I took a tour of Josh Kalk's web based pitchf/x tool to get a sense of what to look for from Daisuke.

Here's what I came up with. I thought I had heard that Daisuke was a guy with a big repertoire, five, maybe six pitches, but Josh's tool really shows him as a guy with three pitches, fastball, slider, changeup. There's over 1400 pitches here, and I believe it's all 2007 data.

Daisuke's fastball sits at an average of 93 mph with decent tail in on right handed batters, his slider is thrown at a modest 84-85 mph and breaks away from right handed hitters. The changeup is thrown mostly in hitters counts to RHBs. Only about 10% of his pitches are changeups which looks like a subpar pitch.

first pitch: hitters want to sit on the fastball low and away, he'll throw that about 60% of the time. He'll start it off the plate and try to get it to tail into the strikezone.

hitter's counts: 60% sliders, mostly thrown for strikes so they'll start middle-in and break away.

pitcher's counts: daisuke will waste a fastball 0-2 high or outside, and try to get you to chase a slider outside on 1-2. Daisuke would rather challenge the hitters. 3-2 will be a low fastball.

recommendation: jump on the fastball 0-0 and 3-2, lay off the slider away 1-2, in the hitters counts take the sliders for strikes to get to a 2-2, or 3-2 fastball. Daisuke doesn't want to go 3-2, and doesn't want to walk you.

After watching Rickie struggle to light the fire for the Crew this season in the lead-off slot I started to jump on the "send him down" bandwagon.  Luckily I caught myself and decided to actually go look at his stats and see how he ranked against the other lead-off guys in the NL. 

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Piggly Wiggly Scouting Report Indicates J.J. Hardy Enjoys Rib-Eye Steaks

MILWAUKEE—A Piggly Wiggly-sponsored scouting report shown during an at-bat by Brewers shortstop J.J. Hardy Sunday indicated that his major weakness is a hankering for Piggly Wiggly-brand certified angus beef boneless rib-eye steaks, now just $4.99 a pound. "J.J. is very strong when it comes to purchasing three Ole El Paso Mexican Dinner Kits for $5, but he's struggled lately with Golden Flake-brand potato chips, as he hasn't bought a single bag since last August," said FSN North play-by-play announcer Brian Anderson, reading from the onscreen scouting report. "Perhaps [opposing Cardinals pitcher] Braden Looper can take advantage of the fact that J.J. does not like Tyson breaded chicken fingers." After Hardy grounded out to third base, Anderson called it a textbook case of Ronco vermicelli being on sale for 69 cents.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/

piggly_wiggly_scouting?utm_source=onion_rss_daily

UPDATE: Fox Sports has confirmed: http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/8141962/Brewers-give-young-star-Braun-long-term-deal

ESPN Radio here in Madison just reported that Ryan Braun has agreed to a 7-year extension. No news from the media yet. All I could find was this vague link from brewers.com reporting a major press conference. I'm sure updates will be posted when available. No word yet on money...

This certainly would be a huge move. It will also be interesting to see how it affects negotiations with Sheets, Fielder, Hart, etc.

I'll be making my first trip back to Wisconsin since 2000 in late June,
and I'm planning to take my wife & 4-year-old son to the Brewers/Orioles
game on Friday the 20th.  (It's the only game that fits in the family
travel schedule).  I went to plenty of games at County Stadium before
moving to SoCal in 1998, but this will be my first visit to Miller Park.
Personally, I'd be happy sitting in the Uecker seats with a couple of
brats, a bag of peanuts, and a six-pack of Miller Lite, but I need some
insider information to ensure that the family enjoys the game as much as
me!

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This is probably a moot point right now - seeing as Hall is no longer an outfielder - but I was doing some graphing this morning and I had a question.

Here's a graph of Bill Hall in the outfield last year:

Compared to, say, Jim Edmonds:

 

Color-coding indicates frequency of plays made at that location - blue means a lot of plays, red means fewer plays.

(If you're curious - I'm looking at Edmonds for obvious reasons; Hall had similar RZR/OOZ numbers in a similar amount of opportunities and so I thought it might be an interesting one-on-one comparison.)

The larger number of blue "clusters" in the Hall graph indicates (to me, at least) a larger number of starting positions for Hall than Edmonds. Does that match up well with your experience watching Hall last season?

As the Brewers sit a game above .500 and look to the rest of the series with the Dodgers, and look forward to the series with the Red Sox, all things considered, the Brewers are in a good situation in terms of schedule.

Based off ESPN's SOS and RPI, the Brewers have had the toughest schedule thus far, with opponents win % at .527. This looks to only get harder as the Brewers play a top team in the Red Sox at Fenway. During the course of the year, I would imagine the Cubs will not win at the current pace they have, as well as the Marlins and Cardinals, so the SOS number will probably go down as the pace of 96 wins seems unlikely for all three. And playing in an arguably weaker division could bring down the SOS, even though I don't know if that stereotype of the Central being the worst division in baseball will hold out this year.

The good news is the schedule should get easier with more games vs the Reds (have played 6 of the 18) and Pirates (have played 0 of the 15 ) during the course of the year. Cardinals we have played 9 games, and they appear to be one of the better teams in the NL Central. Plus all 6 of the Cubs games have been at Wrigley so far.

I know this is not college basketball, but if it was, the Brewers could have a chance to grab the last #1 seed, as they are ranked #4 in the RPI which takes 25% of your team's record, 50% of opponents' record and 25% of your opponents' oppenents' record. The Brewers are behind the Rays, Cubs and Red Sox.

ESPN RPI

This is a good sign, last year the top 5 RPI's were the Red Sox, Indians, LAA, NYY and Rockies, all in the playoffs.

I know it is early in the year and the Crew have technically lost their #1B pitcher in Gallardo. But I don't expect Fielder to be a .250 hitter with 20 HRs, and continue to have our #1, #2 and #6 hitter all batting around .200. Even if they did, I think with the schedule the Brewers record would improve with the easier teams they are scheduled to play. If they improve on these numbers to along with the easier schedule, they could be in really good shape. I know it is a long season, but just trying to put things in perspective.

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Last fanpost in a while I promise.  Here is the info from Gagne's two innings yesterday.  He threw 26 fastballs, 4 change ups, and 0 curves according to MLBAM.  Here is the side view of the averaged pitches.

via baseball.bornbybits.com

Now obviously the sample here is tiny but, if anything, his change appears worse than it did the rest of the season.  He might be better throwing a majority of fastballs but I wouldn't be too quick to give him his closers role back.  Bush too threw a ton of fastballs.  MLBAM says 60 fastballs 11 curves, 11 changes, and 10 sliders which I think pretty much everyone else calls a cutter.  Whatever, you get the idea.

Also, I generated a list of every brewer pitcher's pitches by their runs100 .  Now runs100 is based off linear weights for 100 pitches so a negative number is good.  It also is funny because 0 isn't league average.  I'll post the league averages first.  I have tweaked the horrible pitch identification for brewer pitchers but not yet for the league

type    runs100    number

---------------------------------
Fastball -1.17018 82942
Sinker -0.111099 1865
Curve -2.16034 12847
Slider -2.61032 20880
Change -0.873506 16887
Splitter -1.76619 1686
Cutter -2.09699 3724

Here are the brewer pitchers

Dave_Bush Fastball -0.916794 393
Dave_Bush Curve -1.24744 78
Dave_Bush Change 1.05 60
Dave_Bush Cutter -0.0396226 53
Eric_Gagne Fastball 0.909195 174
Eric_Gagne Curve -2.42105 19
Eric_Gagne Change 1.22877 146
Seth_McClung Fastball -3.0339 177
Seth_McClung Curve 0.794915 59
Seth_McClung Slider 1.86667 15
Guillermo_Mota Fastball -4.9947 132
Guillermo_Mota Slider -3.78438 96
Guillermo_Mota Change 2.86087 69
Manny_Parra Fastball 2.72681 332
Manny_Parra Curve -2.01069 131
Manny_Parra Slider -2.37143 35
Manny_Parra Change -2.02055 73
David_Riske Fastball -0.815888 214
David_Riske Slider -1.47857 14
David_Riske Change 2.92245 49
Ben_Sheets Fastball -2.27481 393
Ben_Sheets Curve -4.0783 235
Ben_Sheets Change -4.86389 36
Brian_Shouse Slider -5.03894 113
Jeff_Suppan Fastball 0.137662 308
Jeff_Suppan Sinker -1.38269 52
Jeff_Suppan Slider -3.95391 128
Jeff_Suppan Change 1.14329 164
Salomon_Torres Fastball -1.91856 264
Salomon_Torres Slider -4.98929 28
Salomon_Torres Splitter 0.317391 46
Derrick_Turnbow Fastball 2.16512 86
Derrick_Turnbow Slider -5.18095 21
Carlos_Villanueva Fastball 0.882283 254
Carlos_Villanueva Curve -0.892308 91
Carlos_Villanueva Slider -1.04917 120
Carlos_Villanueva Change -3.47846 130
Yovani_Gallardo Fastball -2.97153 137
Yovani_Gallardo Curve -0.928713 101
Yovani_Gallardo Slider 0.292593 54
Mitch_Stetter Fastball 0.0511628 43
Mitch_Stetter Slider -0.82906 117

Shouse is all screwed up with his side arm action totally messing up the identification.  I haven't been able to fix his yet.  If you take a peak at McClung it looks like his off speed pitches kind of suck.  This makes me think that he wouldn't make it as a starter.  Bush, Villy,, and Parra really have been having trouble with their fastballs.  Before last night Bush's fastball number was in Gagne territory.  Speaking of him, you can see that neither his fastball or change has been doing the job.  Stetter's fastball took a huge hit yesterday as he couldn't throw strikes he threw a ton of fastballs and still missed the zone.  Sheets change, though new, looks very effective.  Maybe that is a good sign for the rest of the year.  Though maybe the league will catch up to it.

Have fun.

2 Innings and 1 ER after Gagne said this, "I do not deserve the ninth inning right now." He has an interview with Tom H. of JSOnline for the purpose of saying, "I had my mental break (Sunday), I'm good to go now. I know I belong in the ninth inning." It's good to see confidence out of our $10 million dollar man, but come on what has changed since Sunday that he suddenly feels as though its 2002 again?