have proven to be way below average. I suspect that the Brewers are simply subjectively deciding which plays would have been outs with normal positioning. I would be surprised if a Brewer employee could be unbiased doing so and it would be hard to determine even if bias isn't a concern. Of course, I am just speculating. As for my personal opinion just from watching? I have absolutely no idea. I can remember many, many plays going both ways. How can anyone claim to keep track of the results of thousands of balls in play?

My coach picked who played but of course, that was football, where people don't act like chemistry is the difference between winning and losing. I didn't want to see any of buddies benched of course but if they didn't perform, you just kind of expected it. The irony is that baseball is the least "team sport" of all the major professional sports in the United States.

Isn't this sort of contradicting itself. On the one hand statistically it hardly ever happens yet on the other it's it's far from trivial. In any event these low occurring events have a good outcome of what maybe 60% while the poor ones 40%. Thus a 20% differential between bad moves and good ones in the outcome. Even if Ron screws up every move we are still left with a very small amount of effected outcomes. I'd even go so far as to say a statistically insignificant amount. I never said they hardly every happen and yes, the difference between a good and less than optimal strategy is usually small. The margins in baseball are pretty small overall, however. A great hitter gets on base only 10% more than a terrible one. A playoff team might only win 5% more games than an average one. Roenicke's sub-optimal strategies might only be 2 games below average (and no I don't pretend to know) but 2 wins is worth a lot! A franchise pays around $5 mil a win on the open market after all. Is the vitriol for Roenicke's sub-optimal strategies sometimes disproportional to the amount of damage they can do? Sure. I believe the frustration lies with the fact that a player just can't will himself to be a better player but a manager can simply just start making better choices. Perhaps this team really is a 100 win type of team but is being managed to a 92 win team level. My guess is that the Brewers are a little better of a team than we thought they were going to be in terms of collective talent (perhaps 90 wins). The balance of the difference is whatever you want to attribute it to. It could be 7 games of luck and -2 games of manager.. I don't know.

The difference between optimal strategy and somewhat but sub-optimal (but not absurd) in-game strategy might only be 3 games (making up a number for discussion but it's something like that). The collective talent of a team obviously has a SIGNIFICANTLY larger effect. 3 times larger, easily. As such, it should be clear that correlation between a manager's skill level and his team's record after 140 games is going to be very weak. Now, if a manager with an perennially average payroll at his disposal and has a team that performs well over a 10 year period, that is a very different situation. It is not THIS situation, though. You can claim that Roenicke has been successful but that's because you are attributing a portion of the team's success to Roenicke. I don't because of the correlation issues I mentioned above. I disagree that there is no objective way to attempt to measure a manager's competency. Through analytical means (simulations for instance), one can attempt to estimate the optimal strategy for a particular situation and compare its expected success rate with that of the manager's strategies. If we have a large enough sample to work with (years), we can look at the actual success rate of his moves, relative to the estimated success rate. I don't claim to have "proof" that Roenicke is a bad manager but I'm not just blindly disagreeing with his strategies either. I have not studies his moves particularly close but I am confident that his small ball strategies are better suited for the run environment you would have found at the turn of the 20th century than for the 4.25ish runs/game you see today. Even if you compare Roenicke to his contemporaries, he's leading the universe in sacrifice attempts: http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL/2011.shtml#teams_standard_batting::25 So everything else equal, either the rest of the NL is wrong for not utilizing sacrifice bunts enough or Roenicke is for employing the strategy too often. I don't know what the answer is for sure but I feel inclined to assume the latter.

A long FAQ accompanies the announcement.They probably had a warehouse of components they would otherwise get pennies on the dollar for.

I think you could equally argue he's setting a precedent so others work at all facets of their game. He can use practices and meetings to tell his players what he expects of them. He should use games as an opportunity to leverage the strengths and weaknesses of his players in such a way as to maximize team wins. That's what I'm talking about when I say he should put his players "in the best position to win." I reject the "major leaguers should be able to..." philosophy that managers will throw thereout when they are trying to defend a bad move. As far as the working 40% of the time part, if you accept it is trivial why do you care? I DON'T think it's trivial. Far from it. My point is that the closer you are to 50/50 odds, the larger sample you need to be able to judge the effectiveness of a strategy by its results. A sub-optimal strategy that still has the desired result 40% of the time can perform very well over 10 instances. That's why I cringe when I hear a manager can learn from their mistakes as the season goes on. Statistically, the opportunity to do so is extremely limited. It isn't whether I find it compelling or not. It's whether maybe there is another way of seeing things that might be equally compelling. How can you judge two trails when you only traveled one? My way is to ask questions. Whether you find it compelling enough to answer is up to you. Didn't mean the "so be it" comment to mean, "screw you". I just meant that you are more than familiar with the kind of evidence I offer up at this point. Me dishing out a little more to you isn't going to change your mind, either way. That's not right or wrong, it just is. I think not subbing Betancourt with Counsell was only a minor mistake. The issues I had were: 1. Bunting at all: I know everyone wants to play for a tie as the home team but I don't think that is sound strategy. Finishing the innings tied still means you have a 50% chance of losing. I could go on and on with why but I just want it noted. 2. Bunting with Fielder at 2B 3. Continuing to call for a bunt attempt when the Cardinals went "all in" on the sac attempt with their defensive alignment on the first pitch. Someone HAS to post a screen grab of the Cardinals alignment just prior to Betancourt's bunt attempt.LaRussa knew he could be aggressive because Roenicke has become painfully predictable despite not being a ML manager for even a full season. "Keep em' guessing" isn't just a cliche. Game theory is very important in this situation. Can anyone think of a better player to ask to swing away with? Betancourt LOVES TO SWING. Let him swing with the infield COMPLETELY out of alignment.

I was referring to RR making the pronouncement of what his players SHOULD be able to do. If he assumes everyone is equally a good bunter, he's blinding himself of reality. And I do my best to not use anecdotal evidence to strengthen my arguments in general. When a bad choice in baseball still succeeds 40+% of the time, the result of a handful of decisions is largely irrelevant. You know the kind of evidence I try to employ. If you don't it compelling, so be it.

Braun is too busy trying to pad is SB numbers. WOW.

I'm somewhat skeptical of the "advanced scouting" or "jitters" phenomena. Of course, you could attempt to test it by looking at the spread of "debut starting pitcher" performance and compare it to everyone else.

First, thanks for doing the homework. You apparently listed the last 11 debuts (you said 10). The last 10 starting pitching debuts against the Brewers has a 4.65 ERA against the Brewers. The Brewers have a 1.59 WHIP in those games. That's a completely arbitrary cutoff of course and I should probably include Wells in there but I don't see anything out of the ordinary. Sometimes they do well and sometimes they don't. I just think sometimes the expectation around here is that the Brewers should pummel every starting pitcher making his debut. That's just not the way it works.

Like every other skill, some players are better at bunting than others. If Roenicke isn't willing to take that into consideration because it doesn't doesn't fit with his idealistic view of baseball, he's a bad manager. His job is to put the Brewers in the best chance to win.

Unlike Betancourt, NL pitchers know how to bunt.

Roenicke needs to read "Game Theory For Dummies". You shouldn't always do one thing or another; you have to mix your strategies up. Unfortunately, Roenicke leads the universe in sacrifice bunts because in certain situations, he will almost always call for one. That makes it easy for the opposing manager to go "all in" with their defensive positioning, significantly lowering the probability of a successful bunt. Throw in Prince being the lead runner and Betancourt being the one attempting the sacrifice and it was pretty much doomed from the start. The real disheartening thing about it was that Roenicke had the opportunity to SEE on the first pitch that both corner infielders were aggressively crashing in. He could have made an adjustment but when RR wants a sac bunt, he seems very reluctant to change strategies. He's just way too predictable.

What a joke. Roenicke would have been a wonderful manager in 1910.

This is so embarrassing. Fielder and McGehee on the basepaths and Betancourt bunting. RR is just stupid. I'm sorry. He's basically a high school manager.

I completely agree. If you can rationalize Greinke's home/road splits for this reason, why not implement that strategy? His Social Anxiety is a known issue which can be worked around. Is it still an issue? Just you can rationalize a reason for the splits does not make it the cause of it. A couple months ago, people were coming up with all kinds of reasons why the Brewers should be expected to continue to stink on the road. Some of them may have sounded plausible but there was no evidence that any them were true. It's just speculation. If Greinke says it's an issue, the Brewers would have to seriously consider modifying the rotation to accommodate him. Otherwise, it's just an interesting theory, IMO.

Still have a pending order through HP but it hasn't shipped yet. We've been assured that they will, though.

We have to look at a lot more than just Atlanta's season split to determine if Wolf should get the extra start over Greinke. Yes, Wolf would be facing potentially 4 lefties in the lineup. I don't think that gets close to counteracting the fact that Greinke's ERA projects to be about a run better than Wolf, though.

What Hairston has done in 73 PA with the Brewers is largely irrelevant to this discussion. If we want to guess how Hairston and Betancourt is going to perform going forward, we should look at least the last 2-3 years of production. That should be obvious, no? ZiPS rest-of-season projections for both: Hairston: .259/.328/.362 Betancourt: .261/.281/.402 Hairston projects to be a little better with the stick (rule of thumb that 1 point of OBP is worth around 1.8 points of SLG). The larger difference is probably defensively, where Hairston projects to be significantly better even if we assume he's a little below average at SS. I guess I'm surprised that at this point, we can't all agree that while Betancourt has made some great plays at SS this year, he's also displayed consistently terrible range there.

The fact that McGehee drove in more runs than Fielder last year doesn't mean he's a better player, but it does mean he was more successful at driving in runs. What "more successful" mean? Did McGehee have more opportunities? Did McGehee make more outs in attempting to rack up more RBI's? These are the questions that need to be asked to determine success. Scoring runs and bringing them in are what the game is all about, so I don't think this can just be discounted. The game is all about the TEAM scoring more runs. A guy who never walked would improve his RBI numbers but would most likely lower the total amount of runs his team scored. RBI totals tell you what happened. They are a poor way to measure batter skill.

O my goodness, no they should not factor in the results of a handful of starts. You could find all kinds of random splits if you wanted to fish around for them. Recent stats against individual batters? I've said this a million times but high school math can prove the folly of that. They should use the park factors to their advantage in combination with the starters' GB rates. That's the kind of analysis that needs to be done.