Sheets and Expectations
by Jeff Sackmann on Sep 19, 2008 2:27 PM CDT
in Milwaukee Brewers News
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PrintThe Brewers suck right now, and I'd rather not say anything about that. Instead, I want to look at what we got from Ben Sheets in 2008. Note that I'm already using past tense--I'd be surprised if he pitches again this year. If he does, it will be a nice bonus.
As usual, Benny has had his nagging injuries, and that means he's been pulled early from a couple of starts, but let's look at the big picture. He started 30 games and threw 196 innings--not far behind the league leaders, and nearly 20 innings more than any other starter on the team. (Bush has thrown 177, Suppan 170.2.)
And, of course, he's been damn good in that time. His ERA is below 3.00; his K/BB ratio is better than 3:1, and he's coughed up fewer homers per inning than any other starter except for CC.
All this for $11 million.
There's no question that Ben has been frustrating in recent years, especially in 2006 and '07. But in '08, for whatever reason--I don't care to speculate whether he stepped it up for a contract, or whether the injuries stayed away due to something else--we got a legit ace at a bargain price. It sucks that his season will probably end at 196 IP, and we may not have him for the playoffs (if we get that far), but let's keep the season so far in perspective.
Which leads me to my next point. It's easy to conflate current performance with projected performance which, itself, is tied up with contract expectations. All season, we've expected that Sheets would get a monster deal in New York or Texas. Some think we're better off without him; others think we should go for the hometown discount.
It's important to understand that we can be thrilled about what we got from Sheets in 2008 without wanting him back. (Or, I suppose, we could be disappointed with his '08 performance and want him back anyway, but that would be an odd position, at least in regard to Sheets.)
Nothing that has happened this year has significantly altered my opinion on trying to keep Ben around. Whether the current scare turns out to be nothing or he goes under the knife, somebody is going to pay him more than he's worth. (In those two scenarios, of course, the dollar figures would be much different.) We don't have a small-market payroll anymore, but until we have a large-market payroll, we shouldn't be making big investments in risky properties, and even if Sheets had made it through 34 starts without a hitch this year, he'd still be risky, and I'd still want the Rangers, or Yankees, or Ham Fighters, to take him.
But that doesn't mean I'm not thrilled with what we got this year. Sheets proved that, when healthy, he's one of the best pitchers in baseball. If he had given us a carbon copy of '06, '07, or even '05, we may well be eliminated from the Wild Card right now.
He has long underperformed some massive expectations, but this year everything--well, *almost* everything--clicked. He's very possibly been the most valuable player on the team over the course of the entire season, and I think it would be a shame to let our extremely high standard get in the way of recognizing that.
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Almost Yostian.
I don’t mean this as an insult.
The one attribute of Ned Yost that I really respected was the fact that he was able to look at the big picture and really break things down to reality. He wouldn’t let one bad game cloud his judgement like the fans do. This post does a great job of that. I’m sorry to compare you to Nedly, who took this quality to a fault, but good job.
Amen
I feel like a lot of Sheets’ performance this year has been lost since the addition of Sabathia and his somewhat inconsistent (maybe injury-related) performance over the last couple months. But over the first half of the season he was in the running for being the best pitcher in the National League, and he largely carried this team over the first half of the season the same way Sabathia has done in the second half.
Ryan Braun: He loves it.
Agreed
Two of the worst decisions you can make as an organization are to sign starters to long term/big money deals (especially injury prone pitchers) and drafting high school pitchers. Just ask the Braves and Giants. I’m sure they are very happy with the money they are giving to Hampton and Zito. I think it is best for us to let Ben go.
CC is much more tempting to go after because he hasn’t had the injury problems that Sheets has had, but I still don’t see us signing him unless we go deep into the playoffs and can persuade him to stay in Milwaukee for less money.
I know you said you didn't care to comment on it ...
… but the contract-year thing happens so often it’s really hard to consider it a coincidence.
Players tend enter the contract year in the best shape of their lives. And in Sheets’ case, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s pitched through more minor aches and pains this year than he’s normally willing to tolerate. For him, that’s just smart business. The more he can hide how fragile he is, the more he’s going to cash in. And once he reached the breaking point — where he thought the whole business plan was in danger of getting ruined — he put himself on ice. That may hurt him in FA, but it’s risk management.
Sheets’ actual philosophy on pitching, as we’ve seen in past years, seems to be that he’s really hesitant to throw unless he’s at 100 percent. Given that pitching is so brutal on your body in general, I doubt that many pitchers, anywhere in the majors, are operating at 100 percent in September in October. Once Benny has the money, I really doubt he’s going to be willing to tough anything out. If he gives Houston more than 180 innings next year I’d be shocked.
Tararreling our way to the finish line.
contract years
Maybe somebody else remembers where this study was posted, but…
IIRC, the only statistically significant contract-year effect is games played/games started. So you’re probably right about the “best shape of their lives” bit, but unless I’m misremembering, performance doesn’t get a significant boost.
Also, cheese.
by Jeff Sackmann on Sep 19, 2008 4:30 PM CDT up reply actions
good shape + more willingness to play hurt could account for that, right?
Tararreling our way to the finish line.
yes, or one or the other
point being, you can point to the contract year to explain Sheets’s 30 starts; I’d be more skeptical of using it to explain the second best ERA/ERA+ of his career.
Also, cheese.
by Jeff Sackmann on Sep 19, 2008 4:54 PM CDT up reply actions
You only hear about the theory when it works
Adrian Beltre has that crazy year and doesn’t approach it again with the Mariners, its the contract year boost. There’s plenty of other examples of guys struggling in free agent years, but it doesn’t get attributed to it being a free agent year.
Sat: George 2 (37, missed catch, fielding) Fri: George (35, throw) Tues: George (34, throw)
I'd assume
that “more willingness to play hurt” would result in a decline in stats, I reckon.
"I will agree that the attitude [at BCB] is ridiculous and they have done so much to instigate animosity and then block us from responding. Real mature!"
On a different subject ...
… how much is Derek Lowe going to command on the FA market? Is there any way we can lure him in as our No. 2 starter behind Gallardo?
Lowe is 35 and made 10 mil from the Dodgers this year. He’s putting up the third-lowest WHIP of his career this year and will break 200 innings. You wouldn’t want to get locked into too long-term of a deal with him, but he might be solid. Only fear is that Miller Park might hurt him, given that numbers away from the Ravine are markedly worse.
Tararreling our way to the finish line.
It depends if he's a Type A free agent or not.
If so, it’d be better to gamble on Sheets, I think.
Sat: George 2 (37, missed catch, fielding) Fri: George (35, throw) Tues: George (34, throw)
wonder about the park effect...
Dodger Stadium is actually HR-friendly (even more so than their 104ish park factor would suggest, IIRC), so I wouldn’t expect a big difference going to Miller.
He might be a good bet…he may end up under the radar this year with Sheets and Sabathia on the market. He’ll probably get quite a bit more than $10MM per, though.
Also, cheese.
by Jeff Sackmann on Sep 19, 2008 4:17 PM CDT up reply actions
I'd be willing to pay $13-14MM
for a guy who keeps the ball down and eats 200 innings with a 3.40 ERA. gladly.
It would suck to have to compete against the Sheets/Sabathia losers, who would be willing to throw a stupidly long contact at DLowe rather than the more sensible one we’d offer.
I’d make him a nice offer early, before the ace sweepstakes heat up, just so he knows we’re really interested and want him as a first option rather than what he’d be elsewhere: a consolation prize.
Tararreling our way to the finish line.
In the end I think there's better odds of this being solved by a trade for one of our infielders.
Figuring out which one goes will probably be the biggest offseason story.
Tararreling our way to the finish line.
What to give up?
So, I have been reading this blog everyday since the middle of last season and this is the first time that I will chime in since I ripped on Yost starting Capuano over and over and over despite the historically bad consequences.
I do not want Sheets with this organization now nor next year. He is too fragile to give a long term contract.
Most of the guys on this team are playing with nagging injuries, it is September afterall, and they still have to grit it out and play. Not to open up a conspiracy but for how many years did he get absolutely no run support?
It’s hard to rally around a guy who hasn’t the heart to give all he has to his teammates.
We all feel a little broken hearted these days so it’s hard for me to talk up a guy who has none!
Here's what I suspect or fear might happen:
If that elbow injury turns out to be major and requires surgery, the odds of him signing in Milwaukee go up dramatically. I think that would be a bad call because I think the numbers will still be far too much for a team of our resources to invest in a guys who can’t seem to avoid the injury bug, but can’t get the possibility that it will go down that way ot of my mind.
I have an unreasonable dislike of Bill Hall.
by Ted Simmons Speed Camp on Sep 19, 2008 5:28 PM CDT up reply actions
I'd type up my opinion response to this, but dixie already did yesterday
Here’s the link, I’ll just copy it here:
Conventional wisdom is a team like the Brewers in the market they are in can’t afford to throw money at a player who is injury prone because if he gets hurt it costs them a much higher percent of their payroll. I think this is absolutely backwards. As a smaller market team to compete with the big boys regularly you are going to need some breaks. Getting an excellent player to sign below market value and then perform is a great way of stretching the budget. If he gets hurt you are screwed but the goal is to win the World Series and to do that you need to put together an excellent team. You have to gamble, you can’t play it safe because safe is much less likely to win it all. High risk, high reward, that is the way to go.
Sat: George 2 (37, missed catch, fielding) Fri: George (35, throw) Tues: George (34, throw)
that's true for low dollar amounts...
like what the Cardinals have done with SPs.
I don’t think that will apply as well to Sheets — even with an injury problem, let’s say somebody offers him $40MM/4 … WAY below healthy-Sheets money, but that’s still enough to really hamstring us if he’s injured/ineffective.
The Cards make this work because they do it on a large scale—look at how many $4MM or less pitchers they have, along with a creative manager/pitching coach. If they just did that with, say, Matt Clement, it wouldn’t do them any good. But Clement + Lohse + Pineiro + Weaver (not this year, I know) etc. …pool the risk and it becomes less risky. You can’t pool $10MM risks unless you’re the Yanks or Red Sox.
Also, cheese.
by Jeff Sackmann on Sep 19, 2008 6:00 PM CDT up reply actions
just my opinion
But I think how he’s been used has affected him adversely. Right away as the season started he came out in Chicago after the rain delay. Shortly thereafter he has a sore triceps IIRC. Then Ned seemed to take some delight in helping him get complete games.
My prediction
I’m 1 for 1 (err, small sample size) on recent predictions. Time to drop that to a more reasonable 1-2:
The Brewers will re-sign CC Sabathia. At the very least, they’ll make a legitimate, mind-boggling offer (as compared to, say, the offer we made Carlos Lee, which was on the doorstep of him possibly accepting but never really crossed the threshold).
Also, I would be shocked if Moustache is fired, even if we miss the playoffs. I guess it’ll depend on how the final 10 or so games go, but we’ll probably finish the season with the most wins we’ve had since Pat Listach won rookie of the year.
"I will agree that the attitude [at BCB] is ridiculous and they have done so much to instigate animosity and then block us from responding. Real mature!"
CC's not coming back
but I’m with you on Doug. I think I’ll write something about him Monday or Tuesday … recent events have exposed some of his missteps, but he’s still done a solid job, and there’s reason to expect he’ll continue to do so. At the very least, he can’t stick with Ned anymore.
Also, cheese.
by Jeff Sackmann on Sep 20, 2008 10:05 AM CDT up reply actions
I'm looking forward to reading that write-up.
But I"m torn on keeping Melvin. He’s not a bad GM and certainly a huge improvement over the parade of clowns the Brewes have had for the last 20 years, but obviously that’s not the standard by which he should be judged. I really do question his judgment on a handful of decisions in the last 24 months. I’m not sure the guy who sticks with Ned, for instance, until the owner gives him no choice is the guy who can put this team into the playoffs and into serious contention for a championship. And while Doug deserves credit for the structure of his front office and getting the right guys in the right places to make good decisions for the club, that doesn’t change the fact that the core of this team (Fielder, Braun, Sheets, Hardy, Hart) consists of a bunch of players that were brought here by someone other than Doug. Doug deserves credit, in my opinion anyway, for the additions of Durham, Cameron, Torres and Kendall, and its not his fault (at least not directly) that one or more of those players may have been misused by the manager. He did turn Johnny Estrada into Mota, which in the end certainly turned out to be a better deal for the Brewers than the Mets. I’ll credit Attanasio, more than Doug, for Sabathia’s acquisition, and a small part of my brain can’t help but notice that Harden will be in Chicago next season while Sabathia will be somewhere other than Milwaukee. And while Gagne might have been a risk worth taking under the circumstances and one that doesn’t pose long term problems for the payroll given the contract he signed, the fact remains that Gagne has been unreliable, to put it kindly.
In the end, that’s a middling report card at best and I don’t know that that’s enough to let him keep his job. It may be that Doug, like Ned (arguably), was the right guy to get the Brewers to move from doormats to respectability, but not the guy to take us beyond that. One brief look at our likely pitching staff for 2009 makes me want Doug to get the axe. It just isn’t good enough this many years into Doug’s tenure as GM and there seems to be precious little chance of a dramatic improvement to that staff between now and April.
I have an unreasonable dislike of Bill Hall.
by Ted Simmons Speed Camp on Sep 20, 2008 10:51 AM CDT up reply actions
A parade of clowns
Very nice.
"I will agree that the attitude [at BCB] is ridiculous and they have done so much to instigate animosity and then block us from responding. Real mature!"
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