Bill Hall traded to Boston

[Thurston Fluff]

If they had left him down at least till the end of the AAA season I wouldn't say that but they left him down just long enough to get another year out of him.

 

JJ's performance did not match his salary. As we see with Suppan and Hall the teams many times have to eat those contracts or suffer through them. In the rare instances where the team can actually minimize their losses I expect them to. Not doing so would be to fail in their main duty as caretaker of the team. The players fortunes are way down on the list of things Melvin is obligated to take care of. They have themselves and their agents for that. Hey I feel bad for the guy but he still made more in a couple years than I in my life and still can make more so you'll forgive me for wanting my team to put it's needs over Hardy's.

 

As far as Hardy needing more rest because of soreness all that does is show a weakness. Dude is in his 20s and has always had problems with a sore shoulder or aching back. That would indicate he's not very durable. I would not care to speculate if that is mental or physical in nature but he just cannot seem to play every day, all year, year in and year out. It was time to cut the losses and move on to someone more reliable.

[monty57]

First off, thank you, JoePepsi.

 

Logan, Hardy probably did need more rest. I am certainly not a Macha fan. His methods of playing certain players every day without rest while letting others rot on the bench is only one of the reasons I hoped he would only be around one season. However, JJ seemed to need three days off at a time. Earlier in the season, Macha sat JJ for three days to get his head together. Then, when he was sent down, Hardy said something to the effect of "I just needed 2 or three days off, not to be sent to AAA." I can see someone needing a day off now and then, and I agree Macha is bad at things like this, but why would JJ need or ask for three days off in a row, unless he was injured, which has never been brought up as being the case.

 

Agreed. It's not going to be fun watching Hardy have a good year next year for the Twins. We can only hope that Gomez can step up and play to his potential.

 

RockCoCougars, while I definitely share your sentiment that I want Gomez to play to his potential, I hope Hardy does well. I've cheered for him for a long time now (since Beloit), so it would be hard for me to root against him. The Twins got a player with a lot of potential to bounce back and be a very good SS, which they needed. They are also paying his full salary, so they'll look bad if Hardy has another down year. The trade gave the Brewers needed salary relief in addition to a young player with huge upside potential, which he currently has not lived up to. Looking at Adam McCalvy's recent article, it appears this salary relief was more necessary than I had originally thought. The Hardy trade essentially saved the Brewers Hardy and Cameron's salary, so it did save the Brewers a lot of money. Whether the money has been used wisely has been the topic of many posts, but to bring this back to the topic of this thread, Bill Hall is a big part of the reason the Brewers needed to dump this salary. If he'd have continued to hit around .280 with 30-35 HRs a year for the past few years, things would have been a lot different.

[logan82]

I am not sure Hardy needed 2-3 days at a time but I would say at least a day a week plus an extra day now and then. I don't like Macha either but I would hardly put it all on his shoulders. The communication really does seem lacking.

 

I just disagree Hardy should have been brought back up when he was. I would still prefer 140 games of Hardy over 162 games of Escobar.

[snyttri]

?Like I said, some people just do anything to find fault with Melvin -- nevermind that he's widely regarded as one of the best GMs in the game.?

 

Is there a ranking of GMs that has him puts Melvin among the best?

[Ennder]

?Like I said, some people just do anything to find fault with Melvin -- nevermind that he's widely regarded as one of the best GMs in the game.?

 

Is there a ranking of GMs that has him puts Melvin among the best?

http://www.fangraphs.com/...-alnl-gap-a-gm-disparity

[TooLiveBrew]

And within that article Ennder linked (fwiw), there's this organizational ranking from 3/27/09 that has the Brewers as 6th out of the 30 MLB clubs. If you follow the team-specific ranking, they give the Brewers' front office an A- grade.

 

Perhaps the most under the radar of the sabermetric front offices, the Brewers are among the leading organizations in baseball in applying new ways of thinking to roster building. Doug Melvin has instituted a lot of forward thinking ideas, and there are a ton of smart people working up in Milwaukee. The loss of Jack Zduriencik, Tony Blengino, and Tom McNamara hurts, but there are qualified men ready to fill their shoes. Melvin understands how to build an organization that can supply impact talent to he major league roster and how to surround those home grown players with valuable pieces from the outside. Milwaukee fans are in good hands with Melvin and his team.

[Invader3K]

Yeah, the grass isn't always greener, as they say.

[brewizard]

We used to long for a .500 season. Now we go 80-82 with a team that had a fair share of injuries and players playing well below their projections, and we're upset about it.

 

I long for a World Series. I hoped we'd be closer last year than 80-82. No one longs for .500. Ever.

 

I think Hardy wasn't treated as well as he could have been. He also didn't play as well as he could have. A vicious cycle.

 

Hall just stunk, unfortunately, and his contract also stunk. Hall was 'can't-play-him-can't-trade-him' bad. Another vicious cycle.

 

With the new season inching closer, I'm slowly becoming hopeful the Brewers will be good this year...

 

Yet another vicious cycle begins.

[MJLiverock]

And within that season we had players like McGehee play very well out of nowhere, Felipe Lopez put up an over .400 OBP and something like an .850 OPS, which is as much or more than could have been expected from Weeks. Craig Counsell found a wellspring and playeed above anyone's expectations as well. It wasn't like there weren't upside surprises to disappoints like Hardy who was the only guy who really performed below expectations on offense. I wasn't really shocked by the rotations performance, going into the season I figured that as being below average so 80-82 was inline with many expecations.

[Ennder]

I wasn't really shocked by the rotations performance, going into the season I figured that as being below average so 80-82 was inline with many expecations.

 

You expected Parra and Bush to have ERA's over 6 and Looper and Suppan to each have their worst ERA in the past 10+ years and every fill in starter to post a 7+ ERA? The rotation preformed way below any reasonable expectations for them. If they replayed 2009 1,000 times it wouldn't surprise me if our rotation never pitched that poorly again it was so far outside expectations. It might not have been an amazing rotation paper but it wasn't a 5.37 ERA rotation by any means.

[logan82]

And within that season we had players like McGehee play very well out of nowhere, Felipe Lopez put up an over .400 OBP and something like an .850 OPS, which is as much or more than could have been expected from Weeks. Craig Counsell found a wellspring and playeed above anyone's expectations as well.

Yes there were a couple guys who outplayed expectations but mostly they were part time players. The guys who badly underperformed were full time players.

[monty57]

Well put Ennder.

 

On the offensive side...

 

How bad were JJ & Kendall? According to ESPN's stats, there were 103 players in MLB last year with 400 ABs. By OPS, JJ was # 96 & Kendall #100. There were 143 players with 300 ABs. Hardy was #131 and Kendall #139. They were among the worst hitters in all of baseball!! Now, I don't think many people expected too much out of Kendall, although a .636 OPS may have been at the low end of expectations, but Hardy was expected to be a cornerstone of our offense, and he was off the charts bad.

 

Corey Hart was in the bottom third of all MLB RF. Maybe that's what was to be expected, but it's not good. Then there's the bench, which was almost entirely turned over last year.

 

And finally, there is our opening day full-time starting 3B. The guy this thread is about, the one and only Bill Hall. Somehow, there was a player to hit worse for Milwaukee than Kendall and Hardy, and that player is Billy, with an astounding .606 OPS for the Brewers in 2009.

 

Yes, Prince and Braun has wonderful years. McGehee, Counsell and Lopez all played well when given time and Cameron probably played up to expectations (although a little below 2008). Overall, our offense wasn't bad last year, but without phenominal seasons by Prince and Braun, we probably would have been pretty pedestrian.

[logan82]

If by pedestrian you mean above average, then I agree. Even with all those guys hitting poorly we were one of the best offensive teams in the NL. We were way more hurt by 4 of our 5 starters and almost every single starting pitching replacement pitching WAY below expectations.

[monty57]

No doubt about that Logan. Although Mike Burns probably pitched above his expectations, since his expectations to start the season were "Who the bleep's this guy?"

[MJLiverock]

And within that season we had players like McGehee play very well out of nowhere, Felipe Lopez put up an over .400 OBP and something like an .850 OPS, which is as much or more than could have been expected from Weeks. Craig Counsell found a wellspring and playeed above anyone's expectations as well.

Yes there were a couple guys who outplayed expectations but mostly they were part time players. The guys who badly underperformed were full time players.

 

What full time players other than Hardy badly missed projections on offense? Corey Hart? Jason Kendall? Bill Hall? Sorry but I just wasn't surprised by their production one bit. Counsell, McGehee, and Lopez picked up the slack for the injured Weeks and the black hole that Bill Hall was. The offense was better than expected given Hardy's decline because of great years by guys like Lopez, McGehee, Braun, Fielder Counsell, even Cameron. I would think all of these guys met or exceeded expectations. So that leads me to one guy, Hardy, playinig below expectations, plenty of guys meeting or exceeding expectations, and two guys Hart and Kendall pretty much as advertised.

 

I wouldn't have predicted ERA quite that high for Parra and Bush but the rotation as a whole, yes, I wasn't surprised they were bad. The Brewers weren't expected to be a big factor in winning the division or the playoff race by many many people so it wasn't really going out on a limb to think the team would end up around .500 last year. I think most of my own predictions were from anywhere from 78 to 83 wins. It wasn't really prescient, just not buying into guys who have struggled or have been inconcistent suddenly all having career years like Parra, Bush, Hart,Suppan, Looper. The loss of innings by Sabathia and Sheets was poo pooed by many of the posts where high 80 wins were expected. I cna go back and find the post where I layed out how difficult it would be to replace those 300+ innings of elite pitching. This is why I thought the Brewer staff would be bad, replacing 300 plus innings of elite pitching along with zero rotation depth leads to a huge drop in production. unless somone thought there would be zero starts missed for injury and everyone would have great years at once including two very young pitchers in Gallardo and Parra and two guys where the past performance is pretty consistently average when good and really bad when bad in Suppan and Looper. The only real big stretch of prediction was expecting dramatic improvement from guys and then acting like it was just bad luck or down years because the team only won 80 games. I would bet anyone not wearing Brewer colored glasses wasn't surprised by one bit by the team's record.

[Ennder]

So expecting Hall to beat a .606 OPS when he had a career line of like .780 is having Brewer colored glasses? Braun pretty much hit his projections exactly so not sure why you included him. Fielders 2009 was almost exactly like his 2007 so was pretty expected and most projection systems had him over .950 OPS.

There is a middle ground with the pitching you know. It can be an area that people didn't think would be strong but still did worse than they probably should have.

A combination of all the various projection systems came up with an 82-80 record for the Brewers with an expectation of between 75-88 wins, 740-815 runs scored, 730-808 runs allowed. The actual results were 80-82 with 785 runs scored and 818 runs allowed. We hit the runs scored pretty much spot on, our runs allowed were above expectations. The record came out relatively close because we actually won more games than we probably should have last year. I think most of Brewerfan.net was in the 83-87 win range.

[logan82]

There is a middle ground with the pitching you know. It can be an area that people didn't think would be strong but still did worse than they probably should have.

 

Exactly, nobody expected our staff to be great or maybe even good. What we got however was the worst starting staff in all of baseball. Anybody predicting that was unrealistically pessimistic. If our staff had come even close to career numbers, which is what you would expect, we would have been much closer to a middle of the road staff and much closer to a playoff spot.

 

The only real big stretch of prediction was expecting dramatic improvement from guys and then acting like it was just bad luck or down years because the team only won 80 games.

 

Hardly anybody making predictions expects dramatic improvement.

[MJLiverock]

Ender if you read my post I included Braun and Fielder that met or exceeded expectations so I think that pretty much explains why I included them. It is just a rebuttal to the idea that there were all these injuries and bad luck that hurt the team rather than just not having good enough players. I litterally am not surprised they had the worst staff in the National League and many others are not either for the reasons I cited above (no depth which is always needed, young inexperienced guys, older not so great guys, losing 300 innings of ace pitching who went deep into games saving the pen, etc.) Like I said I wouldn't put a 6.5 ERA on some those guys but 5.5 sure, which isn't good.

 

Career history and average are one thing but expecting each and every year as a guy gets older like Suppan or Looper or is highly variable like Bush or even young like Gallardo and Parra can easily throw those expectations of hitting career averages out the window. I would expect Looper and Suppan to perform below their career averages from here on out as they are in the decline phase of their career. Bush is getting further and further away from his promising first year as a Brewer and has stacked in a couple of pretty bad stretches so expecting him to be a 4 ERA pitcher or something is too optimistic in my view. Sure I am probably more pessimisstic than overly optimistic but for some of these guys but in my view the trend is not their friend.

 

Same goes for guys like Hart or Hall. Hart has not been trending well and his getting further and further away from looking like the All Star first few months he had a couple years ago. Hall has been on a slide for a long time now and I can't see why not being surprised he was terrible should shock anyone. These are both guys that had relatively short periods of succes followed by equal or longer times of not producing and looking bad while doing it. Seems like scouts figured out how to pitch to them and/or the early success was just a hot start.

 

There are always going to be guys who miss expectations and guys that exceed them. The Brewers in my view had one offensive spot that fell well below expectations in Hardy. They had Lopez whose numbers had to be as good or better than any one could have reasonably expected out of Weeks. They had McGhee and Counsell exceeding most expectations for 3B/utility. The offense ended up about where expected, even better than I would have expected had someone known how bad Hardy would be in 2009. The pitching was terrible as a lot of people expected.