Honk, honk!

As some of you may remember I had a lot of people (actually 2) in the off-season demand (mention) that I further explain and track the Joe Winkelsas award.

The Joe Winkelsas award is given to the Brewer reliever that eats the most low leverage innings for the most reasonable price point. Named after the garbage man turned MLB pitcher (I'm not making that up) who in 2006 appeared in 7 games for the Brewers that they all lost. Teams need Winkelsases to eat the innings where the game is pointless so the "good" pitchers are fresh for winnable games.

I claimed that Jendal Gustave was the Brewers' Winkelsas award winner last year purely on the "eye-test". This is kind of like congress' definition of pornography, "I don't know how to define it, but I know what it is when I see it". Having been inspired by all of the "seam heads" (i.e nerds) on this website I've decided to be more analytical about the award this year.

I gave this a lot of thought (mostly on the crapper this morning) and came up with the following metrics: A low-leverage inning will be defined by the team being up by 5 or more, or being down by 4 or more. These innings pitched divided by the player's salary (because who really wants to pay for this, right?) gets you the metric.

A great way to win the award would to be like Joe and only be on the roster a brief time (less pay) and pitch in all meaningless innings.

Not sure how diligent I'll be in keeping up with the tracker as I have been diagnosed with ALBD (Acute lazy beer drinker) but watch for them when I'm damn good and ready.