rluzinski

I'd like them to finish in second place, one game behind the Brewers.

Just threw this together real quick. I used Baseball Prospectus's "3rd Order Win Percentage" for an estimated talent level for the Brewers and their remaining opponents. You can find them here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/standings/ I get a .474 SOS, meaning an average team would win about 85 games against them over 162 games. The Astros and Cubs are brutally bad and, despite their average record, the Pirates aren't far behind. Brewers are .526 (85 win team). Anyway, here is what I get when I simulate the rest of the season: http://i53.tinypic.com/k21fsh.gif Average number of expected wins is 89.5. The gives the Brewers around 75% chance of making the playoffs.

I love the question about who's more athletic. After mentioning everything Braun can do, Prince simply says, " I can HIT."

He did play well when Braun was out but has a .242/.301/.333/.635 when starting and a .245/.300/.321/.621 line overall. He has been terrible this year and was terrible last year. I don't get it.

Anyone who thinks they know the Brewers are going to lose should put their money where there mouth is and bet on it. Vegas thinks it's a coin flip, so you can get rich!

Didn't Hart make some comment a when Braun first came up about when Braun starts getting cocky, they just ignore it? Thought it was in the context of them all being friends. Here's a thread on the topic from 4 years ago: http://forum.brewerfan.net/viewtopic.php?t=628/Braun-cocky-or-confident?page=1

Yeh, Brewers win today and yesterday will be forgotten.

Roenicke think Hairston sucks, so we'll only see him for 7 innings in CF every four days or so.

The crowd was crazy loud..... for the first 4 hours!

Sat there for all 4 hours and 28 minutes, fighting to stay hydrated (especially after the 7th!) It will be the game I always remember (helped that I got tickets behind home plate) but MAN, it was uncomfortable in there.

Ummm - no. If Axford got hurt, and they used a different guy then K-Rod it would run the risk of a grievance and I can't see the Brewers winning that one. It, in fact, came with a TON of risk - $17.5 million dollars worth next season - which of course, all went away once K-Rod agreed to waive the option next year. If Axford would have gotten hurt the DAY the KRod was traded for, KRod could have still gotten plenty of save opportunities. I would have loved to see KRod file a grievance for "only" getting twenty save opportunities out of thirty-some appearances. It's one thing to sign a guy to be your closer and bench him with a couple of saves to go before a vested option; it's quite another to trade for a guy to be your setup man and because of injury, give him some save opportunities. Is there a precedent of a player winning a grivance in a situation even remotely similar? What are you basing your claim that he would have a good chance of winning on? So multiply the odds of Axford having a season ending injury within, say three weeks by the the odds that KRod files a grievance by the odds that he wins the grievance by ($17.5 - KRod's worth to the Brewers next year) and that's what The Brewers were risking. Making up some super-conservative numbers as an illustration: 25% x 50% x %50% x ($17.5 - $5 mil) < $1 mil. In reality, I would put the odds of KRod winning a grievance at near zero but regardless, the risk was low.

Unless Axford got hurt within 2 weeks of KRod coming over, there was almost no risk with that option. And in the end, there's ZERO risk if Mark A wanted it to be zero.

Wow, Roenicke REALLY likes Lopez's bat: "I'm not saying (Lopez) is not good defensively. But mainly why he's in there is because we want him to hit in that spot (5th), which is very difficult mentally. He's hit here before (.320 over a half-season in 2009), so he should be very confident in what he's done for this team." 06-08: .266/.336/.372/.709 2009: .310/.383/.427/.810 10-11: .229/.296/.336/.632 Lopez is batting 5th because he had one fluke year in 2009. This is why I can NEVER figure out why Roenicke does what he does. Even after he tells you rationale, it still doesn't little sense. He went on to say: "That's the main reason. If I put one of the other guys there (Jerry Hairston Jr., Craig Counsell and Josh Wilson), I probably wouldn't hit him fifth." I think it's pretty clear that Hairston isn't going to play much. Probably just against lefties in CF.

Lopez: 10-11: .229/.296/.336/.632 (503 AB)ZiPS ROS Projection: .246/.306/.344/.650 Lopez had a very nice 2009 season (.310/.383/.427/.810) but has done very little since. Why Roenicke see's it fit to bat him 5th is a complete mystery.

It's kind of sad to see how crazy good Morgan had to do to get starts over Gomez. When RR makes up his mind about something, it takes a crushing weight to change his mind.

Wow, the fact that he's walking around without a cast is HUGE. A conservative guess (and that's all it really is) might be 3 more weeks?

So nice to get the first game of this series.

I was trying to talk myself off a ledge by saying that Lopez will probably hit himself out of the starting lineup anyway... then I remembered Kotsay has a .242/.298/.319/.617 but RR is telling people that he's starting him in CF for his bat. What do you want him to say? He's starting in CF because of his solid defense? RR isn't an idiot. Kotsay may be needed by the end of the season. You stash him on the bench for the entire season and he'll be awful when you actually might need him. If people ask why he's starting, what do you want him to say?You may need to save a bad defender and hitter for WHAT!?

I was trying to talk myself off a ledge by saying that Lopez will probably hit himself out of the starting lineup anyway... then I remembered Kotsay has a .242/.298/.319/.617 but RR is telling people that he's starting him in CF for his bat. If after tonight he has a 4.40 ERA, that's indicative of what he's deserved to be. Well, that was easy!

Interesting fact...if the Brewers finish .500 the rest of the way (27-26 since there are 53 games left), they go 87-75. Rluz, your prediction has them going 28-25 the rest of the way? Just curious as to why? Based on their schedule, I would think a 30-23 or so record would be a reasonable expectation given the amount of games against Houston (6 games), Chicago (6 games) and Pittsburgh (10 games) or teams they have played very well against in 2011. I didn't put much thought into those win totals to be honest. I was more concerned with estimating the relative talent differences of the teams in question. Those were not final record predictions. As for the strength of opponent adjustment, I'd like to see what the Brewers strength of schedule is before commenting. Anyone give that in-season? And yes, I gave the Brewers home field advantage against ATL.

MIL: 88-74 ATL: 90-72 PHI: 95-67 Assuming that represents their true talent level, I have the Brewers beating Atlanta 49% of the time and Philli 40%. Big difference but the suggestion that the Brewers have no chance is just not correct. Lot's of luck involved in a short series.

Sure, Narveson is a lot closer to Wolf (love how you didn't post ERA) than the other three but the point still stands, Narveson is nothing special. I'd rather give the other guys an extra start (especially the top three, obviously) and use Narveson out of the bullpen.

No one can even agree what "MVP" means so I will simply show some numbers. Context neutral production (offense, base running and fielding) leaders, look at WAR (wins above replacement): http://www.fangraphs.com/...nth=0&season1=2011&ind=0 If you want context (just batting though), use WPA (win probability added): http://www.fangraphs.com/...nth=0&season1=2011&ind=0 Lot's of good choices to pick from.

I made that same argument on this board in 2002. I presented as much evidence as you did as well. Since then, I've studied the matter a lot and realized just how wrong I was. You are correct that defense is not even 50% of the game but it is still very important. Every non-out made by Betancourt represents about 2/3rds of a run on average. That includes the obvious errors and the not-as-obvious 5 hopper that skitters between Betancourt and 2B. Even if Betancourt only makes 1 less out than an average SS every 5 games, that's still about 20 runs and 2 wins over a full season, which is a hell of a lot. That's the difference between an average major leaguer and a perennial minor leaguer. It's the difference between 87 wins and the playoffs and 85 wins and sitting at home. I hear you, but what is the major indicator of 'defense' that we are using? I quoted the term defense, because I would take it mostly to be runs scored against as opposed to fielding metrics. From this reasoning, I would say that good pitching would not only reduce the runs scored against per game, but it would also serve as a type of equalizer by overcoming poor defense. To me, unearned runs would be a good measure of this (yes, I'm old school). To my surprise, the Brewers are actually 11th/15, while arguably the two best teams in the N.L. are 1/2 (Phi, Atl) so the poor defense arguments seem to have merit. At the same time, I would argue that every team makes errors, so things would tend to even out over the course of a season for the most part unless the team is exceedingly brutal at fielding. Even though the unearned runs are high, it seems that this season the Brewers have benefited more than not by crucial errors and/or misplays.I usually use the term "defense" to describe the combination of pitching and fielding, so we are in agreement there. And yes, good pitching can somewhat negate bad fielding, especially if it is in the form of a high strikeout rotation (limit number of balls in play). I really wouldn't use unearned runs, as it actually rewards teams who employ defenders with terrible range. If we are not concerned about uncoupling fielding from pitching, "defensive efficiency" is a good metric to look at it. It is simply the percentage of balls in play that are converted into outs: TmDefEff ? .694 CIN.709 PHI.705 ATL.704 SFG.704 ARI.701 SDP.698 FLA.695 LAD.694 NYM.694 WSN.694 LgAvg.694 COL.693 PIT.693 STL.693 MIL.689 HOU.675 CHC.669 Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original TableGenerated 8/1/2011. Everything equal, things do even themselves out over a season but the Brewers are not "equal". Melvin has a lot of batters in the everyday lineup who projected to be below average defenders before the season even started (Hart, Braun, McHehee, Fielder, Betancourt, in rough order of increased defensive ineptitude). I haven't seen anything this year that suggests those projections were wrong. The Brewers offense has been above average but the positional players have not been above average after you consider their fielding. The Brewers have the opportunity to improve their fielding with the additions of Lopez and Hairston but I don't believe they realize how bad their fielding has been.

Narveson's career numbers post all star break are 3.45 ERA, 1.16 WHIP, .225 BAA so I wouldn't skip any of his starts either.Yeh, but he has a 4.94 ERA in night games, so obviously he could be skipped then (except at Busch stadium, where he has a 3.0 ERA). Wait, 1.45 ERA when Nieves catches him? The guy has 151 IP in the second half in his career. You don't make managerial decisions based on statistical noise.