Monday's Frosty Mug
by Kyle Lobner on Oct 18, 2010 8:50 AM CDT
in Milwaukee Brewers News
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PrintSome things to read, then read again in reverse.
This morning's big story is on the managerial front, once again: The Brewers have requested and received permission from the Nationals to interview Pat Listach for their managerial vacancy (FanShot). Listach is spending the offseason managing Ponce in Puerto Rico, but will fly into Milwaukee on Tuesday for an interview. Last week we took a look at Listach as part of our Candidate Collection series.
Meanwhile, one candidate is off the market: Former Indians manager Eric Wedge has reportedly agreed to terms with the Mariners (FanShot).
It appears Bobby Valentine is still a dark horse candidate for the job. Valentine told XM Radio he's had preliminary conversations with the Brewers and that the two sides could talk again. Jaymes Langrehr of The Brewers Bar says the Brewers shouldn't be wasting their time with him.
In the minors:
- Seven Brewer farmhands were active in the Arizona Fall League and in Mexico this weekend: You can check out their performances in this morning's AFL/Winter League Update.
- Meanwhile, Brevard County catcher Shawn Zarraga is headed to Taiwan with the Dutch National Team. They're competing in the Inter Continental Cup.
- Baseball America has a story on Brewer Minor League Player of the Year Erik Komatsu, but it's subscriber-only.
If you're still looking for closure on the 2010 season, John Steinmiller might have some help for you: He's making the team's End of Season Notes and Wrap Up available to fans for the first time.
If you skipped out early for the weekend, you might have missed the first post of TheJay's new weekly "Brewers Numerical History" series. If you did miss it, go back and check it out.
Around baseball:
Dodgers: Have reportedly agreed to a three year contract extension with pitcher Ted Lilly.
It's a good thing the Brewers don't appear to be relying on the free agent market for pitching this offseason, because the market may close before it opens. In addition to Lilly's new deal with the Dodgers, the Cardinals and Rockies are reportedly negotiating new deals with Jake Westbrook and Jorge De La Rosa, respectively.
While the free agent pitching market might be drying up, a big fish was just thrown into the trade market: The Royals are reportedly considering offers to trade Zack Greinke this offseason. Greinke has two years left on his current deal and is scheduled to make $13.5 million in each of those seasons.
If you had told me that a Brewer released this spring would go on to make an impact for a team this postseason, I would not have guessed that Brewer would be Matt Treanor. Nonetheless, at one point this weekend Treanor had reached base five times in six plate appearances for the Rangers. I guess you never know.
Speaking of the postseason: The lyrics are clearly NSFW, but this song about Tim Lincecum might be my favorite development this October.
He's been gone as a Brewer for a year now but J.J. Hardy remains a hot topic on occasion, so I thought some of you might find this interesting: Parker Hageman of TwinsCentric notes that Hardy was among the league leaders once again this season in defensive plays made outside of the expected zone, and says Hardy plays deeper and uses above average positioning to make up for the fact that he's abnormally slow. If nothing else, there are some decent jokes in there about Hardy's lack of speed.
Elsewhere in former Brewer notes:
- The Diamondbacks have hired Eric Young to coach first base next season.
- As noted by Zeyes and TheJay in Friday's Mug comments, three former Brewers made Baseball America's Independent League All Star team this season: Catcher Lou Palmisano and pitchers Dan Reichert and Jorge Julio.
There are certain corners of the web where this news could be the forerunner of much rejoicing: Hardball Talk notes that ESPN has yet to re-sign longtime Sunday Night Baseball commentators Jon Miller and Joe Morgan for next season.
Happy birthday over the weekend to:
- Brevard County Manatee Matt Cline, who turns 25 today.
- 2002 Brewer manager Jerry Royster, who turns 58 today.
- Plover, WI native Walt Wilmot, who would have turned 147 today. Wilmot played ten major league seasons between 1888 and 1898 with the Cubs and two other teams.
- Nashville Sound Ben Johnson, who turned 29 Sunday.
- 1986-90 Brewer Glenn Braggs, who turned 48 on Sunday.
- 1994 Brewer Brian Harper, who turned 51 on Saturday.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm out of donuts. (h/t Ben Badler)
Drink up.
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Greinke
Would be an absolutely great addition, despite having somewhat of a down year.
That said, I won’t be holding my breath on it, but I suppose I look at it this way: if you can manage to land Greinke with some players you may have been hesitant to trade, then you can be less picky with what you ask for in return for Prince, as in then we wouldn’t be so desperate to absolutely need a MLB ready starter in return and could get the best deal possible no matter what player(s) is included.
Just a thought.
"I signed with the Milwaukee Braves for three-thousand dollars. That bothered my dad at the time because he said he didn't have that kind of dough." - Ueck
Grienke alone doesnt do it
If you sell the farm to get Greinke (the Royals would want at least Lawrie and Odirizzi), you’d have to hold onto Fielder all year, to only improve by 5 games in next years standings, and that still doesnt get you to the playoffs.
The only way that makes sense is if they also add a guy like Cliff Lee, which we know they wont and cant do.
Adding a guy like Zack Grienke is not something a rebuilding team needs to do. Its exactly the type of thing a team that unrealistically thinks its missing that one piece, and then setting the franchise back even further than it was when they made the deal.
You don't know if a 5 game improvement will get us to the playoffs or not.
Is that with the assumption that the other teams in the division do nothing? The assumption that Brewers production next year is equivalent to this years? Neither of those are valid assumptions.
Though, I agree, I don’t want Greinke. The Brewers are missing 2 pieces, not 1.
New and improved: http://www.twitter.com/ackchooairy
Note: Improvement not guaranteed.
Thats what the sabermetricians do
Yes, you cant be certain that a 5 win improvement gets the team into the playoffs or not. But you can make reasonable assumtions.
The 2010 Brewers were a 77 win team, the assumption is that adding Greinke would make them an 82 win team, and that is if you hold onto Fielder all year long. The way I see it, for next years team, as far as projections go, you have 3 question marks (Lucroy, Escobar, Cain), two sure things (Braun, Fielder) and three guys who could be regression candidates (Weeks, Hart, McGehee), I dont think thats a recipe for dramatic improvement. The pitching staff is altogether worse when you look at what is going on there.
When talking about what other teams might do, the Reds I dont see going anywhere, but the Cards should fall. I can project what I think the Brewers might do, and guage from there if that is a playoff caliber team or not. I figure they need to be at least an 86 or 87 true talent win team before they start talking about 2011 playoffs.
The Brewers were a 77 win team
You of all people should know that the amount of wins doesn’t exactly represent the amount of “wins” the team was worth in the past year, it can easily be argued that they underperformed based on their production by about 5 wins. You should include that when looking at upgrading.
E: George 4 (5, throw, throw, throw, throw).
From some of the things I have seen
They actually outperformed by one win. This according to BP’s 3rd order Pythagorean W-L.
If you go by WAR alone, they probably underperformed by 3 games probably. Braun and Wolf are probably the big culprits there. But then this also doesnt account for McGehee, Weeks, or even Edmonds big years.
Id say 77 is a fair number for a starting point for next year and then add or subtract as acquistions are made.
Did you figure in how many wins the Brewers will improve next year
Just because all the players will be a year older, wiser, and more skilled? Or does this not exist for saber purposes?
I think thats fair
But what about the guys like McGehee or Weeks who probably outperformed their abilities?
I love Rickie Weeks, but Id never have imagined him having a 6 WAR season, and there are only about 3 or 4 players in the game that you can expeict that much from year in and year out.
But with the younger guys, you just never know what to expect in a 2nd season, I think to project a .5 WAR bump is fair, but lets say you give Lorenzo Cain a .5 WAR bump, that puts him at 1.7. That’s really not very good for an every day starting CF, and it also takes into account that you lose out on the 2 games you got from Edmonds and the 1 from Gomez. I think if you extrapolated his year out to a 3.6 year (1.2 × 3 times as much playing time) that would be expecting way too much from a guy with 150 career AB.
Weeks did not outperform his abilities
He just didn’t get injured (for once).
by BrewCrewBrian on Oct 19, 2010 7:49 AM CDT up reply actions 1 recs
He played in 129 games with 475 AB
Projected 2008 numbers given this years ABs (2010 #s):
Runs:122 (112)
Hits: 152 (175)
2B: 30 (32)
3B: ~10 (4)
HR: 19 (30)
RBI: 63 (89)
K: 158 (115)
Overall: maybe a little worse, but considering he is 27, it is about right.
by BrewCrewBrian on Oct 19, 2010 10:07 AM CDT up reply actions
That means he missed only 33 games.
This is what stands out to me… .234/.342/.398 vs. .269/.366/.464
Regardless how you want to look at it, he had a career season this year. I’m not saying that he isn’t going to hit like this going forward… just that this wasn’t his only season when he didn’t get injured.
Pujols is the Barack Obama of baseball.
33 games is 7 games shy of 1/4 of a season.
My point is not that he had as good of a season in ‘08 (comparing numbers to numbers). It is that his overall numbers this season weren’t a fluke, we should have seen this coming.
Did BA go up significantly? Sure, but I would expect a players BA to go up between the time he is 25 and 27.
by BrewCrewBrian on Oct 20, 2010 9:48 AM CDT up reply actions
It's also just 0.6 games over 1/5 of a season
Not only did his BA go up significantly, but so did his OBP as well as his SLG.
I still don’t see how we could’ve “seen this coming” considering he set career numbers in almost every stat. Even looking at your projected 2008 numbers, his HR total isn’t even close.
BTW, Weeks had 29 HRs, 83 RBIs and 184 Ks (at least according to B-R) this past season.
Pujols is the Barack Obama of baseball.
Weeks has posted
a .360 or better OBP in 3 seasons including this one. The OBP at least shouldn’t be much of a surprise.
Give him an offspeed pitch down and in. He will swing and miss.
Would ESPN really not pick up Jon MIller after being awarded the Frick Award?
Then again I was at Cooperstown for his acceptance speech, and after having to sit through that and Joe Moragan’s introduction I would have taken it back.
by thefreewheelin76 on Oct 18, 2010 9:36 AM CDT reply actions
Dan Schulman is so much better
I was disappointed with the lack of hookers but the pancakes were delightful
Maybe they want some people
who aren’t afraid of statistics in the booth.
New and improved: http://www.twitter.com/ackchooairy
Note: Improvement not guaranteed.
Maybe...
I think ESPN thinks of Sunday Night Baseball as their Monday Night Football, and want to attract more casual viewers. They keep Joe around to stay away from the stats that may confuse some, and tell (slightly fabricated) stories of the game.
At least thats the only way I can rationalize keeping him around.
by thefreewheelin76 on Oct 18, 2010 10:22 AM CDT up reply actions
I don't mind Jon Miller at all
but Joe Morgan makes me turn Sunday Night Baseball off and listen on radio
Too close for missiles, I’m switching to Ueck.
"Normally, in this circumstance Jon and Joe would have been signed by now. Not always, but often."
In other words, some bored writer is speculating.
I never use a big word when a diminutive word would suffice.
Casey McGehee voted team MVP
I don’t remember by who, but I don’t respect any of them, at least not anymore.
New and improved: http://www.twitter.com/ackchooairy
Note: Improvement not guaranteed.
ah, the BBWAA
so, yeah, never did,
New and improved: http://www.twitter.com/ackchooairy
Note: Improvement not guaranteed.
Here's the link
http://brewers.mlblogs.com/archives/2010/10/milwaukee-bbwaa-announces-2010-award-winners.html
New and improved: http://www.twitter.com/ackchooairy
Note: Improvement not guaranteed.
Weeks outhit McGehee
played better defense and plays a harder position. Makes perfect sense.
Give him an offspeed pitch down and in. He will swing and miss.
McGehee
was the 2nd worst offensive player on the team (among qualifiers), and was Casey McGehee at 3rd base. So stupid.
Any award that’s voted on has zero credibility in my book.
New and improved: http://www.twitter.com/ackchooairy
Note: Improvement not guaranteed.
Lincecum song was amazing.
That is all.
by Bush League All Star on Oct 18, 2010 3:52 PM CDT reply actions
I agree.
Of course, I love the “f” word.
by Hangwith'em Rach on Oct 18, 2010 10:09 PM CDT up reply actions
Not gonna lie
I’d be a supporter of a Pat Listach hiring.
Yeah, well, sometimes I drink.
by Dikembe Meiztombo on Oct 18, 2010 10:59 PM CDT reply actions
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NL Central Standings
| W | L | PCT | GB | STRK | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cincinnati
|
25 | 19 | .568 | 0 | Won 6 |
|
St. Louis
|
25 | 20 | .555 | 0.5 | Lost 1 |
|
Houston
|
21 | 23 | .477 | 4 | Won 3 |
|
Pittsburgh
|
20 | 24 | .454 | 5 | Lost 2 |
|
Milwaukee
|
18 | 26 | .409 | 7 | Won 1 |
|
Chicago
|
15 | 29 | .340 | 10 | Lost 9 |
(updated 5.25.2012 at 3:41 AM CDT)
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