rluzinski

Wow, lots of subtle parting shots this offseason. As an ex player, I'm sure he would have liked to be more aggressive on the basepaths. The players would have loved it! It wouldn't have made a lick of difference, though.

I would have no disagreement with Casey getting this award if it was called the "Nicest to the Press while having a Solid Season" award. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif I went to the Baseball Writers Association website but you have to be a member to even see who's a member. Odd.

Looking at the numbers, picking Mcgehee is just embarrassing: McGehee team rank (min 300 PA):OBP: 5thSLG: 5thOPS: 5thRuns: 5thRBIs: 1st (Braun and Hart within 2)Runs Produced: 4th Maybe he got a lot of opportunities to win a lot of games and kept on delivering? Not particularly, at least relative to the other stars of the offense. His WPA came in as 4th highest. Defensively, he plays at a more valuable position than Braun, Fielder or Hart but I (think?) we can all agree that he's been below average the last 2 years. Advance defensive metrics certainly backs that up. WAR puts batting, fielding and positional adjustment together and Mcgehee comes in 4th on the team. Based off of everything above, that sounds about right. McGehee, congratulations on your BF.net 4MVP award (4th most valuable)!

If the "experts" think he was the MVP, who are we to second guess it? These awards mean nothing.

per speculation of course but I think MLB GMs know better than to over-weight RBIs and wins these days.

I think the casual fan is always going to prefer the famous hometown ballplayer over someone else. I think a lot of knowledgeable fans would as well. Let's face it, these guys are all mostly interchangeable anyway. That's why they last only a few years on average and get paid peanuts.

We don't know the sale of the grades and we aren't even sure what they represent. It's certainly not just an estimate of a player's skill, relative to the rest of the league. The basic foundation must look something like this: Grade = Performance - Expectation GRADE: If a player matches his expectation (performance - expectation = 0), I'm not sure what grade that would result in, though. My gut says a C but that seems a bit harsh. Who knows? PERFORMANCE: How do they quantify performance? How a player impacted a game, in terms of runs and wins, is my guess, which is why RISP splits ARE relevant. I think something along the lines of WPA (win probability added) would be an excellent tool to use, to gauge offensive performance. It lacks some important information but it would be a good place to start. Anyway, here are the Brewer WPA's: http://www.fangraphs.com/winss.aspx?team=Brewers&pos=all&stats=bat&qual=0&type=3&season=2010&month=0 Offensively, Braun and Hart's offensive contributions impacted their respective games the most. If you want to adjust for opportunity (if a player gets to bat with the bases loaded and 2 out in the bottom of the 9th every game, his WPA will be higher), you use WPA/LI. That shows that while Fielder did not get as many opportunities to impact the game as hart did, he did more with them. For fielding, there's no WPA for fielding atm, so I would just use some mixture of UZR, general scouting and situational defensive performance. This is also where I would hope that a SS would get weighted more for his defensive contributions than a 1B. EXPECTATION: The expectation part of the equation is as important as anything else I've talked about so far. I would be fine with setting expectations proportional to the player's salary (feel free to make adjustment for pre-arby guys). I think that Tom and Witrado just make up expectations as they go, though. I doubt there is any real science to it. I mean, many questioned whether Hart should have even started and he ended up going to the All Star game. He still "only" got an A- though, so I have no idea what an A+ would look like. Of course, I don't know what a B, C, D and F look like, either.

I have no problem with what he said about Fielder and Braun. He wasn't disresptful, just calling it how he sees it (fair or not). I have no problem with their celebrations but I can appreciate why Macha might have. The Gallardo comment is pretty silly, IMO. Yo had the 3rd best FIP among qualified pitchers this year and is easily one of the top 16 pitchers in the NL (even if you ding him a bit for slightly shorter outings). If a manger thinks he needs that as a number 2, he's asking for way too much. Guys like Briggs hear ace and think "top 5 starter in the league" or something. If that's your definition, great. As Skjelly said, it's just semantics. Waste of time to argue about it. Overall, I think Macha's comments were pretty benign. He's giving his side of the story and he has every right to.

I think the majority of professional athletes are primarily (and by primarily, I mean almost completely) motivated by the prospect of being independantly wealthy for the rest of their lives. No, I don't want a manager that is loathed by his players but I'm fine with "apathetic".

I don't find it hard to believe that, every 3 minutes, there is something in the air that can't be identified. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

If Melvin thinks it's so important to find a "winning manager", all he has to do is get any recent Yankees or Red Sox manager. They are apparently all very good, since those teams win every year. Hearing Melvin's wish list reminds me that he thinks pretty much like everyone else in the league.

But he had the expectation of him performing better than his career norms, which he didn't do. My point was that just throwing up their stats isn't enough.

I agree that the trade has not worked out but Melvin never had the expectation of Gomez outperforming Hardy this year.

"He wasn't raised and trained in the U.S. so he should have a decent major-injury-free career. Not having his arm babied his whole life should keep him pretty healthy. " You don't honestly think it's that simple, do you?

What I think is more interesting to debate is when the new manager will be fired. My guess is T the end of the 2013, after 3 years of 75-80 wins.

"There are many, many human elements that play a role in performance." I think you won't find much argument with regard to whether it plays a role. I and others just feel it's generally a very minor role, compared to talent and luck. And because it's it's typically minor, you will never find any real statistical evidence of it.

You shouldn't be surprised that one person is willing to at least consider anything. Based on the posts in this thread, it is only one, though. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

The minimum "wiggle room" any team has over the course of a season is huge. Even if god tells us the odds a team will have of winning each of their 162 games in a season, the absolute BEST we can do is say something to the effect of: "Team A will finish with X wins, plus or minus 6 wins, 68% of the time." Where did I come up with that? That's 1 standard deviation of 162 coin flips. That's all a season really is, afterall. Now, the odds of winning each game is going to vary but that is still a very good approximation. So you can take a team that projects to win 83 wins and 16% of the time ((100%-68%)/2), they are going to win 90 or more games (over 83+6). In reality, there's a lot of other uncertainty (estimates of the true talent of each player is the big one), which gives a team that's projected to win 83 games even a better chance of winning 90+ games. The flip side is also true of course, in that they could substantially underperform as well. Sports fans absolutely HATE the concept of luck but it's inescapable. You can't wish it away.

I don't see how the Brewers would justify retiring Sheets' number but some of this stuff comes accross as terribly personal. Win/loss record when he played on terrible teams for most of his Brewers career and batting average? Weak.

I disagree. No fan base cares if their team gets the most per dollar spent. I am referring to judging the performance of a general manager. If you give me a billion dollars to spend and my team wins 90 games, I probably suck at my job.

Everything is about wins/$, which is exactly why Hendry just looks horrible.

Nice painting the Brewers gave him. Nice gesture.

I understand why the Brewers are letting Houfman chase a round-number but I just don't get it. 599 is JUST as impressive as 600.

There's no question that location has a significant effect on the outcome on a subsequent ball in play. Pitchers DO have an effect. It's just that many other factors come into play (batter skill, defensive skill). Over a only a season's worth of stats, BABIP doesn't tell you much. If however, you are talking about a 10 year vet, I'd trust BABIP a heck of a lot more.

It comes down to one thing, the team has played badly under him and he needs to go And that's why managers are replaced at a comical rate in MLB. The fans demand it! I don't think Macha is a particularly good manager but I don't blame him for not making the playoffs the last couple of years. These teams don't have playoff caliber talent. Before Macha managed a single game, the team was picked by everyone to NOT make the playoffs. Are we supposed to just ignore that so we have someone convenient to blame?