Yost: Rickie's "doing fine," but has "never achieved"

[MickeyDavis]

Perfectly said by TH.

[Samurai Bucky]

He calls a spade a spade. I doubt I could have said it any better myself.

[giffted1]

This is one of my problems with Yost. I like how he sticks up for his players, but there's a point where it needs to stop. Rickie Weeks has reached that point. When a guy is struggling offensively and defensive and has shown no improvement in a couple of years its time to cut the cord.

[sheethead]

I have never claimed victory in any topic. I only defend my opinions (durham over weeks for example) when they are under attack by other "demonstrated" opinions. And trust me, I have had pieces of my posts disected against me as well.

The problem, at least in this thread, is that you haven't shown anything to support your opinion. It is confusing where you are getting your opinion that Durham should start over Weeks from.

Outlandish. I gave plenty of reasons to support my opinion. To the contrary, I don't see any shown to support the opinion that Weeks should be starting other than he is younger and will outperform Durham the rest of the year. Complete speculation vs. facts of current year production? Yeah, I can see how I wouldn't want to claim victory on this subject.

 

[TwinsBrewersWorldSeries]

I can't help but think of Rickie Weeks as Corey Patterson. Weeks' saving grace is that he doesn't have a terrible attitude, but like Corey, Weeks was hyped for years and really has never proven anything. Time to pull the plug. We have better options.

[DHonks]

I don't think I've ever agreed with Haudricourt this much. Weeks should be in AAA. Right now, he's the next Corey Patterson. He has a chance to be a Brandon Phillips, but it's highly unlikely.

[Oldcity]

Last night was about as bad as a game can get for a player, but I really find all this "that's the last straw!" talk to be very oddly timed. Weeks has a .923 OPS since the All Star Break and plays better defense than Ray Durham. No other 2b on the roster has the capability of putting up those types of numbers. Don't you think this is mainly overreaction from one terrible game? Weeks had been playing well before yesterday.

[Brew Guzzler]

I don't want to hear about Yost ripping on Rickie, but it better happen in private. If he wants to defend him to the media that's fine, but I really hope he gets on Rickie about his play because our team needs him to play better. A night off can't hurt either

[MickeyDavis]

Weeks has always had his little hot streaks where people talk about him finally realizing his potential. And then he goes back into triple A mode.

 

We have a 56 game pennant race. We can't afford the highly inconsistent Weeks.

[logan82]

Nice job of pandering to the masses there by Ton H.

[Oldcity]

I can't believe what a joke that post was by Tom H. That was hilarious. I think "It's big boy time" will be my new sig.

[tristarscoop]

Tom's points are well-made (for once) and yet he totally lost any cred by using the term "big boy time" not once, but twice. Seriously, couldn't he, or someone in copy editing, come up with something better there? The sentiment is straight on, but the term just makes me imagine a kid on a training potty.

[crossface21]

The Prince of Darkness has really gotten snippy towards the Brewers the last couple of days. He's made some comments on the blog and articles pretty much calling out Ned Yost. I'm glad someone is doing it. I don't really know what to think of TH sometimes, but I have to agree with him the last couple of days. When is Yost going to realize it's a pennant race? Yost should be putting the best team out there, and as long as he has Rickie Weeks in the line-up, it's not the best team. It's not like Durham was hitting .293 with only 30 at bats. He had close to 300. I don't care about Weeks mini hot-streak. We have better options than him, otherwise what was the point to trade for Durham? They could have easily brought up someone from the minors instead to put the "pressure" on Weeks.

[logan82]

sheethead wrote:

Outlandish. I gave plenty of reasons to support my opinion. To the contrary, I don't see any shown to support the opinion that Weeks should be starting other than he is younger and will outperform Durham the rest of the year. Complete speculation vs. facts of current year production? Yeah, I can see how I wouldn't want to claim victory on this subject.

What I consider outlandish is trying to ignore 1300+PA in favor of 400. Despite Weeks current season suppressing his overall stats, he still has a similar career OPS to Durham.

[RyDogg66]

I don't know if it is outlandish to use a players most recent 335 ABs - that make up a large proportion of his career states, about 25%. One way to look at it is that in the most recent 25% of his career ABs, Weeks has been dreadful.

[TheCrew07]

I wonder if Taylor Green can hit MLB pitching?.... This is all happening a year or two too earlier... there isn't a replacement for him at this point. Even for next year about the best you could do would be to slide Hardy over to 2B and insert Escobar at SS. In the event that doesn't happen and Green gets traded to Cleveland, Weeks is the guy for better or worse. Durham may outproduce Weeks this season, but he's not coming back year, Weeks is the only longterm option in the entire orgatization at this point in time.

 

I have no problem benching him, just like I had no problem benching Hall, though I would challenge TH notion that Hall has is hitting RHP... he's hitting for HRs, but always he did that, the problem is what he does inbetween the HRs. Some people smarter than me have suggested that Weeks just doesn't have the hand eye coordination to go with his tremendous raw bat speed, or maybe the pitch recognition...

[sheethead]

In my years of watching baseball, I found that what a player has done 2 years ago is less relevant than what a player has done the current year. Especially when August rolls around.

[Brawndo the Thirst Mutilat]

I don't know if it is outlandish to use a players most recent 335 ABs - that make up a large proportion of his career states, about 25%. One way to look at it is that in the most recent 25% of his career ABs, Weeks has been dreadful.

 

So you assign more weight to the most recent 25%, but you cannot discount the other 75%. That's exactly how Marcel projections work, and the monkey still likes Weeks better than Durham on offense for the duration of the year:

 

Weeks: 248 / 354 / 412

Durham: 259 / 335 / 412

 

On defense, all of the advanced metrics like Weeks better than Durham. Dial had him 5.5 runs better on his all star break leaders update. THT's numbers have Weeks near the bottom of the pack in RZR, but he's second only to Utley in OOZ plays, putting him middle of the pack overall among regular 2B. Durham has both the lowest RZR and fewest OOZ plays of any 2B who has played more than 250 innings. If you lower the threshold to 150 innings, only Ronnie Belliard has been worse. The only argument I've seen anybody make for Durham's defensive superiority (including Haudricort) is some variant of the increasingly irritating "I've seen Weeks, and Durham can't possibly be worse," which only betrays a lack of imagination on the part of the author.

 

We're all bummed about the loss yesterday, and we all love to have a scapegoat. But even in a year where his AVG is way down (incidentally, AVG is about the least stable, and therefore least predictive, stat that anybody really cares about), Weeks excellent walk / HBP skills, his above average IsoP, and his middle of the pack defense have kept him right around league average for a regular 2B. If he can start hitting just a bit more like he's hit in the other 75% of his career, he will be significantly better than any reasonable expectation for Durham.

[jeffy]

Last night was about as bad as a game can get for a player, but I really find all this "that's the last straw!" talk to be very oddly timed. Weeks has a .923 OPS since the All Star Break and plays better defense than Ray Durham. No other 2b on the roster has the capability of putting up those types of numbers. Don't you think this is mainly overreaction from one terrible game? Weeks had been playing well before yesterday.

 

Yes, the timing is odd. Since the All-Star break his OBP is .400+, last season his pre all-star obp was .328 and post all-star was (a team leading) .422.

 

I don't think Yost will overreact to one bad inning or to the opinions of the guy who reported he was fired.

[TooLiveBrew]

Last night was about as bad as a game can get for a player, but I really find all this "that's the last straw!" talk to be very oddly timed. Weeks has a .923 OPS since the All Star Break and plays better defense than Ray Durham. No other 2b on the roster has the capability of putting up those types of numbers. Don't you think this is mainly overreaction from one terrible game? Weeks had been playing well before yesterday.

 

That's it right there. Most of the 'OMG WEEKS MUST DIE' stuff is knee-jerk frustration from an emotional game. Yes, the plays weren't good. No, we don't currently have a better option at 2B than Weeks. I know that can be hard to rationalize after such a crazy game as last night's, but it just is the plain truth.

 

To show how in-depth & objective the research has been in most of these anti-Weeks vents, people are declaring that the time to give up on him is when he's producing. Ray Durham is a great guy to help fill out the bench & get some spot starts against RHP. The strangest part is that this is basically the first season that Durham has been more successful against RHP, which is an indicator that he's played well over his head v. RHP so far, and under v. LHP. His 3-year splits (which includes 2008) against RHP: .266/.334/.419/.753. Now of course Weeks must be platooned for a weaker all-around defender when Rickie's 3-year line v. RHP is .249/.346/.404/.750.

 

If you've been watching the team lately, you should be very aware that Rickie has been a huge part of the recent success. Rickie has been hot, and honestly that's what people should have been expecting. He wasn't going to carry a sub-.330 OBP all season long, he's just a better player than that. Now I can understand & get behind getting him a few starts off v. RHP now & then (which is precisely what I think Durham was brought in to do, along with the fact that Ray can hit LHP too), but this 'dump Rickie now' stuff is just silly imo.

[Invader3K]

I do agree (slightly) that using the term "big boy time" more than once was rather silly. However, I agree with everything else Haudricourt wrote. He's basically just saying what virtually everyone is thinking anyway.

 

I don't think you have to necessarily bust Weeks down to AAA to fix the problem. Just play Durham and/or Counsell more. Isn't there a reason these guys are on the team, other than to make sporadic pinch hitting appearances?

 

One more thing: I made this point in the chat last night, but then a Brewers player hit a homer and it was promptly lost in the chat room hysterics...I just don't get why so many on this board have embraced, and continue to embrace Rickie Weeks, especially when compared to some of the other Brewers youngsters. I know he mashed in the minors, but so many other guys on this team are outshining him, I don't understand the continued fandom he seems to enjoy on this forum. I want him to succeed too, but nothing in his recent performance tells me that he is suddenly going to bust out and become the perennial All-Star that many were predicting. At one point a couple years ago he reminded me of Gary Sheffield (and I mean that in a good way). Now, the only reasonable comparison I can make is someone like Corey Patterson...not exactly the kind of MLB player to get hyped about.

[logan82]

Brawndo the Thirst Mutilator wrote:

The only argument I've seen anybody make for Durham's defensive superiority (including Haudricort) is some variant of the increasingly irritating "I've seen Weeks, and Durham can't possibly be worse," which only betrays a lack of imagination on the part of the author.

I always think of something like that as "our guy is bad so he must be the worst in the league or different must be better." Much like our apparent lack of fundamentals.

[JohnBriggs12]

Weeks isn't the only guy not being held accountable.

 

What about Suppan and his 9.09 ERA over his last 6 starts? Villanueva was banished to the pen for better numbers than that.

 

Or Kendall, who continues to keep Mike Rivera and his .451 slugging pct. on the bench by "hitting" .179/.289/.244 over 78 July ABs with 4 measely RBI?

[Invader3K]

Weeks isn't the only guy not being held accountable.

 

What about Suppan and his 9.09 ERA over his last 6 starts? Villanueva was banished to the pen for better numbers than that.

Well, if Weeks got the free pass due to the wrist injury for a year and a half, Suppan should be given some slack due to his recent DL stint.

[logan82]

The really strange thing is that the splits from 2005-2007 seem to indicate that Weeks should face RHP and Durham LHP if they should even be platooned at all.