Prince's defense

Somewhat lost in the shuffle in all the talk about Prince Fielder's fantastic offensive season this year is that, amazingly enough, despite being known as one of the worst defensive first basemen in the game, UZR actually has him as about an average defender this year, around -1.1 runs. UZR is highly susceptible to small sample size fluctuations, and it's possible that this is one of those, as it's significantly better than any other number he's posted (usually around -8 to -10), but it's also possible that getting in better shape has improved his defensive ability. Prince is already one of the best players in the game, but if he can become an average defender, he'll be even more valuable, and maybe shake the "future DH" label, and be seen as more of a well-rounded player than just an all-or-nothing slugger.

Buehrle sets retrosheet record for 9x3s

As you've all heard by now, Mark Buehrle pitched a perfect game today. Perhaps even more significant is that it was the third "9x3" of his career. A 9x3 is a game where the pitcher only faces 27 opposing batters, even if some of them reach base; the ones who do reach base are erased by double plays, caught stealings, etc.

I've often wondered what to call such a game; I asked my dad for a suggestion, and after his initial suggestion of a 3x3 animal style, we settled on 9x3, as in facing all 9 batters in the lineup exactly 3 times, and nothing more.

Baseball-reference recently made a list of this, and apparently as of 2007, it had only been done 35 times since 1957, exclusive of perfect games. Buehrle, at that time, was the only pitcher with two games on that list; Koufax had one plus his perfect game, so they were tied for the retrosheet lead with 2. Buehrle, of course, as I mention above, has now taken the lead.

A 9x3, even of the non-perfect variety, is quite an accomplishment, as evidenced by its rarity, but you never actually hear about it. I suspect this is because there's no snappy name for it, so I suggest from now on, we all agree to use the phrase "9x3" as casually as we say "no-hitter" or "perfect game". Okay? Okay.

Return to blogging with a quick post, and maybe a longer one later

Hi, I haven't posted here in a while; I've been meaning to on several occasions, but I haven't had time to lately. Anyway, though, I have a long post about various things, including UZR and other fielding metrics, but first, speaking of UZR, I wanted to point out something exciting, that I've been thinking will happen for a while but finally has.

Check it out:



Ryan Braun officially has a positive UZR on the season for (I believe) the first time in his career.

It's a small sample, for sure, like UZR usually is, but personally I think it could last, and expect Braun, when all is said and done, to end up reliably a few runs above average in the outfield.

Braun's gettin' on base

Now, having just emphasized the small sample size present in the last post, I'm going to disregard my own advice and look at some of Braun's numbers so far this year. In particular, I wanted to analyze the comment I made earlier that Braun has been drawing walks at a solid pace. I made this graph of his AVG, OBP, and SLG so far this year:



As you can see, even when his AVG and SLG were swooning, Braun's OBP has consistently stayed very solid. It got as low as .304 on April 11th, but ever since April 13th it's been higher than .340, which suggests that even when he hasn't been hitting, Braun has been good enough at drawing walks to keep getting on base. Again, it's a very small sample size, so there's no way to tell if this will keep up, but it's very encouraging, as patience has always been the weakest part of Ryan Braun's game.

Very Quick Point About Sample Size

So, it's a cliché at this time of year to say that we shouldn't read too much into a batter's performance because it's such a small sample size, but I thought I'd use an example to illustrate that point. Going into the series in Philadelphia, Ryan Braun's slash line was sitting at .222/.340/.356, not completely terrible, but certainly not what we expect from him. However, coming out of Philly, after just three games, Braun has raised his line to the Pujolsian .327/.448/.600. Even after just the first game, where he went 5-for-5 with two homers, he had raised his line to an awesome .300/.397/.540. BTW, note how Braun's ISO discipline (OBP-AVG, basically a measure of patience at the plate and skill at drawing walks) has been pretty consistently great. Braun has actually been drawing walks this year, and if he keeps that up, he can go from being great at the plate to being an absolutely dominant player.

So the next time you read something about small sample size, keep this in mind. We're still at the point in the year where 5 at-bats can turn a guy from suck into awesome.

Fun facts about Gary Sheffield #500

-Gary Sheffield, as has been noted elsewhere, is the first to join the 500 HR club with a pinch hit home run.

-Sheffield is the second to hit his 500th homer off of the first team he ever played for; the first to do this was Jimmie Foxx, on September 24, 1940. Sheffield and Foxx are the only members of the club to hit their 500th homers off of a team that they played for at any point in their careers.

-Sheffield has played for more teams than any other member of the 500 club, with 8 (Brewers, Padres, Marlins, Dodgers, Braves, Yankees, Tigers, Mets). Prior to his joining, Frank Robinson and Eddie Murray were both tied for the most clubs, with 5 (Reds, Orioles, Dodgers, Angels, Indians for Robinson, and Orioles, Dodgers, Mets, Indians, Angels for Murray).

Brewers fans represent

So, I was at tonight's game, and I'm still trying to gather all of my thoughts about it (in particular, how I should feel about seeing Gary Sheffield's 500th HR in person, and how I should feel about seeing an exciting ballgame that my team loses). In an attempt to get something down, I'll start out with a quick note about how there was a surprisingly large number of Brewers fans at the game tonight. I saw the Brewers play the Mets at about the same time last year (on April 12th), and there were not nearly as many Brewers fans at that game as there were at this one.

There were Brewers fans in my section, actually, a few rows behind me, which was a new experience for me. It was pretty awesome, because in the top of the 6th, before Braun hit his home run, the Milwaukee fans in my section started arguing with some of the Mets fans over usual baseball stuff ("Wisconsin sucks!"), and then Braun hit his shot to give the Brewers the lead. That, of course, shut up the Mets fans, and I ran up to high five the other Brewers fans. That was the high point of the game for me.

Hyperbole? Nah.

From the Citi Field opening day program:

"There was no lack of shattering news events in the year 1969. There was the Jets Super Bowl III victory, the Woodstock Festival and Concert, Lyndon Johnson leaving office and the ascendancy of Richard Nixon to the Presidency, the implementation of the first artificial heart and Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon.

But for sheer drama and surprise, nothing could match what happened on October 16, the date the expansion New York Mets sent shock waves through the baseball world by defeating the Baltimore Orioles for the World Series Championship."

Man walked on the fucking moon...but that's got nothin' on the Mets winning a World Series.

Why I'm still feeling alright about the Brewers' season

Yeah, long time without a post; I have some things I've been meaning to throw up (including a predictions post--it's still valid a week in, right? :-P), but I thought I'd get this out of the way now. The team has had a rough first week; 2-4, including a couple of brutal losses to the Cubs and some terrible Suppan starts. That said, I think this team has a lot going for it, and I'll lay out some reasons why:

1. Most of the games have been fairly close. The Cubs games, in particular, were all fairly close and exciting, and even the one today (Sunday) was closer than it seemed; if Reed Johnson hadn't made an incredible play, it would've been a one-run game, rather than a three-run game. And on Saturday, if Soriano had been (properly) called out on the double-play, the Brewers could've won that. It really was some tough luck losses, and the Brewers could've won or even swept the series.

2. Other than Suppan, the starting pitching has been solid. Starting pitching was our big question mark coming in, and so far it's been pretty good. Gallardo was amazing, Looper put in a solid effort, and Parra and Bush basically kept up what they gave us last year. Unfortunately, Suppan also kept up what he gave us last year. That said, maybe this is wishful thinking on my part, but if he has another start or two like the last one, I really feel like there'll be some accountability this year, $40 million contract or no. I wouldn't be surprised if we see him taken out of the rotation. The bullpen hasn't been too bad so far; nothing great, but not terrible, and should get better once Hoffman's back.

3. The hitters have been getting on base. We haven't been scoring runs like we should, but that's mainly been a fairly of clutch hitting more than anything else. They've seemed to do a good job of working the count, and guys have been getting on base at a nice clip. If you keep getting guys on base like that, you're going to start knocking them in and scoring runs. Also worth keeping in mind is that we've held our own even though Hardy has been slumping, Kendall is doing even worse than usual, and we've faced a string of good starting pitching: seriously, Dempster is the worst starter we've faced so far, and we've still averaged over 4 runs a game.

So, it's a rough start to the season, but all things considered, I think it was more rough luck than anything else, and as the season starts rolling along, I fully expect this team to perform well and contend for the wild card.

I don't like this

So apparently Suppan is going to be the Opening Day pitcher.

Yeah, in the grand scheme of things, the order you put your rotation in doesn't really make that difference, but this just doesn't make sense to me. The number one starter typically makes the most starts, so why not put your best pitcher there? The argument about Gallardo not having enough experience just doesn't fly with me, especially if your replacement is Suppan, our worst pitcher.

The decision itself probably won't have terrible repercussions, but the thought process worries me.

Corey Hart hit a home run today...

...and it was good.

Spring Training!

So, as I mentioned in the last post, I'm in Arizona, and I've been going to spring training games. I've been to three so far, in three different stadiums, two of which involve the Brewers. There are plenty of blow-by-blow accounts of the games themselves on the net elsewhere, so I'll focus on talking about the parks themselves, and maybe a thing or two about the atmosphere, or little things that other write ups miss.

Sunday: Rockies at Dodgers



So, I started out with a Dodgers game, mainly because Manny was in the lineup and I wanted to make sure I saw him play while I'm here. I showed up just in time to see him groundout in his only at-bat; unfortunately, later in the game he injured his hamstring, and apparently is going to miss another week, which means that was my only chance to see him here. Oh well, at least I got to see him in the field:



In the 4th inning, right before the play where he injured himself, he let a flyball drop right in front of himself; my dad thought seeing that was worth the price of admission.

This is the Dodgers first year training in Arizona, and they have a brand new stadium, which is quite nice, as you can see in the pic above. Perhaps the best part about spring training games is that you can walk up to the ticket window as the game is starting and get good seats for cheap, and although this stadium is the most expensive of the Cactus League stadiums, this was still the case; we got this view with $20 last minute seats (and they only charged a dollar for my eight-year-old brother, which is nice):



It may have been because the game was a blowout from the beginning, but this crowd definitely lived up to the Dodger fan stereotype; they were almost all gone by the 9th inning, and didn't seem quite as engaged as the crowds at the other two games I went to.

Also, I found out that, unlike the spring training games I went to when I was 12, you can't get players to sign autographs during the game :-(. That was a little upsetting.

Monday: Cubs at Brewers



This game was amazing. It wasn't just that it was gratifying to see the Brewers smackdown the Cubs (but it was, even if the game doesn't matter), and it wasn't just that it was exciting to see Corey Hart tearing it up (yes, spring stats don't mean anything, but it looks like he's ready to bounce back from his September). Beyond all of that, it was great to have a little bit of Milwaukee in the Valley. I haven't been to Milwaukee in over 11 years, so it was amazing to have a brat (with stadium sauce!), watch the sausage race, and sing "Roll Out the Barrel". I hope to finally come back to Milwaukee and see a game at Miller Park this summer, but until then, this was the next best thing.

The Cubs have a large fanbase in the Valley, for a variety of reasons: first of all, due to Chicago being a huge city and WGN, the Cubs have a huge fanbase in general; second of all, there are a ton of former Chicagoans in Arizona; and third of all, the Cubs have been training there for almost 60 years, since 1951. As such, I was expecting the number of Cubs fans at this game to completely overwhelm the number of Brewers fans, but it actually seemed to be split about 50/50, which was a pleasant surprise (and only made the game feel more like a bit of Milwaukee in the desert).

Our seats were even better at this game, good enough to give us a good view of how Prince gets a triple:



The Crew pretty much just dominated the Cubs, and as I indicated above, Corey Hart had a big day, going 3-for-4 with a double and a homer. The only thing more he could've done is draw a walk (because every time Corey Hart draws a walk, an angel gets its wings). The Cubs did threaten in the 8th, scoring 4 runs off of Sam Narron to narrow the deficit to 2, but even this ended happily, as in the bottom of the 8th, Lorenzo Cain doubled and Alcides Escobar knocked him in for another insurance run, thereby reassuring us that the 2011 Brewers know how to get the job done.

After the game, I was able to get autographs from Joe Crawford, Brad Fischer, and Lorenzo Cain, so I know who I'm rooting for to inherit the CF spot from Cameron...



Tuesday: Brewers at Giants



In spite of the Brewers losing this one, and having the worst seats I've had yet, it still had its redeeming qualities, not the least of which that the Brewers lead for most of it. It was at Scottsdale Stadium, which is significantly closer to me than the other two parks (half hour drive as opposed to an hour drive), so I was able to get there earlier, and got signatures from Ken Macha and Mat Gamel before the game.

I was under the impression that Scottsdale Stadium was an old stadium from the 50s, but the current structure was actually built in 1992 on the site of the old stadium, which was opened in 1956 for the Orioles spring training, and later hosted the Red Sox, Cubs, A's, and now Giants. Opening in 1992 does still make it the oldest of the parks I've been to so far, though, and it did feel older because it had an enclosed concourse, unlike the other two parks. Still, it was overall a nice park, and looked nice with trees behind the outfield fence:



As Maryvale had the Brewers' signature brats, Scottsdale Stadium serves the Giants' signature garlic fries. I'd heard some people saying the garlic fries aren't very good, but I love garlic, potatoes, and grease, so I came away satisfied.

Like I said before, the Brewers lead for most of this; Corey Hart stayed hot, smoking two doubles, one of which scored two runs. Brad Nelson had an RBI single, and even Mike Lamb of all people blasted a two-run shot. What's more, amazingly, Jeff Suppan even had a terrific outing, facing the minimum through 4, and ending the 5th with a strikeout. True to form, that last strikeout was his only of the game, and he relied on the defense the whole way, but still; if Soup can keep that up, not walking guys and getting them to hit on the ground, he can be an adequate 5th starter. Now if we can just keep him out of big games...

Unfortunately, there was a black mark on this game, and his name is Villanueva.



I don't believe in getting worked up over spring training games, but this is worrisome. Villy is someone we really need to stay solid, and he hasn't looked good in spring. He looked terrible out there today, and Macha is worried about him, too.

That said, there was one bright spot about Villanueva's outing. In the bottom of the 8th inning, immediately after he gave up the two-out inside-the-park homer that tied the game, Alcides Escobar made a tremendous play to end the inning. A ball was smoked hard to his right, really near Gamel's range, and he slid on his knees to get it, picking it on a hop near the edge of the grass, then sprung up and fired a rocket to first to nail the runner with plenty of time to spare. This was a ball that would've gone through the field for a hit with most shortstops, and Escobar not only stopped it, he got the guy out and didn't even make it a close play at first. We've all heard a lot about his ridiculous fielding prowess, and he lived up to his reputation in this game.


Escobar and Gamel—the future

So that's my wrap-up of halway through my spring training experience. So far I've had a fantastic time. I was going to go to the Giants-Cubs game tomorrow when Randy Johnson was scheduled to start, but now that he's been scratched, I've been thinking about taking the day off. The Brewers' last home game while I'm here is on Thursday, and I definitely want to go to that; Maryvale was such an awesome experience I'm fired up for doing it again. I'm also thinking about checking out a Mariners game; I'd like to see what Russell the Muscle is up to.

A Brewers logo post

So, I'm in Arizona for spring break, and I've been having the time of my life going to Spring Training games. I plan to do a big post on that real soon, but first I'm going to do a quick one here about the Brewers' logo.

The Brewers, of course, once had the best sports logo of all time: the "ball-in-glove" logo, which combined an "m" and a "b" into a shape like a ball and glove



In 1994, however, they stopped using the logo, but brought it back in limited capacity in 2006, wearing it at "Retro Sunday" home games. In 2007, Retro Sunday became Retro Friday, and it remained in 2008. However, in 2009 Retro Fridays will only be the first Friday home game of each month.

Some people feel the old logo/uniforms should be brought back full time, but the players are resistant to this idea, because they feel they want to create their own identity, and not constantly be compared to the '82 team. While I once would've liked to see the old uniforms brought back full time, I am sympathetic to the player thoughts, and the new uniforms have grown on me. As such, I would support going to the new uniforms full-time, but I do have two reservations:

1. The ball in glove logo really is an incredible logo, and shouldn't go to waste.

2. The current main logo for the team, not seen on the uniforms but used in promotional materials and such, is godawful:



Seriously, that's just generic, boring, and ugly.

So, to me, there's an obvious solution here: update the ball in glove logo with the current colors, and use it as the primary team logo. Maybe even put it on the new uniform as a patch. It could be combined with the current wordmark to create something like this (apologies for my terrible photoshop skill):



That's much better than the current logo, and makes great use of the ball-in-glove logo, yet still seems in keeping with the team's current image, rather than calling back to the '82 era. I think this would be a perfect way to combine the team's history while allowing the current players to create their own image.

Brew Crew Ball on the Brewers' Offense Rebounding

As always, good stuff from BCB.

It's the same basic idea as what I talked about here, except they actually, y'know, use real numbers and come to an actual conclusion. Long story short, we can expect our five core players (Braun, Fielder, Hardy, Hart, and Weeks) to add 5 wins just by rebounding from a bad offensive year last year.

In other news, the Brewers ended their first Spring Training game against the Oakland A's with a 3-3 tie after ten innings. Worth noting, IMO, is that Corey Hart went 2-2 with a home run and a walk. Yes, it's a tiny sample size and not worth extrapolating anything from, but this team needs Hart to be contributing this season, and it's nice to see he's at least capable of putting up some numbers. Hopefully the trend will continue...

Also, I've been meaning to mention this, but I hope that Macha starting Suppan in the first Spring Training game doesn't mean he wants him to be the Opening Day pitcher. As I indicated before, I don't even like the idea of anyone other than Gallardo being the opening day starter, and I especially don't like the idea of Suppan being the opening day starter. I don't think Suppan will be as bad in '09 as he was in '08, but barring a freak occurrence, he's the worst pitcher in the rotation, and it just doesn't make any sense to give him the most starts.

Not offering arbitration: smart move?

The OC Register, in a piece on the smartest baseball moves of the offseason, praise the D-Backs, Yankees, and Phillies for not offering arbitration to Adam Dunn, Bobby Abreu, and Pat Burrell, taking the point of view that the cheap contracts these sluggers ended up with in a down market justified the move. I disagree with this.

By not offering arbitration, the clubs lost out on draft-pick compensation for these players. However, they also took away the players' options to accept arbitration, which would've resulted in the clubs paying overpriced salaries to Dunn, Abreu, and Burrell. This is why the move is praised, but, the move only saved the clubs money if Dunn, Abreu, and Burrell would've accepted arbitration.

Sure, in hindsight the three of them would've been better off accepting arbitration, but out of 24 players offered arbitration, only two accepted, and they're both little-known relief pitchers (Darren Oliver and David Weathers). Furthermore, several players definitely did hurt themselves by declining arbitration, most notably Jason Varitek. With this in mind, I find it quite likely that players offered arbitration would've declined it, anyway, thereby netting their clubs a pick, and losing them nothing.

Granted, you can't always count on such things, and the GMs moves to not offer arbitration certainly looks better now than it did at the time, but I don't think I'd go so far as to praise the move.

Brewers, Hart, avoid arbitration

"Presumably settled somewhere near the midpoint" of $3.25 million.

I have to say, I figured if Doug Melvin's arbitrationless streak had come to an end this spring, it would've been with Prince, so I guess I'm kind of not surprised at the settlement.

How Hart does next season is one of the questions I'd like to see answered. I don't know what the hell happened to him in September, but it was bizarre. He went from hitting .299/.310/.523 to hitting .173/.192/.245. That's a drop of 100 points in OPS+. Admittedly, this can perhaps be partly explained by a .213 BABIP, but it's still awful. I find it unlikely that Hart suddenly forgot how to play baseball when the calendar turned, but maybe opposing pitchers have figured him out. Hopefully it's just a case of really bad luck, and he comes right back to his former self as the season begins.

Rare triple-post day!

Ryan Braun on steroids: "I would never do it because if I took steroids, I would hit 60 or 70 home runs."

It's kind of a dumb thing to say, but I love that he's being a cocky bastard here, rather than an evasive douchebag, like most players tend to be when the topic of steroids comes up. Really, when it comes to steroids, I pretty much come down on the side of, "Yeah, it's a bad thing, and we should do something about it, but is it really this big of a deal?" With that in mind, I appreciate that rather than tow the party line and act all serious, Braun is having some fun with it.

Of course, if he does hit 60 or 70 home runs in a season someday (it could happen), then this quote might come back to haunt him...

Hey-la, hey-la, my Gagne's back

Minor league deal, no terms as of yet

Gagne gets a lot of shit for being shit, but he wasn't too bad in the second half of last year. He mainly got a bad reputation for having some high-profile meltdowns, and forgettable solid performances. He's an arm, though, and if the price is right, it can't hurt to have some of those lurking around down in AAA and thereabouts.

Macha not likely to name Gallardo Opening Day Starter

I dunno if I like this.

So, I'm not going to start pissing on Macha right away, and so far he's seemed like a pretty solid guy, but here's, really, the first sort of real decision we've heard from him...and I think it's a bad one. I mean, Gallardo is far and away our best pitcher; he's projected to have an ERA around 3.50 next year, and no one else on the staff is projected to go under 4.00. He may be the least experienced, but talent, ultimately, trumps experience, and we should give our best starter the most starts, simple as that. Now, I will grant, that I am not well-versed in the impact of experience on this sort of thing, and the impact of pressure situations on a young pitcher's development, but can the impact really be enough to offset that wide of a talent gap?

Furthermore, is this sort of thing really necessary with Gallardo? Everything we hear about him is that in addition to being a great pitcher, he's Mr. Poise and thrives under pressure. Is he really not up to the task of Opening Day? I'm not sure I buy that.

And I also don't totally buy that being the Number One starter is that much more pressure. I mean, the argument used here is that you'd always be going up against every other team's number one, but that's just not the case; off days and a injuries scramble up pitching rotations pretty damn fast, and the ace matchups don't always happen all that often.

So, in other words, I'm waiting to judge on Macha, but this move displeases me; I feel it's a rather significant cost with no obvious gain.

Looper Deal is Official

One year, $4.75 million

I like it, because depth...is good. Seriously, though, while we don't have superstars, I think the rotation is pretty solid now. It's easy to feel down on the team because we lost Sabathia and Sheets and haven't really replaced them, but I think an important thing to keep in mind is that we wouldn't have needed Sabathia so much last year if the team's offense hadn't completely fallen off the face of the Earth in September. Here's a chart of the runs/game each month that I think illustrates that well:



As you can see, I also added in a line for the Simple Runs Created (SRC) per game, which is the runs we should have scored based on the team OBP, SLG, and at-bats. (It's calculated as OBPxSLGxAB. As an aside, looking at that formula is a useful way to see why OBP is more important than SLG; while an increase in SLG only increases its own variable, an increase in OBP increases both itself and AB, because a team with a higher OBP isn't getting itself out as easily, and so is stepping up to the plate more). While it's already obvious that September was just terrible offensively for the Crew, the SRC/G line emphasizes the fact that, while the team did not score many more runs per game in May than they did in September, this was more a consequence of bad luck; based on how they were hitting, they should've scored something more like 4.6 runs per game, instead of 3.9. However, September was not a case of bad luck; clearly, the team just totally stopped hitting.

There are some explanations for this: Ryan Braun, while he was still in the lineup, was battling a back injury that clearly hampered his effectiveness, and Corey Hart, for some reason, just ceased to exist as offensive force. Also, Gabe Kapler was unable to play because of a shoulder injury; while Gabe wasn't a regular player, I do feel that if he had been available to sub for Hart a few times, that may have helped Hart break out of his slump (but that's just conjecture on my part). Anyway, clearly this was a freak occurrence, and it's unlikely that next year the team will suffer another September slump.

My point, then, is that if the team had continued to score runs at the same rate they had beforehand (4.8 runs/game), they would've scored an additional 31 runs, which is 31 runs that the pitching staff could've allowed. Spread out over 162 games, that's 0.2 runs. So, if the offense can avoid another bizarre teamwide slump, the pitching stuff can have an ERA 0.2 runs worse and still get the same results, which doesn't sound too bad.

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Notes: Just some random stuff I noticed when I was doing up the numbers that I wanted to share:

-September was the only month in which the Crew scored fewer than 100 runs, scoring 94. However, August was the only month in which they allowed fewer than 100 runs, allowing only 72. That's 2.67 runs per game. We all remember how dominant Sabathia and Sheets were, but damn, that's just incredible to see it in cold print like that.

-August was also the Brewers' best run-scoring month, as they scored 151 runs. Again, just to reflect on this, they scored more than twice as many runs as they allowed. However, based on Simple Runs Created, July was actually their best offensive month; they should've scored 150 runs instead of the 138 that they did, and in August they should've scored 145 runs. The better number for July was fueled entirely by a .032 point increase in SLG, as they actually had a slightly lower OBP and 9 fewer at-bats.