Have the Brewers improved this offseason?

[paul253]

Looking at what the Brewers have done so far, does anyone here think we've improved enough to be playoff contenders in 2010? Looking at their moves

 

CF: Gomez for Cameron. Probably a downgrade on both ends, but saved a lot of money

SS: Escobar for Hardy: Offensively they are different type players. If Macha lets Escobar steal some bases his value should be higher, but he won't hit the HR or drive in runs like Hardy can.

C: Zaun and ? for Kendall: I sure hope the ? isn't Lucroy as I dont think having him jump of from AA to play only part time is a good idea. However, I have a hard time seeing how anyone could be a downgrade offensively from Kendall

SP: Wolf for Looper: Although Wolf is definitely better, Looper did lead the team in wins last season.

 

The bullpen is probably going to be better as well with Hawkins and Vargas and maybe Riske. I'm not sure they have the money to make any other major moves, and unless they plan on trading Gamel or Lawrie, which I'm starting to hope they don't, I don't see any other major upgrades. So this is the team. Do we think it's going to be a playoff contender? My money says no but I suppose you never know. Gallardo and Parra need to improve and the bullpen needs to pitch to its potential. Escobar and Gomez, in my opinion, are going to be key players because if they struggle I don't really see any replacements for them.

[dlk9s]

SP: Wolf for Looper: Although Wolf is definitely better, Looper did lead the team in wins last season.

Not sure why this is relevant.

[craigharmann]

Looper did lead the team in wins last season.

Not sure why this is relevant.

Only good thing he did is my guess.

[sauveb]

It's going to be about how many guys have career years and how healthy they are. This team is good enough to compete if the chips fall right but there isn't much margin for error.

[Funketown]

Roughly speaking, I would say that Gomez is a 1.5 win downgrade from Cameron, Escobar a 1 win downgrade from Hardy (assuming Hardy regains some, but not all, of his form), Zaun + ? a 2 win upgrade over Kendall + Lucroy and Wolf a 1.5 win upgrade over Looper. I would say the bullpen is a .5 win upgrade over last year.

 

Any way you slice it, I think it's hard to argue the team has significantly improved this offseason, but it would also be hard to argue that they've become significantly worse. I would bet this team projects to somewhere between 80 and 85 wins, which is about what they projected as last year. In this division, I think they certainly have a shot at the playoffs.

[RyDogg66]

I dont think Gomez is a downgrade from Cameron defensively. If anything he might be a half win better defensively. Of course, the lack of offense wipes that out. But Gomez, as I understand it is as good as it gets in CF.

[TuesdaysWithRillo]

No, but 300+ less Bill Hall PA's and 500+ less Kendall PA's should help a bit. The pitching can't be any worse than it was last year, and the bullpen looks sustainable. With average pitching, better defense, and a similar offense 90 wins isn't out of the question.

[MNBrew]

Up front, I like so much of what Cameron brought, I believe in Gomez's upside, and the cost savings behind the move was essential. That said...

 

Gomez is a stud w/ the glove but is still far more prone than Cameron would've been to throw to the wrong base and other mental blunders.

 

Not sure what stat category that sort of thing falls into since I only absorb the basics, but I've witnessed that enough times & heard enough more about it in the sports talk here in the Twin Cities to know that Gomez's periodic knuckleheaded plays aren't just limited to when he has a bat in his hands.

[logan82]

I would guess we get a projection pretty similar to what we had predicted at he start of spring training next year. I think our team is a little worse overall than we were after the Looper signing but Chicago and St. Louis are not as good, specifically Chicago, as they were a year ago.

 

Dave Cameron had an interseting piece on predicting how good a team will be over at Fangraphs today. When looking at 2010 for example we need to compare what we expect out of Escobar vs expectations for Hardy instead of saying "Escobar can match what Hardy did in 2009." I think in general people here do that. There are posts that have our offense prety much the same saying things like that without taking into account small drop-offs from Fielder and Braun along with a bigger expected drop-off from McGehee and 2B.(.303/.377/.474/.851) I love Weeks, but wouldn't predict him to put up those numbers.

 

Overall

C - better +1

1B - same

2B - a little worse -0.5

SS - worse -1

3B - about the same with a little better OBP

LF - same

CF - worse -2

RF - same

 

Gallardo - same

Bush - -0.5

Parra - -0.5

Suppan - same

Wolf - +1

 

I guess overall my guess is that we are about 2 wins worse than the team just after the Looper signing. Maybe we pick up a win for our bulpen and a win from the NL central being a little worse(that may also be wishful thinking). Keep in mind 0.25 ERA is about half a win over 180 innings so my predictions are for Bush and Parra to be 0.25 ERA worse than their predictions for 2009. This is all off the top of my head though.

[Ennder]

I'm very confused why you think Bush and Parra are worse than what we had last year. If Dave Cameron says you want to compare 2010 to expectations he is completely 100% wrong, you compare this year to last year when looking at how much this years team has improved over last years. Last years team is already in the bank, we know what they did based on what the results were last year, the talent from last year doesn't really play into the discussion.

[nate82]

I'm very confused why you think Bush and Parra are worse than what we had last year. If Dave Cameron says you want to compare 2010 to expectations he is completely 100% wrong, you compare this year to last year when looking at how much this years team has improved over last years. Last years team is already in the bank, we know what they did based on what the results were last year, the talent from last year doesn't really play into the discussion.

I don't believe Cameron was talking about a team as a whole though I haven't been able to read the whole article yet so I might be misrepresenting it here. But he is correct when you are comparing player A to player B when Player A is being replaced by Player B. So you can compare Cameron to Gomez, Hardy to Escobar, and Looper to Wolf. You can't really compare 2009 Bush with 2010 Bush on talent alone. Just my thoughts on that.

[Ennder]

But you want to compare 2009 Hardy to 2010 Escobar, not true talent Hardy vs true talent Escobar. I guess that was my point. I personally think Escobar is a downgrade from Hardy but I think we have upgraded at SS over what we got in 2009 since Hardy had such a terrible season.

 

Overall I think this team will be lucky to be 2 wins better than last year. We still have no depth at SP which killed us last year and we potentially have huge holes in the IF and the OF now. While most will say a poor rotation was at fault for 2009 I will personally say poor depth was to blame. If Parra could have stayed in AAA longer it would have helped, if Bush had been put on teh DL faster it would have helped, if Suppan had been given more rehab starts it would have helped. The fact we had zero depth killed any chance of success in the rotation last season. We have a tiny bit more depth but not enough to fix the problems. We also have potential disaster areas at 2B, SS, 3B, RF and CF on offense. We need to get really lucky to be a.500+ team this season.

[marty22]

Ennder is right. We do wan't to compare Escobar's expectations with Hardy's 09 performance. Where you get in trouble is simply by looking at additions and subtractions while ignoring variance in the players that remain with the team (dropoff from McGehee and 2B, hopefully some rebound from Hart)

[endaround]

Cameron was using his Slate voice trying to sound smart while saying nothing. He was basically saying you shouldn't say "The Brewers won 80 games last year and therefore are an 80 win team and let's look at what they've done" which no one serious does. His whole point is that players will regress to the mean which people fully understand. The issue that the Brewers have to contend with is that they got a lot of performances that are hard to predict being repeated.

[sheethead]

The pitching can't be any worse than it was last year

 

While I want to agree with this, I wish it would stop being said. It COULD be worse, and that would be disaster.

[logan82]

I'm very confused why you think Bush and Parra are worse than what we had last year.

I was looking at what I would put them at ERA wise in 2010 compared to where I would put them in 2009. I think Parra may have been projected a little high in 2009. Bush should probably be about the same, but my expectations are a little lower for him in 2010 than they were in 2009. I only had each as 0.25 ERA lower. I thought Parra should be in the 4.25-4.50 range for ERA in 2009 and would put him in more the 4.50-4.75 ERA range for 2010.

 

I guess I pretty much ignore the win/loss record from the previous season and make a guess from there. I look at it that we were expected to win about 84 games last year and got a little worse as a team so we should be around 82 wins this coming year.

[Thurston Fluff]

SP: Wolf for Looper: Although Wolf is definitely better, Looper did lead the team in wins last season.

Not sure why this is relevant.

If the question is who is better then the answer is Wolf. If the question is will he get us more wins it isn't so clear. I read his question as will we get more wins with this team. If he was asking if we will improve from last season's record wins by a pitcher does have some relevance.

[sgtcluels]

Why is Loopers wins even mentioned? Wins has zero value, it just tells you really how lucky they are. The offense scored more then they gave up, it's not an indication of true skill at all. Looper was basically -1 WAR and below average on every metric you can find. He's bad, an average pitcher will get you +1 win over last year, and Wolf posted two +3 (I'll just say +2 for 2010) that's a +3 win swing. What I'm trying to say, if you put anyone who is remotely "ok" you are going to get more then 1 win out of not having Looper.

 

Add in the fact that he hardly ever went past the 6th inning last year, that saves a lot of bullpen IP and further increases WAR since we won't have to use the back end of our bullpen as much.

[Ennder]

I was looking at what I would put them at ERA wise in 2010 compared to where I would put them in 2009

 

I was looking at what you said wrong, my bad. I was thinking you were comparing 2010 expectations to 2009 results when you are really comparing 2010 expectations to 2009 expectations. That makes more sense then.

[JohnBriggs12]

I think a full season of Escobar at SS is a huge upgrade over the 09 Hardy. I also believe that whatever (if any) dropoff McGehee has at 3B, a full season from him will be better than the two months of Hall, 4 months of McGehee/Gamel/Counsell of last year.

 

My concern is 2B. Weeks and Lopez combined for some very good numbers, and in between the Counsell/McGehee pair wasn't bad either. With Weeks coming off another major wrist injury, we don't know what we have.

 

Catcher should be a slight upgrade, but that's not saying much.

 

On paper the starting pitching should be better, but as bad as last year was, the only injury issue was with Bush and that wasn't long term. If they lost a Gallardo or Wolf, it could get real ugly.

 

I'm concerned about Gomez' bat, but the good news is they aren't locked in if he's really bad. He's got minor league options and they could use Gerut there if he struggles.

 

On paper, the bullpen is strong and deeper than last year and for the first two months of 09, it was the pen that got the Brewers into first place. If they get consistent performance from the guys they are counting on, it could be a real strength.

 

The whole key to the season could be the development of their prospects. They should start the year with genuine starting pitching prospects at AA, and some everyday prospects (Gamel, Salome, Schafer, Farris) that could either give the team a boost later on, or be used as trade bait in a mid-season deal.

[joepepsi]

Brewers were 3rd in runs scored last year, 15th in runs allowed. Colorado was 2nd in runs scored, (18 more than the Brewers), and 7th in runs allowed, (103 fewer runs than the Brewers). That difference was good for 12 extra wins for Colorado.

 

I suspect the offense won't score quite as many runs and be somewhere in the 5th-6th ranking. But the defense should allow far fewer runs and end up in the middle of the pack. That should put them in the 86-90 win category, a pace good enough to justify another deadline push for acquiring a pitcher.

[paul253]

Not sure why this is relevant.
Why is Loopers wins even mentioned? Wins has zero value, it just tells you really how lucky they are.

 

I think it IS relevant and here is my reasoning. When looking how the team compares to last years team, I was looking at who we lost and who we gained. Regardless of bad Looper pitched, he was the winning pitcher in 14 games meaning somehow the Brewers managed to win when he was pitching. Whether it was luck or for some odd reason the bats came alive more when he was pitching...whatever. The bottom line is he won 14 times. If Wolf comes in and posts a 2.16 ERA in 30 starts, but the Brewers lose 25 of the 30 games, can you really argue his addition improved the team? I'm not so sure because even though he pitched a lot better than the alternative, then team had less success. So really when I was comparing the loss of Looper to addition of Wolf, I am wondering if Wolf will match the production of Looper, which I think should include wins because regardless of how he got them, he still got them. I'd take 14 wins and a 5.00 ERA over 7 wins and a 2.5 ERA. I know in reality I should have looked at the Brewers record in all the games he started because its probably more relevant than win-loss record, but I didnt really have time to find that.

[TooLiveBrew]

When looking how the team compares to last years team, I was looking at who we lost and who we gained. Regardless of bad Looper pitched, he was the winning pitcher in 14 games meaning somehow the Brewers managed to win when he was pitching.

 

And this is exactly the type of plug-n-play logic that people have been pointing out as flawed.

[brewerfan82]

There are two ways of looking at this question and it's causing a lot of the disagreement in this thread.

 

1.) Will the team that is currently assembled have better results than last year's team did?

 

2.) Does the currently assembled team project to do better this season than the team we ended up with at the end of last season would have projected to do this season?

 

Both are completely valid questions, but yield different analysis and arguments. If you can't keep them separate, there's going to be a lot of disagreement on this topic.

 

Personally, I think this is still to-be-determined. If we somehow obtain another solid starter, I think the answer to both questions is yes. But until then, it's hard to expect this team to be a whole lot different than last year's team.

[brewers4eric]

It is tough to make any comparisons at this point, as I consider the offseason to end at the point where the Brewers break camp and head out for the first game of the season. I felt the real weakness of the 2009 team was the lack of viable replacements for the starting rotation at AAA. Chase Wright and Nick Green were expected to provide some depth and they never threw a pitch for the Brewers. Once Bush, Suppan, and Parra lost innings to injuries and ineffectiveness, the rotation folded, the bullpen wore out, and the losses piled up.

On paper, the 2009 rotation looks an awful lot like what we had last year and may be prone to the same problems. I'm confident that the minor league system is close to producing some names to fill out the pitching staff, but I do think that we need to identify a Jim Slaton, Rick Helling or Dave Burba type pitcher to give us some depth at Nashville.