rluzinski

100% of the time? 51% of the time? If your answer is "this time", I don't think you are looking at the situation correctly.I am not sure what you are getting at here? My opinion was that the division winner will only need to win 88 games just because no one team is going to be dominant enough to put together a huge 2nd half to get to 90 wins I agree that no team is dominant. After all, no team projects to win even 88 games, according to Baseball Prospectus. But even if that projection is correct, there is a non-zero chance that an NL Central team wins 88 games and still doesn't take the division. If I had the choice right now to magically give the Brewers 88 wins for the season, I would grudgingly do so, since that would offer no guarantee to a division win, just a probability of winning (what that probability is, I could not even guess at without running some numbers). It's similar to the scenario of having five perfectly average teams in a division. While you don't project any one team for more than 81 games, you project the divisional winner to have something like 86 wins by luck alone.

100% of the time? 51% of the time? If your answer is "this time", I don't think you are looking at the situation correctly.

I don't want another bullpen arm because it will just be some guy who's done alright in 20 IP this year or whatever. That or Melvin will overpay for a "name". They are all kind of the same so might just use our spare parts instead of someone else's.

I just wrap the corn in aluminum foil and throw it on the fire. They just steam from their own juices. Hard to mess it up.

I think the bullpen is fine. Get a SS that can field and put up a .310 OBP and left handed option at 3B and I'll be satisfied.

That only presumes that the Brewers continue to destroy opponents at home, which isn't realistic. As my previous post showed, if the Brewers play at a 90 win pace for the rest of the year and have an average home/road split, they'll be expected to have a 19-17 road record but still only 88 wins overall. That might give them a coin flip chance at winning the division?

I really dont think they can keep up that home pace. They are going to have to do better than 16-20 on the road to win it. Right, there's little reason to expect the Brewers to continue to over perform at home and under perform on the road. If we think the Brewers are a true 90 win team (my guess is closer to 86-87 but...), we would expect them to finish about 39-31. Assuming an average home win% of 54%, that's about 20-14 at home and 19-17 on the road. Of course, that's ignoring strength of schedule home and away.

That is a perfect response. I have no issue with professional athletes for trying to maximize their profits. It's practically un-American to expect otherwise. So if any player or baseball organization expects a fan to give away something that is worth money on the open market, that is an insult.

The Pirates don't look like much of a threat on paper if you consider more than just the 2011 results: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/odds/ They have the Cards taking the division with 87 wins but with the Brewers, Reds and Pirates also in the mix, there is a decent chance someone will finish with more than 87 wins. As is often the case, the team that wins it will have probably over performed a bit, relative to their actual talent. BP playoff odds methodology: http://www.baseballprospe...icle.php?articleid=13040

As others have noted, terrible delivery but it sounds like he actually knows baseball, unlike Bill "Too close to take" Schroeder.

It's disgusting how little the Brewers value defense. Gamel is NOT a third baseman!

On average, starting pitchers who have a bad start to a game do not performance any worse than expected. As always, there are always exceptions but the average major league pitcher does not perform worse after getting "flustered".

It looked like he had a chance to grab the outer wall with his right hand but instead kept clutching the ball. Of course, I'm sure it was all so fast that he didn't have to really consider what could happen?

Well, I hope people aren't using half a season to make those kinds of claims. That would be foolish. And has Logan pointed out, you have to also adjust for better production at home.

"That is probably my biggest beef with how WAR is often used - - assigning a precision to the stat claiming that decimal place differences in players has a meaningful or exact quantifiable difference. What is the margin of error on the stat 1, 0.5? The defensive stats are suspect over small samples, not to mention the whole debate about how accurate they are, also the accuracy of the mythical replacement level. I have no problem with using WAR to say player X is bad, O.K. or good, but when it is used to say a guy who is a few decimal places away from another guy is some meaningful difference or can really be translated into wins I have diffculty in that premise." I don't know error it could have. WAR is just trying to estimate the context neutral run value of a player's performance over a given time. A single is a single and it has a particular average run value (based on whatever method you use to value it). It is not a projection. If you want to use it as a projection, you would have to heavily regress them with only a half season of data.

"I also think having Braun, Fielder, Hart, Weeks and Kotsay (I kid) play 81 games a year helps with it being slightly above average in homers as well." Park Factors compare production on the road to their production at home, so it doesn't matter if they hit more overall HRs.

I just emailed Corcoran for an explanation. Miller Park gives up an above average number of HR's but is otherwise un-hitter friendly. Evens out to be a neutral park. Perhaps for power hitters like Prince, it is a good park to play in.

I don't think he'll be playing ANY baseball until after the all star break. Thank god Kotsay is so hot!

I don't think Gamel against a lefty is the obvious choice over McGehee against a righty. It depends a lot on how good you think Gamel is as a hitter (lot's of uncertainty there) and how much you weight McGehee's terrible 2011 compared to his two previous years. I'd lean towards Gamel but I don't know.

Their objections with the move are noted in this thread and still stand, I'm sure.

I think the only reason RR started Wilson is LF was so he could give Kotsay 5 of the next 7 starts and the fans would be happy. I'm glad Kotsay has been better recently (made his first out today as I type this) but still only has a .647 OPS despite having the platoon advantage early and often. Brutal. And I am amazed that RR is playing Gamel at 3B again. Has Gamel gotten ANY starts there in the minors recently?

I can and have analyzed pitch f/x data myself. That how I did things like this: http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a345/rluzinski/vel_0412.jpg The raw data is available to anyone and I just used Excel for everything. You can also just use this site to look at AB by AB: http://brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/pfx.php Here's Greinke's AB against Tosini, when he gave up the 3 run HR: http://www.brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/numlocation.php?pitchSel=425844&game=gid_2011_07_03_milmlb_minmlb_1/&batterX=35&innings=yyyyyyyyy&sp_type=1&s_type=3 That third pitch was a 93 MPH four seam fastball that that had good rise but was left up in the zone. I suspect that was not where he wanted it but I also bet that he gets away with it more often than not. Again, we need to compare it to some kind of baseline. It would be nice to feed velocity, movement an location into an algorithm to get a better sense of what our expectation is based only on that (I realize that there are other factors).

I agree 100%. And for the record, no stat guy can EVER tell you if something is based on just statistical variance (luck) or not. He can only give you the odds that it is. Anything more is just speculation.

I'm as shocked that you refuse to acknowledge how easy it is to read body language, we've had at least 4 courses on it at work over the last 10 years to work better with customers. Furthermore anyone who teaches or coaches and is any good at it naturally and quickly learns to read body language because in many cases it gives a more accurate picture than the what the student or athlete will tell you for a variety of reasons.I can see why you would be shocked because I don't think we are talking about the same thing. Yes, I notice when Wolf is grumbling under his breath after missing the location on a pitch or when Hart swears after swinging at junk. That's reacting to a bad result. Does that adversely affect future performance? Probably for some, perhaps not for others. I want to know the body language I should be looking for that shows Greinke is lacking confidence BEFORE something bad happens. What was it about Greinke's body language that suggested he was lacking confidence BEFORE he throws the pitch that sails over the fence. Is there really a correlation? Are those unfair questions to ask? What's your explanation for Greinke's blow-up innings? He's certainly not giving up dribblers all over the diamond, balls are getting smoked. I've been saying since his 3rd start that his FB location is inconsistent and he's been hanging his slider quite a bit when I've watched him pitch. I don't have an explanation, as I haven't studied the data, nor do I don't trust my memory to gauge how well he's located the 600-some fastballs he's thrown this year. Furthermore, if you've ever looked at a graph of a starter's pitch location for a given game, they are always all over the place. I just grabbed a random game from yesterday... is this good pitch location? http://www.brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/location.php?pitchSel=430935&game=gid_2011_07_05_phimlb_flomlb_1/&batterX=&innings=yyyyyyyyy&sp_type=1&s_type= I have no idea just looking at that. Now add an extra layer of the uncertainty of identifying pitch location while watching a game on TV. Is there a correlation between bad pitch location and bad performance? Of course. That's been tested and verified. But speed and movement are also huge factors. Most pitches with a bad result will have poor location because most pitches that can even be hit have relatively poor location (In the strike zone but not on corners). Of course, even more of those pitches will a called strike, foul or a ball-in-play out. The key is to compare Greinke's 2011 pitch location with some kind of base line. I'm am skeptical of ANYONE'S ability to analyze large datasets accurately and without bias. You may be 100% correct that his pitch location has been poor this year. That wouldn't be surprising at all. But right now, it's just an unsubstantiated theory. most of what we talk about here is, so none of us should be TOO sure that we are right about anything.

I'm sorry but someone tell me how the HELL you can tell if a pitcher is concentrating or not while pitching? Is it similar to knowing when a batter is showing confidence while batting? I think it's all a bunch of BS but anyone is feel free to post some screen grabs to educate me. I need a baseball cliche 101 course, apparently.