rluzinski

99% of the problem is RR batting him 2nd. If RR recognized the blatantly obvious and batted his defensive specialist 8th, I think fans could better appreciate his positives.

Hey look, 1 game under!

HE SAW SOMETHING IN SPRING TRAINING! Just ask him. It was for almost a whole month. (I'm not making this up).

I'm so sick of RR.

It's really fun to watch a guy like Marcum paint the corners. I love that a guy with his skill set can more than just succeed at the major league level.

With Hart and Lucroy back: http://i55.tinypic.com/107p47t.gif That is a simple average, not one based on projected PA.

O, I still read everyday. There was a point that bf.net kind of got anti-stat last year, so I got sick of spending 20 minutes on a post to have it refuted in a 20 second throw-away response. This year has been a lot better but I wish there were more posts as well. Of course, we all can be part of the solution by starting threads. I think I've started one thread this season.

3/31-4/25: .378/.475/.707/1.182 4/26-5/15: .224/.297/.463/.760 2011: .309/.399/.597/.996 He's still crushing his preseason projection .

Exactly. I want to like this guy and think "superstar" but I keep seeing Mr. Up and Down. Can't make it thru the 5th without getting in trouble. I'm having a tough time seeing what all the hype is all about. I'm starting to believe that his ERA last year might be more indicative of the type of pitcher he really is. You keep seeing Mr Up and Down in 3 starts? WOW.

As long as Gomez is cheap ($3 mil or less), I wouldn't have a problem with him being the starting CF next year, assuming their are no better options in the minors. If he can be platooned with another cheap option, even better.

True, Hart had some success hitting there in 2010 (.814 OPS), but Hart was actually much better in the 6th spot (1.091 OPS), and I like an RBI bat there. Looking at BOP splits are largely worthless (especially one season's worth!) Even though Gomez' OBP is relatively low, his walk rate this year is up. His walk rate is up a little from last year but his batting average is down. He has exactly the same OBP right now (.298) as he did last year. He also is very difficult to double up, so Weeks' getting on is rarely going to be negated by a double play. If Gomez grounds into a simple force out, it's not going to make his stats look good, but it gives them a guy who can still swipe a base and get into scoring position with Braun and Fielder hitting. If we have to start mentioning the fact that he usually only makes 1 out per AB as a positive..... Gomez' enthusiasm for the game is refreshing too and over a long season, that's a positive. Yes, baseball fans like to watch his style of baseball. It's a lot of fun, no question. That has nothing to do with his his actual value to the team, though.

Whenever we look at batting performance, we are generally asking two questions: 1. How well has the batter been performing recently and how has that helped his team win games? 2. What does his recent production tell us about his future expected production? Carlos Gomez has hit .243/.349/.459/.808 in 37 AB in May and has played his usual, great defense in CF. I don't think anyone can fairly complain about his performance in May and over that two week period, it has not hurt the Brewers to bat him 2nd. So far this season Carlos Gomez is batting .241/.298/.358/.656. That is almost exactly the same line he had last year. He has an updated ZiPS projection of .249/.304/.364/.668. While no one knows the future, Gomez continues to project to be a very poor batter who should be batting 8th on almost any team.

Never a dull moment. In sniffing distance of .500!

Odd to see to lazy flares find a hole in a row.

Well a lineup is not made by just putting guys in order of their average. You spread people out for speed and power reasons. You are not just going to stick the worst couple guys and the pitcher at the bottom of the lineup. If every batter in the lineup got the same number of PA per game, you would probably be right. But every bump up in batting order position is about 18extra AB over a full season. Gomez will get an extra 100 AB betting 2nd instead of 8th. I don't care how fast he is, that is a losing strategy. But you do because of this book? I didn't bother looking at the link. Wow, if you aren't even going to try than there's really no sense in responding to your posts anymore. You already know everything.

Kotsay has been and still is a solid major league player with over 1,600 career hits, and a solid lifetime .278 BA He batted .298 11 years ago. That's very good.

With a win tomorrow, we'd pretty much expect somewhere between 7-6 and 8-5.

Groundball right at the SS... if the Brewers didn't have the defensive shift on a righty. It results in a run. I think the jury is still out on some these shifts.

Boggs has displayed infinitely more power than Kotsay has, can play better defense and is also a lefty. Why does kotsay ever start?

With Greinke going tomorrow, winning today would be realllllyyyy nice.

RR bats his worst non-pitching batter at #2. It's a rule.

"but likely based on hours of observing both players hit against guys of his ilk" And I don't believe that it's possible to (in your head) accurately categorize different pitcher types, objectively keep track of how each batter performed against each type and make accurate projections based on those observations. Even if the Brewers came up with an objective way to categorize pitchers and objectively assess how well the batter performed on each pitch for a month, they still almost certainly wouldn't have enough data to keep the uncertainties low enough to come up with any useful conclusions. A year of data? Probably not either. Again, I ask anyone interested in this stuff to read the "Mono A Mono" chapter of "The Book: Playing the Percentages of Baseball". If anything, it will at least make clear how much data is needed to come up with these kinds of individualized splits. On a per AB level, a whole career's worth of data might not be enough. Just trying to determine if a particular player has a non-average platoon split takes 1,000+ AB of data. Perhaps using pitch f/x data might allow you to assess batter performance on a per pitch basis and cut the nerded sample down? I don't know. I can understand relying on scouting reports in close calls but I don't think this is a close call, personally. To make it clear, I am not arguing that Kotsay hasn't necessary done better against pitchers "with breaking stuff" (I have no idea), I can't disprove that Kotsay has a real advantage over those kind of pitchers (I don't know). I am simply arguing that the Brewers probably have not even attempted to quantitatively determine whether Kotsay possesses an above average skill to hit breaking pitches. I suspect it isn't even possible with any reasonable certainty. It's like trying to determine if a coin is unevenly weighted in 100 flips. Is it fair to call someone an idiot based off of speculation? That's a fair question. I never called him an idiot but my estimate, based on casual observation of a small dataset, he isn't a very good manager. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

"Judging from some comments he made I think Ron was ready to play Morgan in center quite a bit when he got back." He's still batting his worse hitter (Gomez) 2nd, so he still must be overestimating his hitting abilities. I wouldn't know but nobody said good or bad. He just said he hits righties with breaking stuff. Then he went out and got on base 3 times. Every starting pitcher has a breaking pitch in his repitoire so again I ask, what does that mean? I presume that it meant that he had an above average breaking pitch of some kind. And you HAVE to know that the results of one game should not be used to judge the quality of managerial moves. IF I think RR made a great move before seeing the outcome but it doesn't work out, I'm not going to change my mind. One party said he sucks based on general stats and one party said he hits a certain type of pitcher well based on more specific stats. The party who never looked at the break down of pitcher type is the one who thinks the party who did is an idiot based on less comprehensive stats. Doesn't that sound odd to you? I think you are making a large assumption there. If RR actually HAS access to quality statistical studies that show him that Kotsay should be expected to hit well against certain pitchers, great. That makes Kotsay's aggregate stats worthless in this kind of discussion. If RR has "contrary evidence that appears to be more comprehensive" (your words) and then I'll happily admit I am wrong. I would be happy because I am a Brewer fan and would LOVE to know that RR just isn't looking at generic scouting reports and deciding Kotsay is worth starting in CF and batting 2nd. But as I've already stated, I am highly skeptical that he does. And analysis of defensive spray charts (not exactly cutting edge ) and knowledge that they've attempted to study pitcher injuries doesn't change my mind. Melvin and the Brewers as a whole do not appear to be very sabermetrically inclined from my admittedly 1,000 mile away view.

Recently, RR was stressing how he saw SOMETHING in Gomez this spring and it was for almost a whole MONTH (yes, he stressed the month part as if it were a long time). I don't mean to suggest that a manager shouldn't make observations on a batter's approach and/or how well he's making contact or whatever. I was just amazed that RR seemed CONVINCED that Gomez magically became a new batter because he had decent numbers in spring training. And now here we are in mid May and he's still trying to convince himself he was right.

Hart has started 7 of the 11 games we're talking about. Small samples abound in the stats (not unlike our 11 game interval), but Hart hasn't exactly lit things up to demand an everyday spot in the lineup. Nine years ago, people around would use small samples without batting an eye. Now they say, "I know it's a small sample" and then use them anyway. It's just terrible to use Kotsay's (68 AB) and Hart's (41!!!! AB) slash lines this year to suggest playing Kotsay more might be justifiable. Highschool math can prove the folly of doing so. By all means, include their performance this year when constructing a projection for them but 2011 will RIGHTFULLY be weighted very little.