While looking for something else to do other than trying to crack the nut on Rickie Weeks' terrible year, I wondered if I could determine the "best" objective Pick 6 lineup for any given day. For simplicity sake, I defined "best" as the highest points per game at each position on the season.

With an amount of work dispropionate to the value it provides, I put together an Excel workbook and VBA macros that find the highest possible Points per Game combination given a $120 constraint. I combine the point totals from the Pick 6 options and some tables from Fangraphs to get the Games Played stat and cut the field to at least semi-regular starters.

Position players are rated in Pick 6 Points per Game with a minimum of 50 PA

Starting pitchers are rated as Points per Game Started with a minimum of 20 IP

Relief pitchers are rated as Points per Game with a minimum of 10 appearances

I just did a little guess and check to rough out the minimum requirements. For the handful of games going on tonight, the top points per game guys may surprise you, if you've been as ignorant as I have:

Player		Pts/G
Zack Greinke	9.47
Carlos Gonzalez	8.70
Ryan Braun	8.07
Bud Norris	8.04
David Ortiz	7.68

Zack Greinke tops the field and justifies his $42.25 price tag since he throws a lot of innings and, most importantly, doesn't give up home runs.

Anyway, going into tonight (May 31), the highest points per game (ppg) roster was:

Zack Greinke
A.J. Ellis
David Ortiz
Jose Altuve
Carlos Gonzalez
Kenley Jansen
$93.00 - 43.84 Total ppg

Noting that A.J. Ellis and Zack Greinke are going head-to-head, you can swap in Jarrod Saltalmacchia for A.J. Ellis to have a team at $99.25 with 42.99 ppg

The best Pauper Pick 6 team as measured by ppg:

Bud Norris
Kelly Shoppach
Jed Lowrie
Jose Altuve
Andy Dirks
Kenley Jansen
$3 - 36.54 Total ppg

If you're willing to jump up to $3.25, you get A.J. Ellis instead of Kelly Shoppach for 37.73 ppg.

Obviously, the results are going to be very random (says the man who took a -20 point pitcher last night), but it was still a fun mental exercise to see if I could do it. Since I'll probably be doing this most days for my own picks, I can post the "Best" lineups in the comments section after the picks have locked if there are any other optimizers in the crowd. If not, I'll just keep quiet.

Now that September 1st rosters have been finalized, we know the Brewers will be carrying 12 pitchers and 13 position players into the postseason.  The Brewers can replace one position play on the roster with Rick Weeks, but the pitchers are set.  It will be interesting to see which two position players are dropped for Weeks and Gomez and we probably won't know that until October 1.

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On last night's broadcast, BA and Rock noted that the Brewers have the most sacrifice bunts of any team since the All-Star Break.  Everyone has noticed that the Brewers scoring has been anemic lately.  Losing Weeks is certainly a blow, though a good case can be made that Roenicke's small ball ways are reducing the total number of runs the Brewers are scoring each game.

Having read through Dan Levitt’s 2006 article "Empirical Analysis of Bunting," for my work on aggressive base stealing before the season, I thought I would revisit some of the points for Roenicke's newfound obsession with bunting.

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Doug Melvin has been one of the best GMs at cutting non-productive players, in my opinion.

On August 12, 2009, the Brewers released Bill Hall.
On June 7, 2010, the Brewers released Jeff Suppan.

We're entering the point in the season at which point, Melvin has made moves before.  It's not Melvin's job to be Ron Roenicke's friend and as a rookie manager, RR could use a push in the right direction by his baseball elders from time to time.

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Amongst position players, by my calculations:

I have the Brewers with 347 AB w/RISP.  On the season, the Brewers are hitting .257 and .239 with RISP.  They're slugging .405 overall and .374 w/RISP.  Overall, their BABIP is .295 and .275 w/RISP

To achieve their season-average BABIP of .295, we swap in 6 H where there were outs.  This BABIP-adjusted BA w/RISP jumps to .256.  Voila, no RISP problem.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm on the road today and in a hotel with crappy internet, so the Mug will be off Friday. Thanks to ecocd for submitting this post to help fill the vacancy. - KL

Since Roenicke was first named the new manager of the Brewers, we’ve been hearing about how he wants to be aggressive on the basepath. We’re also all very well aware that Macha was strictly a 27-Outs Manager. Given that the two approaches lie on the opposite ends of the spectrum, I decided to go looking for an answer as to which one would work best for the Brewers. Relying heavily on the work in Dan Levitt’s 2006 article "Empirical Analysis of Bunting," I believe the answer lies closer to Roenicke than Macha.

This post repurposes Levitt’s tables for stolen bases rather than bunting. It’s evolutionary, not revolutionary. I’ll do my best to make this post self-contained, but if you’re intrigued by what you read in this post, you’ll learn a lot from reading his original article. It’s dry and a bit long, but you’ll get a lot out of it.

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Whether you believe 2010 was a breakout year or re-breakout year for Corey Hart, we can all appreciate his increase in production compared to 2008 and 2009.  In my curiosity on what to expect from him in 2011, I delved deeper into his HRs last year and found reason to be optimistic.

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It's early in the season, but with starting pitchers averaging around 8 starts to date I thought it would be fun to take a look at how each of the offseason's free agent starting pitchers have performed so far.  The Diamond in the Rough Award to this point in the season goes Livan Hernadez of the Nationals with a large asterisk (notably a .213 BABIP).

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