JS Brewers Report Card

[rluzinski]

In today's paper. I guess I don't really "get" them. They say they are "based on players' performance on the field, with a heavy emphasis on preseason expectations." Does a player that perfectly matched his expectations get a C? A bad bench player who has a hot 100 AB get an A+? I thought I might be able to sort out their methodologies by looking at their grades but that just leads to more confusion. Anyone have any thoughts?

[Patrick425]

For whatever reason I have never been interested at all in players "grades", whether it be baseball, football, whatever. I saw that in the paper this morning as well and didn't even bother looking through it. I pretty much know the players stats, it just doesn't interest me to see what grade a writer gave a player.

[rm121978]

The grades are just like "top 10"-type lists that papers and magazines do. Just to annoy people and get people discussing the paper. And since TH is awful, it makes the article even more hilarious.

[Diskono]

I'd just ignore it. Heck, he even used the phrase "big game pitcher"!

[rluzinski]

Yeh, this hurting my brain trying to sort through this. There was only 2 positional players who received a grade over a B. Kapler got the only A with a .301/.340/.498/.834 line and solid defense. We should be able to safely assume two things from this:

 

1. They aren't holding an injury to a bench player against them.

 

2. They aren't kidding when they say preseason expectations play a large role in these grades.

 

Fine, we all thought Kapler was going to stink and we were dead wrong. A it is. I have no problem with that.

 

But hold on a second. Branyan was in AAA to start the season, so his expections might have even been even lower. He smoked Kapler's offense performance with a ..250/.342/.342/.583/.925 line while, playing equally solid defense. His grade? A C. Huh!?

 

I'm sure this comes down to the JS boys having little clue as to how to measure offensive value. They also gave Braun "extra credit" for playing poorly while hurt, though, so perhaps there are some other problems in their analysis as well.

 

Maybe I should throw the paper away and think about something else. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

[Gobias Industries]

Wow. Russell Branyan got a C?!?!

 

With preseason expectations taken into account, he was clearly one of our MVP's this year. As twobrewers said, CC Sabathia is probably never in a Brewer Uniform without Russ carrying us in June.

[BrewCrewRising]

Yeh, this hurting my brain trying to sort through this......

 

Maybe I should throw the paper away and think about something else. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

You are not alone. I read that whole article and then instantly regretted it.

 

Here are the article's Pros in my view:

1) It is about the Brewers at a time when there is relatively little news about the Brewers.

2) It is about the Brewers and it was published during the work day when I am bored to death.

3) The vague reference to players performance makes me think of the possibilites of next year.

 

Here are the article's Cons in my view:

1) It was written by the Journal-Sentinel staff

2) It lacks any objective metrics

3) It has no predictive power save for my expectations of the quality of Hardicourt's next article.

[trwi7]

Corey Hart, RF - What happened over the final month of the season? One of the biggest puzzles on the team as the Brewers staggered to the wire and got manager Ned Yost fired. An all-star outfielder with first-half numbers that justified that fan vote - .289, 15 HRs and 58 RBI. After a decent August (.299, 4 HRs, 20 RBI), disappeared in September, batting .173 with no home runs and 10 RBI. Always an overaggressive hitter with little plate discipline but took that to extremes, finishing with 27 walks and 109 strikeouts, with a woeful .300 on-base percentage. Has a strong arm in right field but has problems at times going back on balls. Perhaps the best and most instinctive base-runner on the team but didn't get on enough in the final weeks to use that skill. Despite his woeful finish, batted .281 with RISP. Was working on an "A" until final month. Grade: B-minus

So he was working on an "A" when he had a .286/.321/.500/.821 line one month took it out? Also, if that line gives you an "A" then Fielder, Braun and Hardy should all have "A's" and Cameron should be in the discussion for one based on his better OBP and defense.

 

Oh yeah, I like Rivera's grade too.

 

Mike Rivera - Rivera was missing in action for much of the season, but not because he failed to produce. Playing behind iron man Kendall, appeared in only 21 games and hit .306 with a homer and 14 RBI. Made 15 starts, including two at first base. Despite playing so little, was consistent when he did get chances. Grade: B-minus

It's like he's getting downgraded because Yost and Sveum never played him.

[kramnoj]

One of the problems with the Branyan grade is that he is being penalized for being benched. It's not the Muscle's fault that Ned made a poor decision when he stopped writing Branyan's name in the lineup because of a small run of poor games.

 

I think another factor is the desire to rely on batting average. Kapler's average over .300 is good! Branyan's average . 250 is bad http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/frown.gif. I think to some extent the writers are writing to who they perceive their audience to be. If the writers think their audience is going to rely heavily on BA to judge a player, the writers may let that influence their writing. The JS certainly has a platform to educate their audience and provide a more intelligent discussion, but they may feel that it would take up to much space to do, or that much of their audience wouldn't appreciate it.

[Brawndo the Thirst Mutilat]

They say they are "based on players' performance on the field, with a heavy emphasis on preseason expectations." Does a player that perfectly matched his expectations get a C? A bad bench player who has a hot 100 AB get an A+?

That's my reading. Of course, they don't tell you what the expectation level was, and they don't tell you what method of performance evaluation is being used to compare expected to actual, so it's not terribly easy to evaluate whether Witrado and the Prince of Darkness even did a good job executing this project as they saw it.

 

The capsules provided for each player almost never talk about what the actual expectations were, but Mike Cameron's (B-) is one time that they do:

 

"Strikes out far too often (team-high 142 times in only 444 at-bats) and .331 on-base percentage was much lower than expected."

 

So, I'm not sure whether they expected fewer strikeouts from Cameron. It wouldn't have been entirely unreasonable to expect slightly fewer strikeouts -- he struck out 32% of the time this season vs. 28% for his career. That's not a huge difference, but K% is a super-stable stat, so it wouldn't be crazy to say he disappointed on that score. It would just be crazy to care very much (at least, from a retrospective analysis, grading past performance perspective -- if you want to argue that a slipping K% may signal an imminent age-related performance collapse, that's a different story, but that ain't what they're doing here).

 

It is 100% clear that they expected a better OBP than the .331 Cameron posted. So did many around here, judging from posts I seemed to see all the time. Why anyone would have expected much more than that is totally beyond me. His career OBP is .340. Here is how several projection systems predicted his 2008 would go:

 

ZiPS: .341

Marcel: .333

CHONE: .331

MINER: .314 (Whoa -- Sackmann really had him falling off a cliff. Missed on that one.)

 

What did the J-S guys expect? .360? If .331 was "much lower than expected", it's got to be at least that, right? Given that this is one of only two places they talk specifically about the expectation levels that form the basis of these grades (the other being Kendall's punchless offense -- " what you'd expect"), it reallly makes one wonder how based in reality the expectation levels could be.

 

Based on the available evidence, I give the "preseason expectations" that were used to derive these grades a grade of D, myself.

 

Links, though I'm sure you all know where to find this:

 

Player Grades

 

Team Grades

[endaround]

No, the writers are that bad. A .331 OBP was much lower than expected for Cameron? By whom? How exactly can Bush grade lower than Parra? He had a better season and had lower expectations.

[trwi7]

Jeff Suppan, RHP - A 10-10 record and 4.96 ERA suggest mediocrity but got there in roller-coaster fashion. Had a 5.19 ERA in April, 2.56 in May, 4.33 in June, 9.43 in July while experiencing elbow problems, 3.00 in August and 8.44 in September, when supposedly healthy. Known as a big-game pitcher, he folded down the stretch and put the Brewers in a big early hole in Game 4 of the NLDS against Philadelphia, leading to their elimination. In 177 2/3 innings, allowed 207 hits and 67 walks for a 1.54 WHIP. Couldn't keep the ball in the park, allowing 30 homers in 31 starts. With two years remaining on his four-year, $42 million deal, could become a burden rather than an asset. Grade: C-minus

Based on expectations you say? I think many fans were expecting better than this. Yet he gets a C-, which is way too high of a grade.

 

 

Guillermo Mota, RHP - No lead was safe for Mota in June and July, when he posted an 8.27 ERA over 18 appearances. Set the stage for one of the worst losses of the year July 3 by retiring none of the three hitters he faced as the bullpen blew a five-run, ninth-inning lead in Arizona. Made some necessary mechanical adjustments in his delivery - mainly standing taller and coming more over the top - and became a dependable setup man in the second half. Stranded 20 of 25 inherited runners and retired 45 of 58 (77.6%) of first batters faced, the best percentage in the pen. Grade: C-minus

Yet Mota gets the same grade? There were no expectations for Mota, everybody knew whatever positive contribution we got from him would be a bonus. He was also much better than Suppan this year.

 

This article clearly shows favoritism based on high batting averages or "big game pitchers" who actually weren't "big game."

[rluzinski]

Cameron basically hit his offensive expectations on the head. His OBP was about 10 points lower than projected; his SLG was 30 points higher (according to ZiPS). How he made his outs is almost completely irrelevant in this discussion (we aren't trying to project future performance).

 

I don't really get their obsession with WHEN a player did good or bad, either. All that really matters is their overall numbers and Hart had to easily be the biggest disappointment on the team this year. His .759 OPS (including a .300 OBP!) was .122 points lower than his projected OPS and his defense (including his arm) was a mild disappointment. B-? More like D.

[Brawndo the Thirst Mutilat]

Here's my other favorite tidbit from the article, from the Kendall capsule:

 

batted .351 with runners in scoring position and less than two out

 

This really caught my eye, because you always see the inverse stat as a measure of clutchness. Why would we care about Kendall's RISP performance with less than two outs rather than his RISP performance with two outs?

 

Well, because we have started with the thesis that Kendall was / is a clutch hitter (probably because he's gritty and doesn't strike out), and we are searching for evidence that backs up this thesis. This is the paradigmatic example of the exactly perfectly wrong way to use statistics.

 

So, anybody as curious as me about how Kendall fared with RISP and two outs?

 

.123 / .313 / .185

 

You can almost see the hamster wheel spinning in Witradocourt's head. "Kendall is clutch. Gotta show the readers that. How did he do with RISP? Crap, only .246. That's exactly what he did overall. How about with two outs? Supercrap, .123. That's terrible. Wait a minute -- if he was .246 overall with RISP but only .123 with two outs, that means that...by God...that means something...wait, almost got it..."

[trwi7]

Yeah, they just pick their favorites. I would've loved it if they couldn't have found anything for Kendall to be clutch so they would've went way in depth and had something like "Kendall was the most productive hitter on the team in Tuesday night games with an east wind between 5 and 10 mph and a crowd of at least 38,500."

[brewizard]

Worst article of the year. Grade? D-minus.

 

(He was working on an F but got the D-minus because he spelled everybody's names right.)

[Invader3K]

Rivera should have gotten an "I" for "Incomplete." I don't know how you honestly grade a guy on 20 or so appearances. This of course again begs the question of what he did to become the team's permanent bench warmer.

 

As far as Suppan...I guess you can argue for or against a C- based on the criteria...but how you can turn around and not rate Mota higher than that is beyond me.

[Brawndo the Thirst Mutilat]

I think to some extent the writers are writing to who they perceive their audience to be. If the writers think their audience is going to rely heavily on BA to judge a player, the writers may let that influence their writing. The JS certainly has a platform to educate their audience and provide a more intelligent discussion, but they may feel that it would take up to much space to do, or that much of their audience wouldn't appreciate it.

This is almost certainly correct. Moreover, I've always suspected (without really knowing) that this is (generally speaking) the way all journalists are trained to view their work. You know, I get it -- capitalist society and all, gotta write what sells papers in the style that sells papers.

 

But it's as if, as a society, we never for a second stopped to think about whether everyone writing newspaper and magazine articles, television programs, films, books, etc.etc. for an audience they regard as much stupider than themselves might be making the stupid audience even stupider, if it is not in fact actually creating the stupid audience in the first place.

 

I've read the Federalist Papers. I blame James Madison.

 

I know my post on the Kendall blurb comes across as condescending and mean-spirited...but the thing is, either these guys really are that dumb, or they really are that cynical, which in my view is far far worse.

[Madtown Bomber]

I rarely stick up for Tom Haudicourt but on this occassion I am going to. If you happened to listen to the D-List (so much better with Trenni apart of the show Bill Johnson not) Drew Olson and Tom Haudicourt discuss these grades and how a beat writer has to go about them. Haudicourt uses Gabe Kapler as an example and says it isn't Gabe Kapler vs. Prince Fielder or Gabe Kapler vs. Mike Cameron it is what Gabe Kapler did vs. what Gabe Kapler was expected to do. In that case you can understand why Gabe Kapler recieved the grade he did. He was out of baseball, and expecting to be a fringe role player/pinch hitter and what Kapler did was blow the expectations out of the water. Looking at it that way you can understand a little on where they stood and why they choose the grades they did. Ofcourse there are going to be some grades that we disagree with but I would say a good majority were right.

 

Forget what was written in the notes about Cameron. Cameron gets downgraded because of the expectations that were placed upon him. From the moment we signed him Yost and Melvin talked about how he gets extra bases and doesn't make dumb mistakes. When the offense sputtered in April it was Ned Yost who claimed that a returning Mike Cameron would break the offense out of it. Those were some pretty unrealistic expectations that the Brewers put on Cameron and not Tom Haudicourt. And if you measure Cameron's production against those expectations I think that you are right there with that grade.

 

The Mota vs. Suppan arguement doesn't apply either. Different positions. Mota did fail to meet the expectations put forth by BREWERS MANGEMENT. In the early part of the year when he did well those expectations rose. I expected more out of Mota. Shoot he was handed the closer role and then the set up role and he flunked bad. He did right the ship in the last 6 weeks however. Jeff Suppan is another story. Haudicourt even admitted that his grade for Suppan was almost a D and would have been a D if not for a pretty dominate stretch from after the allstar break to September. People forget that he was pretty darn good there. I know this cause he filled in on my fantasy team while I had a few injuries in my staff. C- is about acurate.

 

The thing about these grades are it is the whole body of work not just what you remember most. Ryan Braun doesn't get points because he decided to play hurt and struggled. Corey Hart doesn't get a pass for looking like crap for 7 weeks.

 

Grading these things are very difficult to do. I would love to see some people do this. Take all the emotion out of it, take all parts of the season into account vs. expectations and see where your grades line up.

[joepepsi]

I know my post on the Kendall blurb comes across as condescending and mean-spirited...but the thing is, either these guys really are that dumb, or they really are that cynical, which in my view is far far worse.

I think it's a little of both. And I loved the Kendall blurb, by the way.

 

I think if media types and beat writers bought wholly into statistical analysis they would become irrelevant. The JS writers could embrace statistical analysis and judge each player's performance based on the best analysis and projections out there. But of course, any of us could that too. And we wouldn't have to travel around with the team, sit in the press room, chum with the players, eat from the press buffet, and collect outrageous expense checks 6 months a year. Anybody can sit at home, watch the Brewers on FSN every night and check the freely available stats online.

 

So the media boys have to come up with something else; some keen ability that separates them from JoeFan and lets them keep their job; some special "insight" you can only get by sitting in the press box, choking down the buffet. They do this by making crap up. They write about intangibles, clubhouse leaders, playing small ball. And they base their grading system on non specific criteria, hinting their keen powers of observation and vast experience have more relevance than any stat. They know Mota was only as valuable as Suppan, because well, they are sports writers and they are paid to know about these things. You, loyal reader, can't possibly understand. And since it's only sports journalism, not real journalism, the editors don't care if it's a bunch of made of crap. And if some loyal readers mock them or try to argue with hard data, well, they're just pocket protecting geeks who probably never played the game and still live in the basement of their mom's house.

[3Putt]

For the most part I thought the ratings were directionally right. I would have given Hall an F and Branyan at least a C plus but I'm sure everyone has a few they would tweak. That being said Brawndo is right. Kendall was only a clutch player when compared to most other Brewers. The only consistent clutch hitter we had this year was Kapler and he's a bench player. It's amazing how far power and pitching will get you.

[dadofandrew]

I predicted yesterday the know nothings would grade Gabe higher than Prince.

 

All the rest is just fodder for those writing the obit for old media. It ain't the horrible writing, it's everything else...please.

[joepepsi]

. It's amazing how far power and pitching will get you.

heckuva lot farther than small ball and pitching.

[rluzinski]

Kendall was only a clutch player when compared to most other Brewers.

 

You do you come to that conclusion? Based on Tom's made up stat? kendall was the LEAST clutch hitter on the entire team, based on WPA:

 

http://www.fangraphs.com/...?team=Brewers&season=2008

 

Cameron gets downgraded because of the expectations that were placed upon him.

 

There was absolutely NO reason to believe that Cameron would be any better offensively than he was this year. I don't think anyone sold him as some .900+ OPS hitter that was going to carry the team.

 

Jeff Suppan is another story. Haudicourt even admitted that his grade for Suppan was almost a D and would have been a D if not for a pretty dominate stretch from after the allstar break to September. People forget that he was pretty darn good there.

 

Like I said, I don't see how having a good stretch makes his overall value higher. It just means he had to stink even worse during another stretch. Just look at his overall numbers.

 

Take all the emotion out of it, take all parts of the season into account vs. expectations and see where your grades line up.

 

It's easy to take the emotion out of it on offense. Just use projections.

[JoeHova]

So, are we to judge from Branyan's C that they expected all along that Branyan would be called up from AAA, carry the team for a month, and be a major factor in saving the team's season? Ridiculous.