TheCrew07

I've been looking forward to this series, the Brewers and DBacks are very similar young ball clubs on the rise. This could be a very interesting matchup over the next hand full of seasons.

edit. nevermind, I read the boxscore wrong... Mercedes gave up 6 ER. Salome has been struggling of late, .114 over his last 10 and still batting .298... Cain has had it just as rough going 4 for 33 for a nifty .121 clip. He showed much more power last year, but just about everyone other than Gamel has seen their power numbers take a dip in BC. I hope Gillespie can keep it going, he's been on fire, and his batting average is still under .250. It would nice to see him finish with a very solid second half. Escobar and Iribarren could please me by both getting their BAs up over .275. If Iribarren would strike out half as much (76 SOs on the year) and Escobar would walk twice as much (10 BB all year) we'd have something. Brewer has exactly as many walks as Iribarren, but like 40 more SOs on the season, and still has better secondary numbers all the way around. I had such high hopes for these two, especially after watching the videos of Escobar playing SS. Still, a very nice win for Huntsville tonight. I gotta give it up for Callix Crabbe as well, I had written him off a long time ago, but he's very good this year at Nashville, currently sporting an OPS over .800 which I would have never believed coming into the season. Maybe him and Rottino are our utility men of the future? (holy run on... I've been reading too much of Mass lately... haha!) My main pimpage at Nashville Grant Balfour with only 4 BBs in has last 10 appearances... how irritated I was when people assumed he was wild because of that stupid "Ball Four" nickname.

I don't get the whole arguement that some other posters have made that Brantley is already as developed a hitter as he's going to become. I can see that with a college kid, if he was in the same position as Brantley he'd be 3 years older and in AA and not hitting very much but showing good discipline. Brantley's plate discipline is truly remarkable for a kid as young as he is. I don't have anything to back me up other than a gut feeling, but I think this kid is going to turn it around in the hits department as he gets older and turn into something special at the plate. He won't hit 40 homers in a year, but he'll be a top of the order OBP machine. I'm sure I'm going to jinx him, but I like the kid so much I must talk about him... Brewer hasn't struck out in 2 straight games! It's been a while since he's accomplished that feat so I thought I'd give the young man some props. If he could learn half the discipline of Brantley as he moves up look out National League, we have another all-star SS on the way! Though I must admit, I'm not sure how I would feel as Hardy has been my favorite Brewer for a long time...

An encouraging outing for sure.

Briggs... Exactly the point, Prior was supposed to be flawless, his innings were overloaded his first season for the playoff run and look where he is now. Do you think anyone in the Cubs front office would let Dusty run him out past 120 pitches every outing if they could do it again? This wisdom of jumping a player 25 innings at a time, especially younger arms has been posted time and time again and shouldn't need to be rehashed again. It's been thoroughly documented on the forums previously. For the Brewers to remain competitive they need to always sell high and get the most out of their cheap young studs. Bumping his innings up may very well have no effect on him, but it could also be the first domino that falls in wasted a career. With the uncertainty, why not play it safe? Does the world end if the Brewers dont' make the playoffs this year?

I wonder, do people still want to trade a starting pitcher today?

When was the last time the AZ Brewers had a winning record? What year?

I think Ennder pretty much nailed it. If you have low relatively poorish OBPs, you need to hit HRs to score runs. I don't believe there's such a thing as too reliant on the home run. A HR is at least a run scored on a single hit, that's never a bad thing.

I was going to let this go but alas I unable too after rereading this thread. I appreciate the distinction, it's not so vast and wonderous that a lamer like myself isn't capable of understanding it. I'm just not the one jumping down other poster's throats over nothing. If they use wins and losses, or ERA, or whatever over a small sample isn't it just another way of saying that pitcher has been bad? Who cares what distinction they use? You routinely cross the line to smug by trying to force sabermetrics on people, just let them be. It doesn't matter if they don't agree, or don't see it or your way, they root for the same team. I'm sorry, but you dont' even consider the alternative point of view, you continually blast away and make poor assumptions or interpetations of my posts. You seem to be so sure that your way is the right way... As long as it works for you that's all that should matter. Who said anything about accepting a poor performance? The original arguement I responded was a post about ERA, for which the poster got blasted that ERA is a worthless stat and so on. The point I tried to make in my last post and you obviously missed was that ultimately the stats don't matter, winning and losing is what counts. I don't care if Sheets or Cappy or anyone else only gives up 1 earned run and the Brewers still lose, whether it's a regular season game but especially if it's a playoff game. Yes I understand the season is long, and I don't get too bent out of shape, but giving any game away drives me nuts. Any way you slice Cappy's season, it's been way below expectations, it's not about being "right" it's about being able to present an observation without getting stomped. Most likely the difference between us is that I've been in locker rooms and around teams August through June since I was old enough to walk and talk. My experiences have led me to conclude that sports are more of an art than science. My father is a hall of fame coach, his friends are hall of fame coaches, I've had the benefit of being able to sit around and to listen to some of best coaches in the state talk sports, players, beliefs, and so on. It's an opportunity that I've been truly grateful for, and has helped me tremendously. Ultimately I believe what goes in the player's head is vastly more important than his talent. You have a different approach, a much more analytical approach, you seem to want things to be black and white. In my opinion, the "noise" that you like to dismiss, it what makes sports great, it's what makes them unpredictable, it's what makes them special. It doesn't matter how many holes are in a stat, there are plenty of holes in every metric in used baseball as well. Everything from OPS to ERA+ to FIP to VORP and so on has holes in it... There is no all incompassing way to evaluate a player's talent, it's simply not possible. I honestly grow weary of these debates, they don't add anything to site. Lately people seem to be getting so caught up on fragments of posts that they miss the message. I don't expect anyone to view sports the same way that I do, it's unique to my personality and my experiences. I would like to think however that we could at least make an effort to consider an alternative point of view and the message without being completely condescending. The original thought was if Cappy was a one year wonder based on last year's season and his performance this season. I didn't think it was a fair statement as I found him to be overrated last year but this year he's definately pitching way below my expectations. There is plenty of season left, but this gets into the question that Geno posed earlier in the Yo/Bush/Vargas thread, how long do you ride an unperforming horse? When is the right time to the make the move? How many games can you give away before you've significantly hurt your playoff asperations? Those are the questions we should be debating, not what stat or metric is proper for the sample size.

I know race continues to be a serious issue in this country, but I have to think that moronic statements like basically calling Jeter an "Uncle Tom" undermines the good work people are trying to accomplish. I'm getting to the point where I'd rather athletes don't speak to the media at all, far too few have anything intelligent to say these days.

Not to toot Mass' horn anymore than necessary, but honestly, as he's pointed out and I tried to previously, he does everything that these other sites have tried to do by himself. I just don't think very many people appreciate or have a good grasp of the wealth of information that's available in the link reports. MiLB becoming a useful site for stats has made a huge difference, in the past that information was very hard to come by, you'd have to bounce around from team site to team site in most cases. Now you can just search the last name for any level of Minor League Baseball get the matching results. Mass brought up the player index, which would be a great way to accomplish the same thing. It might require a bit of work for Brian (user rights, possible space issues) but if you could click on the player index and get all of the updated information including this year's stats... I honestly would have a hard time finding anything more valuable than that. Stat's, complete bio, archived media stories... I'd seriously be in heaven. Is it copyright infringement to cut and past an article if you link the original? If not even when the links went dead we'd still have the full text of the article for the player.

I must say with my boy Brewer behind him, Escobar does become expendable. Though if he can gain some consistency at the plate I would love him as a utitility guy in the future. That young man can play some serious D.

Anundsen over Seidel? I'm intrigued, can I ask why?

It's the Minnesota FSN... the Brewer games will be on the Alternate Sport Channels, which start at 444 and go through 456 I think. Usually I look about half an hour before the start of the game to see what alternate channel it's on. The feed starts for the pregame show and ends after the post game.

The programming schedule was blank in every time block except for the game on Saturday(I think that's when it was), so it doesn't look like anything other than the HD games will be there. I was sort of disappointed, I was hoping for an ESPN type thing where you have the regular EPSN and then ESPNHD side by side. edit. As far as the Big Ten network goes, I would think it would be, I don't see them letting Direct TV get over on them again. I'm counting on it at any rate, but I should really start reading the information they send out. Looking at the Big Ten Network's site, Dish still hasn't signed up. You can enter you zip code and it sends a request to Dish Network which I did. Link to the main page below. www.bigtennetwork.com/

I think what Geno was getting at is that the expectations were always rather low in many circels for Hart... 10th round pick, under utilized the last 2 years, and lets be honest, he's not going to be a "name" on this team, no matter how well he plays. Weeks was supposed to be a star... it just hasn't worked out that way, I don't think it's off the mark to have expected Weeks to put up a season like Hart has thus far. He's show flashes, but the lame injuries, and yes they are lame in my opinion have stunted his developement. I'm not sure how much the wrist is effecting his swing at the moment because he's so off balance and lunging out and over the plate on this swings. Here's hoping the off days helped him clear his mind a bit. I am with you though about the Hart vs Lee production numbers, I've been firmly in Hart's camp all along, and I had no problem trading Lee. Even though I'm not a huge Jenkins fan, it would be nice if the Crew could make the playoffs with him the next couple of years, he's earned the chance to play on a contender. In the future though I wouldn't wait to slide LaPorta into left as soon as possible if he proves worthy.

Braddock... *sigh* I've resigned myself to hoping that 1 out of 2 pitchers that shows something will make the majors at some point. I usually pair them up in my mind. Though maybe I should group them by 4s and I'd be less disappointed. Jones and Parra Rogers and Yo Braddock and Jeffress Periard and Seidel Bryson and Tyson (it rhymes, had to be done) Inman is the only one I oddly didn't pair with anyone, maybe because of the year he was drafted. Will stands alone baby! I have no idea what to make of Robinson as he hasn't pitched yet, and I should probably included some of the Latin kids, but none of them have struck me yet. Am I the only one that pairs up prospects like this for sanity's sake?

Mostly an FYI. I noticed last night that channel 386 is now FOXN HD. I checked the schedule for the week and saw they had a Twins game coming up over the weekend that will be in HD. Hopefully they'll broadcast the Brewer HD games there as well. This was probably in the information I get every month and never bother to read about the upcoming changes. I figured some of you missed it as well so I thought I'd drop a note here.

Great for the Crew. This is may sound silly, but the one thing that playing franchise mode in all my sports games has taught is that concessions/parking/ticket revenue while great, is really just a drop in the bucket, especially in the NFL. The the TV contract brings in the majority of the revenue. Even if Miller Park was sold out for all home games, we'd likely never see a payroll over 90 mil, it's just not feasible IMHO. However, MLB it is considerably different than the NFL because the average ticket price is about 1/3 less but they have 8 times as many regular season home dates to make up the revenue in different ways. I could rant all day about the lame econonmics of baseball, but I'll leave it as baseball's economic and draft system sucks. The main difference between Milwaukee and the large market clubs will be marketing and the TV contracts. Players will always have more opportunity to make side money in the large markets, and large markets will always have a financial edge because of their TV contracts. Does anyone remember the HBO series "When it Was a Game"? about baseball from '35-'50? I DVR'd it after not seeing it for about ten years last weekend. One point I caught that I had missed in the past was they were talking about the smaller market teams having competitive issues back then. The owner would be $300-500,000 in the hole for team expenses from the preceding year and would have to sell his best players away to be able to keep the franchise going. He'd even out the books and pay off all debts, only to have the scenario repeat itself. It really struck me how we've come back full circle.

He got a couple of shots, and a cup of coffee with FLA, it just never panned out. He didn't hit well enough in Spring Training or his call up to stay, not to mention who he'd be rotting on the bench behind. Evidently FLA management just wasn't very impressed with him, or at least not enough to give him another MLB roster slot. Though they did release him when he asked for it after spring training and he signed with the Brewers right away. He played a year in a Japan as well, last year I believe. If you look at his career, he really didn't take off hitting wise until 2004 when he was bounced back to AA for the 4th time when he was 29 years old. How many guys even get a 4th shot at AA even if they want it? He he had some nice power seasons, and some pretty poor seasons at the plate, he was very up and down. He found something in 2004 though, because he's mashed the minors since then. Here's the complete list of his stats from the baseball cube. www.thebaseballcube.com/p...llon.shtml

Everyone in my family teaches except for me. My dad, mom, sister, and brother all teach, my dad and mom since 1972, my sister and brother since they graduated college. My father who has been a science/math teacher and the head football coach for over 30 years talks all the time how it used to be the parents and teachers working on the same side. Now more often than not the parents seem to side with kid, no matter the circumstances, and want to know why their child was singled out. They aren't as upset about what the child did, as why they are the only parents that have to meet with the teacher. It easy to say teachers and coaches have the opportunity to make difference, but I've been coaching for 10 years and it gets a little more difficult each year. Ipods and cell phones distract kids in the classroom and we had to outlaw them at practice as well. You have a couple of great hard working kids, but the majority haven't had to earn anything on their own, and don't really have much self respect or confidence. They'd rather play the video game, than go learn how to play for real. People keep telling me the pendulum will swing back the other way, but I honestly don't see it. I hope for it, but I don't see the fundamental culture changing here in the US unless something drastic happens. I'm 32, what has my generation accomplished, what have we been through? What about the kids behind us? Everyone wants their kids to have a better life, but it should be about quality of life in my opinion, and not so based on material things.

An excel spreadsheet would do that for you if were so inclined.

It's a little too late for this in your case, I run into the same problems with some of my Varsity football kids. 1. The first day of practice I lay down my expectations for the kids and themselves. We go over expectations of behavior towards each other, the coaching staff, the refs, and the opposing team. These expectations are reinforced at the lock-in and then through team discipline during the season. If any one player causes trouble in a class, doesn't turn in homework, screws around in the parking lot whipping cheerios, etc... then entire team has to run a 200 yard sprint which we call a hot lap. Tuesday is discipline day, if you skip practice, you won't play. 2. I'll have conversations with players anytime I think they need it. For example if a kid is down, or acting like a baby, or performing poorly on the field or in school, I just take them aside during or after practice and find out what's going on. There's an old saying, "Kid's don't care what you say until they know you care.", and I try to handle my boys that way. 3. Sometimes talking to the parents works, however I find it's quickly becoming an option I don't consider. More and more these discussions go from, "What does my son need to do to get on the field?" to "My son is better than player A, he should be starting!" which isn't a productive discussion. Instead of trying to explain why, we've gotten into the habit of inviting parents to attend practice. Usually when they attend practice it becomes pretty obvious and we don't hear about it again. Your post made me think of something that happened yesterday. I was playing Gears of War online with some friends from work and we were playing a team that had 3 kids that just glitched around and caused trouble. These kids couldn't have been older than 13-14 and were seriously the biggest ******* I've dealt with in a while. The one was swearing at me for killing him 4 rounds in a row when his mother overheard him and said something to him which I couldn't make out. The kid replied and I quote, "That's ***** BS, leave me alone mom." Apparently she left the room because he was laughing about it with his buddies. I was honestly shocked and appalled that someone would speak that way to their parents, especially at that age. I probably wouldn't be alive had I spoke like that to my parents. The point of the story is that it's very difficult to overcome the atmosphere that the parents create for thier children. Sometimes you can make a dent, but more often than not you're just damage control. In the case above all you can do is file a complaint and move on.

If it makes you feel any better, QB ratings have always irked me too, not just VORP... http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/tongue.gif Actually, VORP is a much better concept in my opinion, as it attempts to compare players against a league average of sorts. The QB rating weights individual statistical elements and eventually caps out... how can a rating cap? Anway, I digress. Most of what baseball statisticians are doing makes good sense; some people get lost on the presentation, some just don't understand it, some just don't see why BA, ERA, and Wins could be misleading (if it's not broke don't fix it). I don't want to beat the issues to death anymore than we already have, but I think generally speaking both sides could learn something from one another. There's a happy middle ground here someplace, we just haven't found it yet.

Wow that's weird, I was going to post his numbers look like a classic middle infielder to me, but then I thought better of it because I really don't know that much about him. He's always been someone I notice, not someone I follow, if that makes sense.