rluzinski

One or two more games like that and it will be obvious that all those who doubted Gomez's offensive abilities were wrong. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

The one who has scored our two runs today?Well, there you go.

It wouldn't be Brewer baseball if we didn't pull the starting pitcher 1/3 of an inning after he bats.

It wouldn't be opening day if the Crew wasn't batting their worst hitter 2nd. Maybe in another decade....

Wow, 40 entries in 24 hours. Nice.

What's with the reflexive player/agent bashing?Dye isn't signed because he's asking for more money than anyone else thinks he's worth. Seems like a fair statement.

A major challenge for any statistical projection system is estimating playing time. Most current systems just take the weighted average PA/IP for a player over the last few years and ignore everything else. Obviously, there is a lot of other information to consider, which is why Tango Tiger is asking the fans to help him with playing time estmates for his Marcel projection system. Looks like Brewer fans have been slacking: http://www.tangotiger.net/survey/ He'll have the survey up for another 24 hours. Let's push the number of Brewer entries to over 50 by then. It took me less than 5 minutes to fill out my survey. I'm interested in seeing the final results for Weeks and Zaun, among others.

How do you know what they have or haven't considered? I'm guessing the reason why Dye is not a Brewer is the same reason he's not on any other team; he wants more money than what he's worth.

An anonymous player reporting anonymous, second hand knowledge? Good stuff.

I don't think there is conclusive evidence that warming up even reduces the risk to injury. I'm skeptical that Gamel's injury is one that he could have easily avoided.

I think McCalvy is heads and shoulders better than anything that comes out of JS.

Turnbow is the reason why the Brewers finished 8.5 games back in 2006? WOW.

Hereportedly hit 91 MPH with his fastball, so it doesn't exactly sound like he'll be announcing his retirement tomorrow.

Counsell improves and everyone is willing to credit Sveum for fixing his swing. Come on, now.

Through May 3rd, I get 3 less starts for Parra (assuming Suppan is in long relief) and 1 extra start for Yom Wolf and Davis. Quick and dirty, using CHONE projections and assuming 6IP/start, it saves the Brewers 1.25 runs. You also get Parra in the bullpen for much of Aprilm which helps. Since you can't easily quantify how much not starting Parra regularly would hurt his performance, had to say what's right. I'd skip the #5 twice at least, personally.

Peak is generally considered to be around 27-29. The Cubs are an old team.

As Ennder points out, you have to look at all the variables involved in order to understand the system. The offers are the main variable. A guy who's worth $10 mil could end up getting paid league minimum if the number he submitted was $25 mil.

I'm not sure what this has to do with the contract that is actually signed being binding. Can I write into my mortgage agreement that I will pay 1% interest? If the bank will agree to it, sure. I shouldn't have said that the contract "isn't binding" for the team. I should have said that the team can "opt out" of the contract, while the player usually can't. I suspect that the vast majority of posters understood what I meant, however. If NFL contracts were all for guaranteed money, they would have to remove the salary cap. Why? Injuries. There are many potential solutions to that issue. Off the top of my head, you could raise the cap for that team by some percentage of the injured player's contract, up to some maximum dollar value, for instance. That would be more of a soft cap, I guess, but that would be fine by me.

The NFL contracts are in fact binding for both parties. Its not like teams just tear up a contract and send a player packing. Its written into the contract that players can be cut or released. Can it be written in the contract that a player can be released from it at a time of HIS choosing? If it can, than I stand corrected. And with the size of signing bonuses getting larger and larger, it's not really fair of me to suggest that NFL contracts are completely unguaranteed. If NFL contracts were all for guaranteed money, they would have to remove the salary cap. Why?

I've always thought it was odd that in the NFL, a contract is binding for the player but not the team. Either both sides should have to abide by the terms of the contract or it should just be an open ended employment. The terms of that employment can be renegotiated each year (I think midseason negotiation is impractical for professional athletes). No one is making MLB franchises offer up huge, multiyear deals, however. Teams do it when they think it's in their best interest to do it. I didn't mean to hyjack this thread, though. My point was that the anger being directed towards Hart had more to do with fans' unhappiness with the system as a whole. Subsequent comments seem to support that theory.

First of all, sorry for the late response. I hope I can still be of help. What consistutes "replacement level" for a particular league is going to depend on the talent distribution and number of available players, as well as number of positions that need to be filled. For example, if there are 10 teams with 25 man rosters, there are 250 positions to fill. If there are 500 available players to choose from and they are all exactly the same, talent-wise, replacement level would be 100% of the league average. People have a tough time deciding what the replacement level should be for the majors though, so it's a hard thing to pin down exactly. I'm not really sure what "runs above replacement level" (RAR) is goining to tell you more than "runs above average" (RAA) anyway. Unless you are trying to put a dollar value on the performance, its just a baseline to measure against. I would just use average. What you need to spend more time on is finding a better estimate for "runs created" Simple runs Created (ABxOBPxSLG) is a crude estimate at best. I would just keep it simple and use a crude linear weight approach. We know that a HR is worth about 1.4 runs in the majors, but that is dependant on the average number of base runners that are on when a HR occurs. You need to come up with your own custom run values for each batting event. You could use multivariable regression analysis. I think the better option might be to use tango's Markov based simulator: http://www.tangotiger.net/markov.html Now, there are going to be some issues with this approach. Your league has a lot more HBPs and I presume errors, so I would take runs/game with a grain of salt. Plugging in your data (I probably should have included HBP under BB), I get 3.06 runs/game. Here are the run values of each batting event: BB: .348 1B: .464 2B: .778 3B: 1.105 HR: 1.545 Out: -.218 tango explains: "The run values below are what you would use if you wanted to create a Runs Created-type calculation. Linear Weights shows the run values relative to the existing context, and therefore, is a zero-sum game. Runs Created shows the absolute number of runs created. -0.105 : Runs Created OUT, excludes strikeouts -0.105 : Runs Created SO Basically, 3.1 runs per game /27 outs per game = .113 runs per out. .218 - .113 = .105 So I think you could just use this equation to calculate runs created for each player: RC = .464 x 1B + .778 x 2B + 1.105 x 3B + 1.545 x HR + .348 x (BB + HBP) - .105 (AB - H)

The Brewers pay their pre-arby guys on a scale that is reportedly more generous than what other teams use, so I'm not sure there is a valid complaint there. I'm not complaining; I'm pointing out the hypocrisy of the situation, as I see it. In 2007, Prince Fielder had an 1.031 OPS and 50 HRs. Fangraphs estimated the free agent value of his 2007 season at almost $21 mil. We can all agree that his free agent worth was in the tens of millions. Prince was paid $670,000 in 2008 by the Brewers (about $300,000 over the league minimum). When Prince complained about the system, he was strongly criticized by many of the Brewer fans. It didn't matter that Prince was getting paid perhaps 30 times less than what his 2007 performance was worth. That's how the system works so Prince should just shut up and play. In 2010, the system allowed Hart to make $4.8 mil in arbitration. Fans are pissed off because Hart used the system to maximize his earnings, despite him having a poor year in 2009. It didn't matter that Hart was just following the rules. A player should be paid proportional to his recent performance, so Hart should have just shut up, taken the Brewer's initial offer and played. The argument seems to boil down to: 1. Certain factors make it (always?) justifiable when the major league system pays a pre free agent player a fraction of his real value. If that player is critical of the system for paying him a fraction of his real value, he has earned the fans' scorn. 2. It's never justifiable when the major league system allows a pre free agent player to get a raise after a bad season or seasons. And if that player is put into a position where the system may allow him to get even a higher raise, it would be immoral for him to take advantage of it. He should simply accept whatever the team offers him. If that's even 80% correct, there is probably little left to argue about.

Why isn't there a 30 page thread every time the greedy Brewers take advantage of the system and pay a valuable pre-arby player league minimum? The obvious answer is, of course, it's OK when the system benefits the team because that is who the fans are ultimately rooting for.

That analogy only works if your boss paid you 1/5 what you deserved for your first 3 years. Or, after you graduated from college, you were drafted into a specific company (that could be anywhere in the county) that had exclusive rights to you for almost a decade. Basically, you can't make ANY comparison between being a professional baseball player in the major leagues and a standard profession. The problem is, people keep trying. You guys want baseball players to get paid proportional to their recent production? Pick a new league because that's not how MLB works.

He's supposed to get around 60% of what comparable players have gotten over the last few (2-3?) years. So it's not just about this off season. Furthermore, I'm sure the system overvalues things like RBIs, runs and steals. Guys like Hart might be overvalued in a system like that. Other players are undervalued. I don't know what they use to measure defense but maybe they see a fast player and think Hart is an above average in RF. The slow plodders with sure hands and good instincts might be undervalued. And in the end, it's not like Hart is really worth $1 mil and intead he got $4.8mil. The brewers offered him, what, $4.4 mil or something like that? To hold it against Hart for trying to maximize his earnings... I just find that unbelievably hypocritical. Sports fans have all these other rules for professional sports players that don't apply to the rest of the population. Hart and every player are going to continue to make as much as they can. Why the hell wouldn't they!?