Who will Cleveland pick? Latest -- It's Brantley for sure (reply #178ish)

[paul253]

I see Gamel more as a firstbasemen than an outfielder. I couldve seen the outfield being Braun, Brantley and Hart, with either Gillespie or more likely Cain replacing Hart.

[homer]

My opinion is that both Brantley and Green are far enough away from being major contributors that they're strengths should not be used to make roster moves at the major league level. Brewers could do some fine tuning in this off season or next (i.e. trade Fielder) and power goes from a plus to neutral or minus.

[JJHardy7]

Counsell makes that argument seem ridiculous. Guys that walk do so because they take balls, not because the pitcher is afraid to pitch to them.

 

Counsell hitting 8th in the National League is going to lead to more walks because pitchers would rather face the pitcher than Counsell. I've seen Brantley more than a few times (again I can't comment too much on his defense because I don't know all that much abaout it in CF) and if he develops power he could be a real nice player. I have no clue if he will or won't, but playing in the AL he's going to struggle IMO if he doesn't develop power. MLB pitchers will be going after him and comparing AA pitchers to MLB is night and day. Brantley was facing guys that will never get to AAA and will continue to struggle with control issues. This isn't a knock on Brantley. I just think it's very hard to project him in the MLBs as being great at OBP or anything else. If he can't stick at CF, he's a really weak hitting 1B. I personally don't know who I'd rather have seen gone. I just hope both Brantley and Green develop and get to the bigs.

[dadofandrew]

Counsell's walk rate this year was superb, and he never hit 8th. It's about plate discipline.

[JJHardy7]

Counsell's walk rate this year was superb, and he never hit 8th. It's about plate discipline.

 

Well hopefully you get my drift. When you're hitting where he has over the course of his career and not just this year he's going to be pitched around because when at the bottom of the lineup there isn't really too many teams that are afraid of Counsell, Kendall, pitcher, etc. You walk Counsell and try to get Kendall to ground into a double play. I'm not saying Counsell has a terrible approach. He's very good at what he does and I don't want to discount that. He does have tremendous plate discipline. I think it does help to hit in front of Kendall (IIRC he grounded into quite a few double plays) and the pitcher.

 

I may be way off base here, but I'd be interested in seeing Craig's OBP based on where he hit in the lineup. I quickly looked at baseball cube and baseball reference and didn't see it. I thought there was a way to do that, but I'm not a pro on those sites obviously. I might be way off, but my guess is when Craig hits lower in the order his OBP is better. I apologize in advance if I'm way off.

[piccione88]

Yes Counsell is very good at drawing walks and does not have much pop, but he is rare in that respect. I dont think anyone said it was impossible for Brantley to have a good BB rate in the majors, he very well could be one of the rare players that draws walks at a very good clip without having much power. My point was that it will be very difficult. It is not that common for players to draw alot of walks without the power, craig is one of the exceptions.

 

If you look at the top players in the majors for walks just about everyone of them has at least 10-15 homerun power. There are only 3 players in the top 25 for BB that did not hit 10 homeruns this year, those are B.J. Upton who hit 24 last year, Joe Mauer, and Brian Roberts, all of them had 9 homeruns. Not to mention that Brantley really does not even hit doubles.

[paul253]

I tend to agree with Dadoandrew. The fact is, the reason why counsell had a better walk rate than say, Braun or Hart, is because Braun and Hart were constantly swinging at pitches out of the strikezone, and Counsell was not. I dont think pitchers are simply going to throw a fastball right down the middle every time they get Brantley to a 3 ball count. They wont be as careful with him as they would with Braun or Fielder, but i dont believe they will always throw him pitches right down the middle, especially if someone is on base.

[kramnoj]

http://www.baseball-refer...i/bsplit.cgi?n1=counscr01 is the splits page for Counsell. About 1/3 of the way down is the batting order position stats. I'm not sure how much you can learn just by looking at those lines. It's only natural to think that when Counsell was a better hitter, he hit earlier in the order, and when he was a bad hitter, he hit later. So it's not really a surprise that Counsell's worst OBP is when he hit 9th (It does look like he was a PH quite often while hitting 9th, so that partially explains poor performance if he was facing quality relievers). His OBP when he has hit 1st, 7th and 8th is .347-.349. It was .334 while hitting 2nd. All other positions are too small to really tell us anything. BTW, if you ever want to look at player splits, you go to the player page, and above the career batting numbers there is a line that has a few links and one of them is the splits link.

[Postseason2006]

Even with Counsell's great ability to draw walks, his OPS was awful to say the least and with a catcher just as bad along with the pitchers spot, there is no reason to keep talking about Craig.

 

And again, dadofandrew, we know you don't like LuCroy. You've called him a backup catcher if he makes it.

[dadofandrew]

Actually, I said I saw a capsule that said he projected as a major league reserve...which as I've pointed out numerous times, would be a fantastic return for a pick at his level.

 

And to be honest, BA's latest end of the year review said he was very weak on defense except for throwing...that would hint he is unlikely to be looked at as a starter, at least until he improves.

[piccione88]

The reason Craig was brought up was to make a point about the affect of slugging on OBP. I do not think that dadofandrew was trying to say that craig is an all-star, just that he draws walks despite having poor power.

[JJHardy7]

Thanks kramnoj. I don't know how much those stats mean, but it is something I was wondering.

[Oldcity]

Counsell's OBP was also much higher in that minors than for his major league career, so even though he takes walks despite no power, he doesn't escape the statement that guys with no power won't get on base nearly as easily as they did in the minors.