Composite Prediction Thread

[bklynbrewcrew]

Looks like most were way too optimistic although Doug Jones, Klements Bratwurst, and JJ Hardy 7 were right in line.

[Ennder]

If you had told me Hardy would be useless all year, Weeks was going to miss most of the season, Bush and Suppan would miss a big chunk of the season. Riske and DiFelice would miss huge chunks of the season, McClung would get hurt, Hart would get hurt for a big chunk of the year I'd have predicted around .500 too. The team had way more adversity than could be expected. I mean Bush might as well have missed 2/3rds of the season since he never came back effectively after the injury.

 

Last year I predicted the Brewers would win 90 and they did but I didn't really like my prediction at the end of the season. Sabathia did much better than I would have expected Gallardo to do and really 'saved' my prediction. I feel like I overvalued the talent on the team even though my end number was correct. Last year very little went wrong with the team either.

 

Point is looking back at a thread like this isn't the most useful thing in the world because predictions are made with so little information. People weren't too optimistic, the team got hit by way more adversity than can be expected.

[MJLiverock]

Or the more pesimisstic predictions were grounded in more reality that the pitchting staff wasnt' that good. Bush and Suppan aren't superstar pitchers. Suppan made 29 starts, only 2 less than last year and about about 18 innings less. Was he coming off an injury sometimes yes, is he good no.

 

Over in the grading thread the arugment is made no one should be disappointed that Gallardo had a 3.73 ERA and 200K with 185 innings. I would agree, but some of the offseason predictions has Gallardo sliding in and duplicating the Sheets Sabathia production. I was never on board with that kind of expectation let alone the total 300 innings of elite production vs. 170-180 predicted out of Gallardo. Again, I think expectations were too high.

 

The Brewers were picked to finish by many experts to be right about where they are, mainly because the staff just isn't good. I am a fan, I want to believe my team has a shot but I think the result was more a reflection of the talent assembled than any exucses about injuries to poor pitchers.

 

Lopez's numbers were so good as a Brewer I don't think the Weeks loss had much impact. Hardy was terrible but McGhee came out of nowhere and put up numbers that rivaled anything expected out of Hardy. Fielder and Braun exceeded expectations and Cameron was pretty much as expected. Hart missed some time but plent of people aren't sold that he is anything but an average to below average RF who put up about what was expected. Kendall was about as expected as well. Counsell was well above as well.

[DougJones43]

Well, not to toot my own horn (okay, to kind of toot my own horn), but recognizing the lack of depth was part of what figured into my prediction. I said: I just expect that this team isn't going to get some of the lucky breaks they got last year, and I think the relative health...was pretty lucky. Given the lack of depth in several areas, I think even a few poorly placed injuries could really bring the team down.

 

Anybody (including Melvin) who just assumed everybody was going to stay healthy and play up to their projections was setting themselves up for failure. We had most of our key, core players stay healthy (Fielder, Braun, Hardy, Gallardo, Parra). We also had a number of guys over-acheive (McGehee, Counsell, Fielder, Hoffman, Coffey, Felipe Lopez, Vargas), so I think this whole notion that it was a worst case scenario where "everything went wrong" for the Brewers this year is hogwash.

 

Point is, predicting something can involve more than just "here's what the projections are, so that's the only logical prediction." A lot of it is just guessing yes, but there are also numerous things about this club that people factored in, that maybe didn't show up in the projected numbers.

[bklynbrewcrew]

Blaming this poor season on injuries to Suppan and Bush is ridiculous. Suppan is well below average and Bush is average at best so losing guys like this should not be the difference between winning and losing. Overall our injuries were far from bad and other than Weeks we never lost a "good" player to significant injury all year.

[joepepsi]

DJ43 you pegged it from the start. Good job.

 

I think they covered for the position player injuries just fine. Had they lost Braun or Fielder it could have been devastating. The hitters they did lose were sort of average-ish and not that difficult to replace. Despite Hardy's terrible season, overall the offense was a bit better than last year.

 

If a team can play around .500 when their 3-4-5 guys are on the mound and better than that with the 1-2 guys, they will compete for the playoffs in this league. For me 2009 was all about the horrible performances of Bush and Parra. In 2008 the team won exactly half of their 58 starts, when they were sort of the 4-5 guys. This year they had 10 fewer starts and the team had a .438 winning pct when they did start. Their replacements, Burns, Villy, and McClung were terrible, although Burns went 2-2 in his 4 starts despite an ERA approaching 7.

 

Overall those 5 have made 59 starts going 25-34. Back out those 59 starts and the team was 52-48. Add in those 59 starts at the Bush/Parra 2008 winning pct and you have the team sitting around 82-77 right now.

 

Not very sabremetric I know, but an interesting exercise nevertheless. Bush had never been injured in his amateur or pro career. He was coming off a very solid season. It was reasonable to expect improvement from Parra, not for his ERA to rise by two runs! But injuries and down seasons happen to players and teams every year. Despite Bush and Parra's horrible performances, they were still the best option when they were healthy. So their poor performance and the lack of depth to replace them is the bottom line to Brewers failing to compete for a playoff spot.

[logan82]

Parra's rise of 2 runs in ERA alone accounts for 4 fewer wins.

[joepepsi]

Yup. Bush's ERA is also two run higher than last year and he missed about 10 starts. His replacements for those starts posted ERA's in the 6's as well.

[DougJones43]

Parra's rise of 2 runs in ERA alone accounts for 4 fewer wins.

This is another case of Milwaukee's lack of depth making something like this more destructive than it would be for other teams. A team with any other viable options would have pulled the plug on a guy getting shelled that badly way before June 13th. They also would have had the luxury of leaving him at AAA longer to get back on track. So again, if a team leaves itself no choice but to continue to play somebody who is grossly underacheiving, it's hard to view that player's negative effect on the team as some kind of bad luck, unavoidable circumstance.

[Klements Bratwurst]

"So the big question marks I have reside in the starting rotation, 3B, 2B, and maybe RF. I just don't see this team as playoff calibur minus Sabathia and a healthy Sheets. Gallardo is a plus for sure, but will he be a plus in late August and September?

 

The way I see this 2009 team making the playoffs, is if they mash their way there, with Weeks finally realizing the potential he has, and Hall at least getting back to the midpoint of his 2005-2006 form. With that said, if these things happen we may score 850 plus runs and pummel the division and make the playoffs. I just don't see that happening. I would LOVE to be wrong!!! "

 

This was part of my prediction of a potential 79-83 season. I had no belief that Gallardo was yet ready to shoulder the load of what Sabathia and Sheets did, and in effect even with his year of an ERA of 3.73 with a 1.31 WHIP he surely didn't match Sabathia's '08 (1.65 ERA/1.00 WHIP as a Brewer) or even Sabathia's '09 as a Yankee (3.21 ERA/1.10 WHIP). So that was a loss to last year's team and I haven't even yet mentioned who was to replace Sheets' performance.

 

Bush was my hope due to his '08 stretch drive performance, (I still get excited by the Chris Carpenter comparisons of Dave Bush to the Cardinal Ace) but Hanley Ramirez changed that, but even before that injury happened, Bush was serving up too many gopher balls to the point where he was putting up average numbers. Suppan, has gotten worse every year, so I didn't expect much there for improvement and Looper looked like another Suppan. Parra, I saw as the the second linch pin (next to Dave Bush) to possibly holding out hope for a playoff calibur team, however, being very young and inexperienced, I couldn't overlook Parra's dreadful August and September 2008 and say, he will figure it out again fully to the point of putting up Ted Lilly '08 numbers. Mc Clung was in the bullpen waiting to step in as our #6 starter, but that 2008 starting expirement didn't work as well, nor should we have expected it to. As "Doug Jones" said the complete lack of any depth coupled with an average rotation at best doomed the team.

 

The Brewers have scored 759 runs this season with three games to go which equals 4.77 runs per game, which is nothing to sneeze at, but the only way this team was going to make up for the pitching shortcomings was to score almost another run per game on average like the Yankees did 898 runs with three games to go (5.64 runs per game). I don't have the stat handy, but the Brewers led the league in lowest winning percentage when they scored 4 or 5 runs or more. Maybe even scoring at the Yankees pace wouldn't have mattered anyway given the average at best rotation and backup plans of Seth McClung, Mike Burns, Chase Wright, and Nick Green spelled disaster to me in terms of a playoff run.

 

With that said, they are not that far away if they have some better luck obviously, and sign the right pitchers in the offseason. Couple that with the emergence of Josh Butler, Mike Jones, Zach Braddock and Mark Rodgers coming up the ladder closer to the top of the minor league ladder (crossing fingers), we could go down there in times of need for a dominating bullpen arm or a spot starter for a month and not be stuck with an under replacement level player like in 2009 stepping in.

 

Let the hot stove league begin!!!

[logan82]

Bush was serving up too many gopher balls to the point where he was putting up average numbers.

 

Bush had a 4.58 ERA at that point. That isn't bad for a MLB starter.

 

I couldn't overlook Parra's dreadful August and September 2008 and say, he will figure it out again fully to the point of putting up Ted Lilly '08 numbers.

 

I think people would have settled for Parra's numbers from 2008. His September and August could easily have been from extending his innings to far past his previous high. He hit a wall and almost exactly when many people thought he would. There really was little reason to expect him to be this bad given his previous performance.

[Never Outhustled]

Bush had a 4.58 ERA at that point. That isn't bad for a MLB starter.

Its below average, and bad for a team with playoff asperations.

[DougJones43]

Bush had a 4.58 ERA at that point. That isn't bad for a MLB starter.

Its below average, and bad for a team with playoff asperations.

Plus, it's not really fair to compare him to all MLB starters. He has the advantage of pitching in the NL, where the overall ERA of starters is 0.27 points lower than the AL counterparts.

[joepepsi]

What is the average National League average for ERA among starters this year? I can't find it anywhere.

[trwi7]

What is the average National League average for ERA among starters this year? I can't find it anywhere.

4.33.

[SoCal Brew Crew Fan]

To be fair to Bush, he had a 4.38 ERA before that Florida start. I believe the injury happened in the first inning of that game, so I'll cut him some slack for that loss. He also gave up 2 runs in garbage time relief in San Francisco before he took his turn in the rotation. Take those out and he was at a 4.12 as a starter before the Hanley Ramirez at bat. No all-star, but a capable #3.

 

If you assumed a capable rotation of 1) Yo 2) Parra 3) Bush 4) Looper and 5) Suppan with at least a McClung circa 2008 fill-in when neccessary...it was awfully disappointing. Yo was fine although broke down at the end of the year, Parra was awful, Bush was hurt, Looper not great, Suppan was hurt and our best fill-in was Mike Burns with a 5.75 ERA. Yeesh. It's amazing they won as many as they did.

[Ennder]

I wasn't trying to say predictions are useless. DJ said he had a feeling the team would have a lot of injuries and the lack of depth would cost us and that is exactly what happened, but at the same time this team had one of the best health indexes going into the season so a gut feeling that happened to hold true isn't always a sign of a great prediction. I mean I can feel my AK is going to beat 22 in hold em but the reality is it is still a losing play more times than not.

 

JJ Hardy said we would be under .500 if Gallardo failed to pitch the full season but then Gallardo pitched most of the season and we still were under .500.

 

Klements Bratwurst had the most compelling post but again I think the rotation problems were more from injury and a bit of bad luck than just straight up terrible pitching.

 

I think the 2009 Brewers underperformed their talent level and had more than expected injuries, so yeah someone who said 82-83 wins wasn't being optimistic, they just couldn't know that the season would go as bad as it did. People need to stop being so darn result oriented in general, someone who predicted the Mets to be over .500 didn't make a terrible prediction, someone who predicted the Giants to be under .500 didn't make a horrible prediction. Every year teams play way over or under their talent level because of poor play or injuries. If you really wanted to judge 2009 you would have to look at how the same players did in 2010 and 2011 because it takes 3 years or so to get a good look at the true talent level of any player.

[DougJones43]

80-82

 

Weeks improves.

Fielder actually comes close to his 07 season

Braun continues to dominate

Hart stays the same - maybe a little worse

Hardy's power regresses a little, but still solid

Kendall plays 137 games

 

THEIR PITCHING BLOWS! (Although I think Gallardo makes strides to improve, but not dominate yet)

 

And for the record, I hope I'm wrong about the latter.

Somebody give this guy a cookie. Nicely done.

 

People need to stop being so darn result oriented in general

How can you not be results oriented when the object of the thread was to predict the results?? This wasn't the "determine the true talent level of the club if everything happens as expected" thread. I don't see why you can't just admit that in reality the team was 8 wins worse than you thought, and just be okay with that outcome.

 

someone who predicted the Mets to be over .500 didn't make a terrible prediction

Not terrible, but still wrong.

 

someone who predicted the Giants to be under .500 didn't make a horrible prediction.

Not horrible, but still wrong.

 

If you really wanted to judge 2009 you would have to look at how the same players did in 2010 and 2011 because it takes 3 years or so to get a good look at the true talent level of any player.

Or you could look at how many runs they scored, how many runs they allowed, and how many games they won.