We here at FanSided are doing our Collaborative Post on what teams should do as the trade deadline approaches. Here is a sneak preview, of what the Brewers focus should be going forward. Readers of this blog probably won’t find RtB’s proposed answer to be all that stunning.

As the trade deadline approaches, I think it’s pretty clear that the Brew Crew just doesn’t have the pitching — starting or in relief — to be any kind of a real threat to make the postseason. So its obvious they should be trying to sell for the future.
While there are any number of players they could potentially move for some minors depth or mid-level prospects, including Trevor Hoffman or Corey Hart, the Brewers should be solely focused on moving their first baseman while his value is highest in trade. Sure, Fielder isn’t having his best season, but I’m sure teams around MLB know his value, and recognize 1.5 years is better than .5 years of return.
As discussed previously on Reviewing the Brew, Prince just isn’t as irreplaceable as Milwaukee would like to believe — I even went so far as to say that Mat Gamel could take over for most of Fielder’s value immediately. While Fielder seems a decent bet to reach 5.0 WAR and up this season, in two of his first five years he didn’t even manage three, mostly because his shoddy defense can sabotage his work with the bat. Plus, it’s hard to believe that either Fielder will sign with Milwaukee longterm, or that doing so would be entirely beneficial for the Crew, given his, uh, physique.
The Brewers should take the highest offer they get for their first baseman, unless they believe it entirely feasible they will receive a higher offer in the offseason.

Once the entire post is up, I’ll drop a link here. Enjoy your Friday.
Sláinte!

Seeing as the Brewers are on a bit of a hot stretch, having won six of their past seven, featuring a sweep over the rival Twins even, it seemed a good time to bring up this question. FanGraphs has started a running series about buying vs. selling at the trade deadline, and a few days ago had this post surrounding the Milwaukee Brewers options/.
Now, I think the post has plenty of strong points, and brings up the most interesting question surrounding the team, long-term: What to do with Fielder.
First off, let me say that Prince Fielder is one of the best offensive players in baseball, and he’s also just 26 years old. With a wOBA of .420 last season he rated as the No. 2 first baseman offensively in baseball last season, and really, he is capable of similar performances pretty much any year.
However, Fielder is a below average fielding first baseman, with a career UZR/150 of -6.4. His fielding prowess is the key reason that only two of his first four seasons saw his WAR value at just 1.3 and 2.7.
Now, this isn’t to say that because Fielder doesn’t do his surname justice, the Brewers should trade him. Hardly.
What I AM saying though is that in the NL, if your 1B is nearly a DH when it comes to his glovework, then that player is rather replaceable.
While I won’t go so far as to say that Fielder is easily replaced, I can say that finding either a first baseman who either can hit well and field poorly is not difficult, of field well and hit average might be the easiest find in baseball.
I say this because the vast amount of major leaguers in the game today could probably slide to first base and maintain a UZR/150 of -6 or better, especially after an offseason working on it. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but a few positive examples include, Nick Swisher (-2.0 last year), Ramon Hernandez (-5.1), Luke Scott (-2.9), Pablo Sandoval (1.4), Mark Kotsay, (2.7), Matt LaPorta (14.4) and Jose Lopez (18.1).
Now most of those players only had spot duty at first last year, but all were primarily used at other positions for the bulk of their career and have transitioned to be as good or better defensively as Prince.
Now, before we get any further, let’s note that under the most optimistic of circumstances, Prince Fielder is unlikely to sign long term with the Crew. He will probably make about $15 million or so next year in arbitration, and while the Brewers can pay him that, they seem unlikely to offer him the six-year high eight or “low” nine digit number that will be necessary to sign him.
So even if you love Prince and want him to stay forever, you have to realize the odds of that happening aren’t too high. In fact, they’re lousy.
And that might be for the best, because while Prince is a transcendent hitter, his, uh, body type doesn’t exactly scream “20-year career”. Or really, “productive 10-year-career” for that matter. It just doesn’t look like Fielder, vegetarian or not, can sustain his current level of performance for too much longer. I’m not sure I’d want to offer him a six-or-seven year contract, much less a 10-year deal, which could be what Fielder is asking. Who knows.
So, all that said, Fielder’s trade value is likely to be highest right now, when whoever gets him has another full season of him. It hurts that Prince is off to a bit of a sluggish start, but overall, I think he would garner more in return now then next year if he were having production similar to his 2009.
In short, the Brewers brass HAS to know Fielders sign-ability by now (right?) and if they can’t get a good value for their dollar, they MUST trade him while his value is highest (RIGHT??).
The fact is that finding a productive 1B can be found. Heck, it could be Mat Gamel down in the minors.
Getting a good haul for Prince, simply makes sense. He is worth more to the Brewers than any other team due to his popularity, so keeping him makes sense, too. But at the cost he might be asking for, that might not be an option.
IF that’s the case, now might be the time to make a move.

So who is the Brewers MVP and best rep for an All-Star nod to this point? That was teh question posed to me by Fandsided’s blog Call to the Pen.

Here is Call to the Pen’s most excellent review of each team’s All-Star.

It’s been a rough season for the Brewers, and its equally difficult to try and single out any players as “All-Stars” on a team that has been massively disappointing. But two players stand out from the on-set as deserving participants of the Mid-Summer Classic: Corey Hart and Ryan Braun.
Let’s take a closer look to see who is the most warranted All-Star THIS YEAR.
Firstly, just to get it out of the way, both are different, but still sour degrees of bad as corner outfielders. Braun is among the worst in the game defensively (-19.8 UZR for Braun over his time as a leftfielder, on pace for a -25.7 UZR/150 right now !) at his position so far, while Hart is merely below average, with a -3.6 UZR/150 over six seasons as a right fielder, though he is suffering his worst fielding season of his career thus far, with a -14.7 UZR/150 currently).
I feel comfortable giving neither player any edge here. Though Hart is clearly better, he’s been poor and not helpful. So it will be up to the better bat to decide this.
Let’s look at the stats:
Corey Hart: .267/.344/.610, .401 wOBA; 17 HR, 9 2B, 41 RBI, 28 R
Ryan Braun .299/.364/.490, .383 wOBA; 9 HR, 17 2B, 39 RBI, 41 R

These are two pretty close players. Hart owns a healthy 3 HR lead among National League leaders, which is pretty much sure to punch him a ticket (with Braun, who will likely be voted in), however, is he deserving? The answer is yes.
I mean, sure, the majority of his numbers are high because of those homers, which explain the monstrous .610 slugging percentage. He only had 9 doubles to go with these, so Hart’s production has for the most part been homer or bust, since he’s not hitting for high average.
Braun on the other hand is having a much more balanced and sustainable season and the kind we’ve come to expect from him by now. His home runs will probably go up, but beyond that he’s been outstanding. If the award were to grade the better player, or the player more likely to continue their season, Braun would win easily.
But Hart, to this point, has been the Brewers’ All-Star.

As predicted, the Brewers were able to “steal” one of the three games in St. Louis, though not particularly impressively. It was exciting stuff, to be sure, as two games went into extra innings, and Adam Wainwright’s game 1 performance was undeniably impressive, even in this new age of bi-weekly perfect games.

And exciting as they were, the series left a bit to be desired as the Brewers really had a good chance to win, particularly following Jim Edmonds’ lead-off double in the 11th inning. However, botched plays all around ensued and no run was scored until the Cardinals sealed it up in the bottom half of the inning.

There are no moral victories, and the Brewers are no further back in the race then they have been at any point this season and are notably absent of any hope beyond “they can’t play this badly, ALL YEAR.”

Let me restate that I will be using some advanced statistics pretty regularly in this blog, and one of the most useful for recapping what happened (not what WILL happen) is WPA, or Win Probability Added. Here is a link to a FanGraphs post that gives a brief rundown of what it is and has links to much more material.

Top Shelf (Star of the Series): None

No Brewers hitter had a WPA over .100 which really should be the baseline for any series award, since single game performances of .140 and up are just about commonplace. The biggest reason for the lowly offensive numbers: Wainwright, who managed to allow only TWO Brewer hitters a positive WPA, as Rickie Weeks and Cory Hart both had .015 on the day. Over the final two games the biggest standout was probably Casey McGehee, but he was also one of the worst victims from Friday night, accumulating a -.090 WPA.

It was bad, Tommy, REAL bad.

On the Rail (Schmoe of the Series): Alcides Escobar (-.222 WPA) and Craig Counsell (-.236 WPA)

Escobar single handedly turned Saturday’s hopeful 11th inning with that botched bunt, that he popped out to first, which alone is enough to earn a spot here when you do absolutely nothing at the plate the rest of the series (1-9). So, he’s a goat.

However, the worst series and game at the plate undeniably belonged to Counsell, who turned in his lousy WPA in only two games and six PA, going 0-6 in a bunch of high leverage situations.

John Axford was asking for a spot here, but redeemed his awful Saturday with an impressive Sunday showing. Carlos Villanueva had a similar situation, just reversed.

There were obviously a ton of managerial decisions that could be questioned here as well, but I’m saving those for a later post, as Ken Macha truly deserves one.

I don’t have a ton to say about this series, since it essentially went as it should have and the two close games, while exciting, just don’t have a key point to focus on, without blasting the bullpen for the 40th straight post.

Mercifully, the Crew have the day off today. We’ll have our series preview for Milwaukee’s home series with Chicago in the next 24 hours or so.

Sláinte!

I guess there is a ton you could say about

In case you haven’t noticed, the Brewers have not played very well as of late. In fact, it would be fair to say that they have been pathetic. After a stretch of winning five of six last week, they’ve gone on to drop four of their past five.

So playing the Central Division co-leaders and perennial NL pennant threat St. Louis on the road, in a park that is as unfriendly to the Brewers’ current style of play (all offense, no pitching) as almost any in the majors… It’s hard to be excited about their chances this weekend, especially with Yovani Gallardo not making an appearance. Let’s look at the numbers:

Stadium: Busch Stadium
Five-year Run Park Factor: 0.97
Five-year HR Park Factor: 0.92
Stadium Dimensions:
Left Field: 330 ft.
Left-Center: 372
Center Field: 402
Right-Center: 372
Right Field: 330

Projected Pitching Matchups

May 14: Randy Wolf (L) vs. Adam Wainwright (R)
May 15: Chris Narveson (L) vs. Adam Ottavino (R)
May 16: Dave Bush (R) vs. Jaime Garcia (L)

Okay, so here’s a word on what this means: ERA is something we are all familiar with, but too often it just isn’t indicative enough of how well or poorly a pitcher has done. FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) is a much better tool, and best yet it is rated to correspond to ERA. So you don’t have to think about the numbers any differently. A 3.00 ERA and a 3.00 FIP both mean a good pitcher.

In case you care, here is the FIP equation:

FIP = ( (13 * HR) + (3 * (BB + HBP – IBB) ) – (2 * K) ) / IP + Constant

Note: The constant is found by calculating the FIP (without the constant). You then take the league average FIP and subtracting that from the league average ERA. This number is typically around 3.2 and I will use that example for the remainder of the article.

Essentially, FIP is just an equation taking baserunners, home runs allowed and strikeouts, the three things a pitcher has the most control over and puts them together in an ERA form. It helps limit the damage done by poor defense or the help given by good luck. xFIP is pretty much the same thing, but instead of home runs factors in home run to fly ball ratio. This makes it a bit more accurate.

I’ve included ERA since it is more familiar, but especially in terms of a prediction of future performance (i.e. this series) xFIP is just a better barometer of what to expect.

So, in looking at Doug Davis, you can see his unsightly ERA and think “Boy, he’s been lousy this year.” However, his xFIP suggests he’s just been a bit below average and very unlucky, as he has an unreasonably low 58 percent strand rate (the average is around 72 percent) and an absurd BABIP of .415, about .100 points north of his career average.

So, you can expect Davis to be better (not very good, mind you, but better) going forward.

Meanwhile, Jaime Garcia has an xFIP that says he is a good pitcher, and much improved… but an ERA champion? No. We’re just waiting for that other shoe to drop. Hopefully it’ll be on Sunday, right? (Actually, I hope not, but only because I’m starting Garcia in my fantasy league. I’ll root for a St. Louis pen meltdown.)

*Obviously, Jim Edmonds has been getting quite a bit of playing time, so I’ll include his breaks here too, though I find it highly unlikely for him to play against a left-hander barring injury:

So that leaves us with a prediction:

St. Louis is simply a much better team. However on Saturday, the Brewers have as close to a favorable matchup as they are going to get with Ottavino on the mound. If the powerful Crew lineup shows up then, I see a good chance to steal a game. However, beating either of Wainwright or Garcia with Wolf or Davis doesn’t seem likely at all to me.

I’ll be optimistic and predict one win in three for the Crew.

Sláinte!

For me, this is the best series of the year, when my hometown team gets to play the team most of friends back. Let’s just say there have been many sixers won (2006, Marlins sweep the season series) and lost (2007, Brewers go 5-2) over this “rivalry”.

However this week’s worth of games to a more typical Crew fan probably represented a good chance to get some wins and earn a split or — dare I say — WIN a series. And I guess I can understand that, as the Fish are, as usual, around .500 and without much for hype or excitement nationally, beyond Hanley Ramirez’s recent temper tantrum.

And in reality, this was a good chance for the Brewers to at least earn a split as they had their ace Gallardo pitching one game (and not against Josh Johnson) and faced the three weakest starters the Marlins have thus far in 2010.

Alas, that was not enough…

After taking a few days to organize the site and get everything going a bit more smoothly, we’re back up today. The “Macro-Brew” series review is up next, with a Keg Tapper preview to follow.
Sláinte!

Another day, another loss for the Brew Crew, as they wasted another wonderful (if somewhat fortunate) start from youngster Yovani Gallardo thanks to another messy bullpen performance. This time the main culprit was Todd Coffey who somehow managed to give up five earned runs in a 2-1 ball game.
It isn’t so much stunning that Coffey was capable of such a shoddy performance, as it was that Ken Macha could allow a 2-1 game to get so out of hand.
So, lets take a closer look at each of these two’s shortcomings on Monday night.

Two series worth of Macro-Brew recaps, and we’ve got two sweeps going against Milwaukee. Too much more of this and Doug Melvin will be giving me some Suppan-esque funds to kill the blog series.

Unlike the Atlanta set, where the Crew showed off their ineptitude, I’d have to say that more than anything the Brewers simply seemed out-classed by the team of Brotherly Love.

Let me restate that I will be using some advanced statistics pretty regularly in this blog, and one of the most useful for recapping what happened (not what WILL happen) is WPA, or Win Probability Added. Here is a link to a FanGraphs post that gives a brief rundown of what it is and has links to much more material.

Anyway, back to the Phillies series…

Top Shelf (Star of the Series): Prince Fielder (.260 WPA)

Unlike the Atlanta series, the TS winner truly earned it, as Prince was 6-for-12 against Philly, going 2-for-4 in all three games. He belted dingers in both Friday and Saturday’s game, to give him six homers and lift his slash line up to .268/.380/.422. It might be unfair to say that he might have busted out of his “slump” since he was still an above-average performer for the team, but maybe the Phillies series will mark where he kicks his production back up to more typical Prince levels.

Prince had the biggest WPA hits of the game for the Crew each of the last two games, with his homer on Satruday earning a huge .126 mark and his eighth-inning single on Sunday earning .122 on the strength of a 3.06 leverage index at the time (meaning the PA was three times more important than an average one).

On the Rail (Schmoe of the Series): Randy Wolf (-.391 WPA), Ryan Braun (-.175 WPA)

The Bullpen wasn’t very good this weekend, but it was certainly improved over their performance against the ATL. This time around, the Brewers had a multitude of culprits, from a lack of offense on Sunday and no timely hitting earlier in the series,  some unproductive bullpen work from Claudio Vargas and a lousy start from Randy Wolf led to a sweep that was well deserved.

Wolf’s Friday start of 6 ER in five innings of work with two walks and seven hits was far and away the lowest Brewer WPA of the series, but since it was only one game, and the Brewers had more than enough culprits in the sweep, superstar Ryan Braun deserved some negative recognition for a three-game set that saw him go 2-for -12 for the series. Thankfully for the Brewers, that is almost certainly just an aberration, as Braun only struck out once on the weekend.

Let’s take a look at the three Win Expectancy charts from the series, courtesy of FanGraphs:

via FanGraphs

via FanGraphs

via FanGraphs

Unlike the Braves set, the Brewers were able to extend games a little deeper and keep the outcome in doubt. However, with division foe Cincinnati starting up tonight, the Crew  needs altogether more well-rounded performances if it hopes to pick up some wins.

Then again, Cincinnati is no Philadelphia as well, so maybe Dusty Baker could hand over a pity win (unwittingly, of course. Almost charmingly so, really). We all know the Brewers could use one. I’ll post a series preview later this evening, hopefully.

Until then, Slainte!

Happy Weekend to everyone.

In my first week taking over the RtB here, I’ve been setting the table behind the scenes for a lot of the series you can expect on a regular basis. However, they do take time to set up, so here is an abbreviated version of what will be “Tapping the Keg” series reviews.

In the near future it will be much more intensive and expansive, but as an added bonus I’d included the link to the game 1 Baseball Reference batter vs. pitcher matchups for tonight.

Slainte!

Stadium: Miller Park
Five-year Run Park Factor: 0.99
Five-year HR Park Factor: 1.01
Stadium Dimensions:
Left Field: 344 ft.
Left-Center: 370
Center Field: 400
Right-Center: 374
Right Field: 345

Projected Pitching Matchups

May 14: Randy Wolf (L) vs. Jamie Moyer (L)
May 15: Chris Narveson (L) vs. Joe Blanton (R)
May 16: Doug Davis (L) vs. Cole Hamels (L)