SB Nation User Blog: jihad

Not Giving Up on the 09 Brewers

jihad — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 22:57:21 -0000

2009 pitching and hitting projections are coming in and optimism seems to be a bit low around the Brewer fan community for next season-- not just here, but in general. Even though watching a crappy baseball team is a lot of fun, I think there's plenty of reasons to think the Brewers could very well be a 88-90 win wildcard team again next year. It's not likely, but bear with me here. I see four possibilities/situations that could surprise us next year.

We and most professionals projected last year's Brewers to win about 88 games at the start of the year. They won 90 with a half year of Sabathia and no Gallardo, and the offense was significantly worse than expected, although some pitchers, like Bush, performed better than expected.

So let's start with the assumption that the Brewers are an 84-86 win team, without Sheets or Sabathia, if they just sign a lefty 3B to platoon at third with Hall and stick with the roster as it is right now.

1. An 84-86 win team can definitely fluke its way into 88 or 90 wins. It's happened before and it will happen again. The 2007 Diamondbacks were outscored by 20 runs and won 90 games and the NL West, and teams like the Twins this year can win a lot of games by being very "clutch" throughout the year (not that it means anything going forward, but a team can certainly be more clutch than usual over the course of 1 year).

Now I'm not saying it's a good idea to bank on a fluky year. And there's also the possibility that you get a 06 Brewers type year where everyone gets hurt and nothing goes right, and your 85 win team does not crack .500. But it's silly to give up already when the possibility does exist.

2. This year the Brewers were able to stay alive in the Wildcard race up until July with the exact team they have right now, except with Ben Sheets pitching with Gallardo injured. If Gallardo covers similar production to Sheets first half last year (a stretch, certainly, because Sheets was dominant) we're right back where we were at the deadline in 08. Melvin has shown a willingness to pay premium prospects for a rental two years in a row now, provided he can get draft picks for the player, and there's no reason to believe he wouldn't do it again. There aren't a ton of appealing options right now, but we all know how fast things can change.

3. Fielder dropped .120 points of OPS, Braun dropped .110, and Hart dropped .130 from 2007 to 2008. Their 2008s could have definitely been expected regression from stellar 2007s, but there's hope that all three could return to higher production levels, and there's the eternal possibility of the long-awaited breakout from Weeks. The current pitching staff plus a group of mashers like we had in '07 could find its way to 88-90 wins and the wildcard.

4. We're not done with the offseason yet, heck, we didn't even start it. Given the status of the team and the points laid out above, I think it's a fantastic year to take a gamble on a risky starting pitcher, like a short, rich deal to Sheets or a trade for someone like Erik Bedard. The reward could be huge. A 3-4 win improvement could mean we're the wildcard frontrunners, and a potentially dominant pitcher plus our Yovani and Manny combo could work in October. We're not in a position where a cheaper, more reliable option-- say, Jon Garland or Paul Byrd, who could provide 1 or at best 2 wins above our replacement starter-- would be worth it, because that doesn't get us in the "expected" playoffs.

So that's the pitch. Don't expect 90 wins again, but don't expect another year of painful attempts at mediocrity or rebuilding-- even if Sabathia isn't re-signed. Blind optimism does us no good, but that doesn't mean we have to give up on the team before they even start.

Other changes will be coming this offseason. Let's wait them out and assess the team then before we decide whether or not the playoffs are impossible. Remember, the playoffs were impossible last year, too.

What Happened to Bill Hall?

jihad — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 21:40:20 -0000

Is there any hope for Bill Hall to return to a decent option at any position, or fetch a return in a trade? Everyone thought his 2007 was an outlier in what was going to bounce back to a solid big league career. So what happened?

As I wrote in the Corey Hart fanpost, there are three things that could have happened to cause a player to suck:

1. Actual talent level or approach to the game changed

2. Previous success was either fluky or unsustainable

3. Recent lack of success is result of fluky or unsustainable properties

So with some time here on a Sunday afternoon, I'll see what I can find about the subject.

So we'll start with the basics. In four full time seasons in the majors, he's put up the following OPS numbers (vRHP/vLHP/overall):

.793/.967/.837
.846/1.072/.899
.713/.795/.740
.557/.893/.689

Progression: 
vRHP .793--.846--.713--.557
vLHP .967--1.072--.795--.893

Worth noting, of course, is that Hall's OPS was and is mostly driven by slugging. Overall slash lines in those four years:

.291  .342  .495
.270  .345  .553
.254  .315  .425
.225  .293  .396

It looks to me like his BA-OBP gap has stayed pretty consistent. Going back now to the minors, here's Hall's (OBP-BA) gap, showing his plate discipline:

.027
.036
.039
.051
.038
.051
.075
.061
.068

Not what I expected to see at all. He went from a hacker in the minors to a patient hitter in the majors, and he remains patient. The average has been the problem. Unfortunately, there's no batted ball data for the minors, but we have fangraphs and a four full-season sample to find some trends.

via www.fangraphs.com

The spike in flyballs in '06, coupled with a career high HR/FB rate of 20% (around 13% every other year in his career), explains the 35 homer outburst. I don't expect him to come close to that again. What's interesting is the line drive numbers--the career high in '05 makes sense given his also career high average of .290, but they actually fell in '06 and rebounded in '07, followed by another fall--without the fly ball numbers-- in '08. That leads to BABIP:

via www.fangraphs.com

A casual analysis might determine that Hall was unlucky this year due to the low BABIP, but given the decrease in line drives and fly balls and increase of ground balls, the BABIP isn't too out of line. So has something changed in his approach at the plate, making the average fall?

His walk and strikeout rates have stayed almost exactly the same since '05, with the only exception a career-best walk rate in '06. He Ks more than the average player, but his strikeout rate didn't jump too much last year.

Pitchers haven't drastically changed their approach against Hall, either, and there is only one thing that really stands out to me in his plate discipline: he's swinging at more pitches outside the zone and actually making contact with a higher percentage of these pitches outside the zone. I'm theorizing here, but I'd think that would lead to more weak groundballs and fewer line drives. I remember seeing the same problem with J.J. Hardy in a fanpost before he went on his hot streak this year:

I was surprised to see Hardy here. His LD % is pretty worrisome. His groundball percent is at a career high and line drives are at a career low. Remember in spring training when he said he wanted to shorten up and use his two strike approach more? Well, he's striking out less and hitting more balls weakly.

Hall seems to have adopted the "2 strike approach", hitting more balls less hard and seeing a resulting dip in line drives and BABIP. J.J.'s problem might have been a small sample result, but Billy has been doing this for 2 years now. We can also speculate how his eyesight has affected his hitting ability, but his contact rate hasn't really gone down too much in any other area.

He'd certainly be worth a gamble for a shortstop-needy, big budget team that can afford to hope he has a .700ish OPS year playing full time. I'd be willing to bet his .500 range OPS vRHP won't happen again, as he's never been below .700 vRHP before in his career. High .600s- low .700s is possible. And there's no doubt he's a heck of an option in the righty side of a 3B platoon.

A team like the Brewers, if they expect to contend, shouldn't play Hall every day at third base, but that doesn't mean he couldn't play everyday somewhere. It's relatively easy to find a lefty platoon 3B (Branyan!) for cheap and it would be foolish to hope for a .700 OPS vRHP from Billy when Branyan can contribute .800.

So I'm going to vote for a combination of numbers 1 and 2 above-- I think something in his approach/game changed, even if it wasn't a concious change, and there is some evidence that his 05-06 success wasn't sustainable anyway- '05 had a pretty high BABIP-driven average and '06 had the ridiculous HR/FB ratio.

If he played a full year at this point, I'd expect about .260/.315/.400 with about 15 homers. You can do worse at shortstop, but I don't think he's a good 3B anymore. Or an MVP candidate, Ned.

Rule 5 Draft Protection

jihad — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:19:43 -0000

Rule 5 Draft Protection

The Brewers added 4 pitchers to the 40-man roster to protect them from the Rule 5 draft.

RHP Omar Aguilar
RHP Alexandre Periard
RHP Mark Rogers
RHP Cody Scarpetta

Apparently, when the Brewers voided Scarpetta's contract after his injury when they drafted him, it opened up an exception that made him eligible for the draft. Still somewhat odd to see him protected, I don't think anyone would take a pitcher who has never pitched above rookie ball even though he's a good prospect. It's unlikely Rogers would have been picked either, but they didn't want to take the chance.

BF.net thinks Lorenzo Cain is eligible, too, and it's surprising they didn't stick him on the roster. Hopefully he's not, because it wouldn't be surprising to see a team take a shot on him.

Fire Joe Morgan says Goodbye

jihad — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:28:15 -0000

Fire Joe Morgan says Goodbye

My favorite (non team-specific, of course) blog on the internet is shutting things down (seems to be a trend). This comes after rumors of Joe Morgan being pulled of ESPN Sunday night broadcasts. They'll leave the archives open. All of us will have to pick up the quest to pick apart/make fun of bad sports journalism.

NL Gold Glove Winners

jihad — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 23:45:30 -0000

NL Gold Glove Winners

No Brewers make the Gold Glove team.

National League
P, Greg Maddux, LAD
C, Yadier Molina, STL
1B, Adrian Gonzalez, SD
2B, Brandon Phillips, CIN
3B, David Wright, NYM
SS, Jimmy Rollins, PHI
OF, Carlos Beltran, NYM
OF, Nate McLouth, PIT
OF, Shane Victorino, PHI

Nate... McClouth? We all know this is an exercise in stupidity because the writers who vote have no clue what they're talking about, but McClouth is a terrible defender. Sky Kalkman/Justin Inaz's ratings had him at 45 off, -14 def, 32 tot. He might be the worst defensive CF in the majors.

That's not the only bad pick. Pujols is pretty clearly better than Gonzalez, and Brandon Phillips is not anywhere near Chase Utley, who some stats think had the best year of a second basemen in quite a few years.

Sports Illustrated Magazine Mentions BCB

jihad — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 02:27:47 -0000

Sports Illustrated Magazine Mentions BCB

I still get a Sports Illustrated subscription, and even though most of the articles are just full of cliche and little analysis, there's occasionally some interesting stuff. The column that replaced Reilly on the back page is now a rotating group of writers that write "The Point After". I was pretty surprised to read this week's edition, dated October 6th, 2008:

"Cubs fans, who, let's face it, have a right to be edgy about these things, were equally irked when they saw their third baseman, Aramis Ramirez, gracing the cover of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED last week, bringing the supposed SI jinx into play. MDBNIU wrote on bleedcubbieblue.com, "Thanks jackass New York--based editorial board of Sports Illustrated." Sorry about that, MDBNIU. How about we send you a fleece and call it even?"

"...But most fan rituals are about bringing good karma rather than warding off bad. "I made a pumpkin pie from scratch yesterday ... and the Brewers won," KLSnow blogged on brewcrewball.com. "I'm going to need a lot more pumpkins."

Nice to see the site get a mention in a national magazine, and I like how it portrays the Cubs fans as asshats and us as the nice, American guys. Congrats, KL. Nice conspiracy theory, guy who comes here and taunts us when the Cubs win.

Cubs/Astros series to be moved to Miller Park?

jihad — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 01:36:55 -0000

Cubs/Astros series to be moved to Miller Park?

Adam McCalvy has an MLB.com article posted saying that Miller Park might be the destination for the Cubs and Astros for the games they're supposed to play in Houston during Hurricane Ike.

Seems like it would be a bad deal for Houston, who would lose 3 critical home games to what would certainly be a Cub-fan majority in Milwaukee.

It's acknowledged that Milwaukee was initially ruled out, but apparently there aren't any better domed options available.

For what it's worth, a Brewerfan.net member 'broke' the story about 2 and a half hours ago.

Also in that thread is the conundrum of what you root for- as one poster points out, you can't root for an asteroid now, because it's our park.

A fan's video of Kapler's amazing catch in LA

jihad — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 15:27:19 -0000

A fan's video of Kapler's amazing catch in LA

Kremblas Reveals 8 September AAA Callups, UPDATE: 2 from AA as well?

jihad — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:53:14 -0000

Kremblas Reveals 8 September AAA Callups, UPDATE: 2 from AA as well?

Here's the list of the players that are getting the call from Nashville on Monday, according to an audio interview with AAA manager Frank Kremblas last night:

RHP Tim Dillard
LHP Mitch Stetter
RHP Mark DiFelice
IF Joe Dillon
C Vinny Rottino
3B Mat Gamel
OF Tony Gwynn Jr.
1B Brad Nelson

Only Gamel has to be added to the 40-man roster. Keep in mind that this is only the callups from AAA- there's still room for Mel Stocker to be recalled from Brevard County, or maybe someone from Huntsville. If you count on Branyan being back eventually and Stocker getting called up, there's room for 5 more players total.

The other two who were speculated to be called up from AAA are OF Jay Gibbons and RHP Joe Bateman.

UPDATE: A former coach of Angel Salome's posted a thread on Brewerfan.net about Salome getting called up- no official word, but he knows Salome personally and isn't just making stuff up. There's also plenty of speculation that Alcides Escobar is going to get a callup as well; it would make sense because he's already on the 40-man roster and isn't scheduled to go to the Arizona Fall League. Salome would have to be added to the 40-man (outright Richie Gardner?) and someone would replace him on the AFL roster.

New KUG Leaderboard

jihad — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:26:04 -0000

It's been almost 2 months since the last KUG grit rankings update. For this round, I've revised the formula to be a rate stat. These numbers can't direcltly be compared to the last set, but they're on the same scale. All counting stats are now a function of plate appearances, so bench players are judged on the same scale as starters.

I don't have the time or energy to write out the whole formula here- it's long and messy with some random multiplication to get the numbers to be on a scale similar to where they were last time. If anyone wants me to run somebody specific's numbers, I'd be glad to.

I'll just fill everyone in on what's changed for now. In addition to making the stat a rate instead of a cumulative number:

I've added stolen bases to the non-gritty section of the formula to weed out guys who have the talent to steal bases, like Joey Gathright
I took out sacrifice flies as a gritty thing to do, because guys like Prince Fielder hit a lot of them
I added a bonus for being 6 feet or shorter, the final number was multiplied by 1.05 for those players
I added a bonus for being older than 30, I multiplied by 1.05 for that too.
Gone is the ability to score in the negatives, like Braun did last time. Now the best you can do is 0, like Russell Branyan, who hasn't had a sacrifice, HBP, or caught stealing this year, so the top of his Raw Grit formula was a 0. Even though he's 30+, 1.05*0 is still 0.

Greater Rankings of Individual Tenacity

Player	KUG Rate
Jason Kendall	37.804
Rickie Weeks	12.81
Craig Counsell	8.2357
Mike Rivera	6.57
Corey Hart	6.4
Bill Hall	5.7435
Gabe Kapler	5.677
Prince Fielder	5.4915
J.J. Hardy	3.96
Ray Durham	3.56
Mike Cameron	2.70111
Ryan Braun	2.37
Russell Branyan	0

Rickie Weeks, due to being crappy and hitting a lot of ground balls, moves up to second behind the Grit-man. Cameron slides down due to improved production and a not-gritty .306 ground ball rate.

I'm curious to see how this new formula works out, I'll maybe run some other guys tomorrow if I have time. For now, take comfort in knowing that the Cubs have no one that can out-grit Jason Kendall.

EDIT: The Formula for Grit

I went through the whole spreadsheet to figure out the formula. It looks ridiculous, but it makes sense if you go through it:

1000(SH/PA + HBP/PA + CS/PA) / 100(HR/PA + IBB/PA + GIDP/PA + SO/PA + SB/PA) * 1- (H/XBH) * (GB rate) * 1.05 if age=30+ * 1.05 if height=<72" * (3)

No, the multipliers are not errors. Since there are a lot fewer events in the first part of the ratio, and we obviously want the number to be positive and large enough to understand (not the leader at .95, second at .82, etc.), I made the top number bigger.

The other odd-looking part is the last thing, I just multiplied every number by 3. That makes the numbers look kinda like they did last time, when the top GRIT producers were in the mid-30's in KUG, this time Kendall had 12 so I just multiplied everyone by 3.