Bad Luck or Bad Team?

[RobDeer 45]

I know we aren't the best but I wonder if this team has just had some bad luck on its side. We've been pretty close to taking 2 of 3 from some good teams here and I've been wondering if a few things go their way, if they could turn the corner. Twins and Cardinals series are two that come to mind. The problem is every time I think they are going to get a little winning streak going they dissapoint (usually a sing of bad starting pitching).

 

Just thinking out loud here, what are your thoughts?

[naivin]

Bad pitching usually results in 'bad luck."

[JohnBriggs12]

In both the Cardinal and the Twins series, they were blown out in the opener of each. The other 2 were tossup games that could have gone either way, so I think they got about what they deserved in each series. It's been more than the starting pitching though. The bullpen has had it's issues. Braun hasn't really hit since getting bopped in the elbow a month ago. Fielder hasn't had a hot streak all year. Weeks has had some really bad stretches. This offense can and should be doing more.

 

Defensively, this team hasn't been very good either. Braun has become extremely timid in LF on balls in front of him. Hart seems to have lost about a step and a half in RF. Weeks still makes errors at critical times. Fielder hasn't been making plays that good defenders make. The catchers can't stop teams from stealing bases at will.

 

This team is still very capable of a good stretch of 20-25 games. But they have to clean up the little things, get a little more consistent on the mound, and have the middle of the order start doing some damage.

[naivin]

For me, this season keeps coming back to Trevor Hoffman. The SP has been bad, but seems to be settling down somewhat. The problem is, Hoffman's inability to nail down that 9th inning spot (coupled with Hawkins injury which hurt a lot as well), has upset the entire bullpen, and made life very difficult for the Brewers. They have and will continue to score plenty of runs in general. Axford has definitely helped, but his last few outings continue to make me think that for the Brewers to have any sort of consistent success, Hoffman is going to have to remember how to pitch and effectively get back in that 9th inning role. IF that could happen, I think they now have enough guys to adequately cover the 6-8th innings, and win a few more games. Still probably not enough, but certainly could move them from pathetic to average status. Will it happen? Probably not.

[Baldkin]

The offense has been asleep since it left Arizona. A full month's worth of games since then, they've averaged only 4 runs per game. With this pitching staff (Even at it's best) an offense that ranks 23rd in the league in runs/game (that's where a 4 run/game offense would rank) isn't going to cut it.

[sheethead]

It does come down to Hoffman, and if we are counting on him to climb back into the closer role and put up zeros, the season is over.

 

Axford is the ninth inning guy, Hoffman is riding it out for a paycheck.

 

As for luck, bad pitching and bad defense will give you bad baseball. The team is just bad.

 

Can they turn it around? Sure. Suppan is out of sight out of mind, finally. Hoffman is the new mop up guy. Parra and Narveson are in the rotation as they should have been from day one. They need an 8-10 game winning streak however, and seeing how they have not even won four (4) in a row yet this year, its going to take a remarkable turn of events.

 

I really believe Macha has this team sleepwalking through the season. I mean, he has me sleepwalking through it.

[FVBrewerFan]

I agree, closing games has been the problem. How many blown saves this year 7 or 8? If 5 of those get closed out, this team is .500- just that simple.

[Ennder]

Looking at pitching peripherals some of it is almost certainly bad luck. The defense is bad but even with that a .344 BABIP is just ridiculously high, especially given how many of the guys are FB pitchers. Variance or luck or whatever you want to call it accounts for at least 10% of the leagues wins and losses so hard to just look a teams record and say what they are. If the Brewers are an 81 win true talent team they can easily win 72 games or win 90 games while playing to their talent.

 

We have reduced the load of our weakest pitchers on the year as well which should theoretically help. Stetter, Hoffman, Bush, Suppan, Estrada and Wolf all have xFIP over 5. Given his history I'd expect Wolf to improve and most of the rest of those pitchers aren't throwing many innings anymore.

[sheethead]

If the Brewers are an 81 win true talent team they can easily win 72 games or win 90 games while playing to their talent.

 

Isn't that only if their variance is 100% bad (72 wins) or good (90) luck? What are the chances that variance slides in one direction so heavily? Usually a team is lucky one day and unlucky another day. I don't by a 20 game swing in wins can be explained by variance, or luck.

[logan82]

What are the chances that variance slides in one direction so heavily? Usually a team is lucky one day and unlucky another day. I don't by a 20 game swing in wins can be explained by variance, or luck.

 

Not very likely but is can happen. As an example we had a 28-17 record in one run games in 2008. Even for a good team that should be much closer to .500. A handful of runs at the right or wrong time can make a huge difference. In 2007 we missed tying for the division lead by one bad pitch by Cordero. He gave up a walk off HR to Ramirez and that was the difference.

[monty57]

If the Brewers are an 81 win true talent team they can easily win 72 games or win 90 games while playing to their talent.

 

Isn't that only if their variance is 100% bad (72 wins) or good (90) luck? What are the chances that variance slides in one direction so heavily? Usually a team is lucky one day and unlucky another day. I don't by a 20 game swing in wins can be explained by variance, or luck.

I'd say the 10-games is about right. If 100% of bad luck went to a team, that would mean that every blown call would go against you and every ball hit down the line by the opposition would be a double, while every ball your team hit down the line went foul (as two quick examples). In that case, it would account for much more than 10 games one way or the other.

 

If your "true" talent level is x, then I think it's pretty reasonable to believe that occurances throughout the year would justify that you'd win x 10.

 

Before the season started, if you used Davis, Hawkins, Hoffman and Wolf's previous years to try to determine how they'd pitch this year (even regressing some for age), you'd have to think they'd have pitched much better than they have. The ungodly regression of some of our pitchers is far and away the reason we're playing so bad. Whether that's luck or not could be up to discussion. The fact that this is the second season in a row that our MLB staff has performed far below expectations would have me trying to find out if there was something more than luck involved.

[owbc]

They clearly are not as bad as their record, but they are also not good enough to get back into the race. Even assuming a weak NL Central, they will need to go about 20-25 games over .500 the rest of the way to be a playoff contender. It's hard to see that happening, even though luck tends to even itself out over the course of a season.

 

I think all of our pitchers have a tendency to underperform due to the horrendous defense. That is unlikely to change for many years to come.

[Polish Falcons]

Yeah I think some of this is bad luck. I believe that the first two months of the season (April & May) will prove to be the worst two months of the season. It stinks to start off like that, and it is deflating for a fan, but I don't believe this team is that bad. They are going to have a win streak at some point. It hasn’t happened yet.

 

 

As far as performance goes, as others have stated, I agree the bullpen has been the number one problem for the Brew Crew. How many leads have they blown in the eighth or ninth inning? At least 10, right? Going into the season, the bullpen was the least of concerns for most Brewer fans. But the relievers, particularly Hoffman, have been absolutely horrendous and dug this team into a huge rut early on.

 

The Brewers are 24-34 right now. If the bullpen blew only five games, which is still really bad at this point in the season, they would be 29-29.

 

 

If the bullpen does a decent job and closes down 8 of 10 leads, they would be 32-26 and a half game out of first place.

Maybe tonight, we can win a series before it is even over.

[naivin]

They clearly are not as bad as their record, but they are also not good enough to get back into the race. Even assuming a weak NL Central, they will need to go about 20-25 games over .500 the rest of the way to be a playoff contender. It's hard to see that happening,

I'm not sure they aren't as bad as their record. Their SP and RP has been horrible this year, so given that, plus a couple injuries, and I would say they have the record they should. Now, the good news is that teh bullpen seems to have been stabilized somewhat recently, and hopefully that trend continues. The Starting pitching? I don't have much hope about that. About the only way they can make this season interesting would be to win 6 or 7 in a row to get back near .500, and then play very consistently from there. I don't see any way they have the pitching to do either one of those things.

[Ennder]

If the Brewers are an 81 win true talent team they can easily win 72 games or win 90 games while playing to their talent.

 

Isn't that only if their variance is 100% bad (72 wins) or good (90) luck? What are the chances that variance slides in one direction so heavily? Usually a team is lucky one day and unlucky another day. I don't by a 20 game swing in wins can be explained by variance, or luck.

To put it another way, if every single team in baseball had exactly 81 win talent you would probably still see at least one team win 72 games and at least 1 team win 90 games. There is no perfect way to pin down how much of their record is variance obviously.

 

I think the Brewers are a better team than their record, I still don't think they are a playoff caliber team though.

[theavrock]

 

The Brewers are 24-34 right now. If the bullpen blew only five games, which is still really bad at this point in the season, they would be 29-29.

 

 

If the bullpen does a decent job and closes down 8 of 10 leads, they would be 32-26 and a half game out of first place.

Thats a pretty good way of looking at it. Obviously no one expected Hoffmann to be perfect, but had he been serviceable this season would look different.

[HiAndTight]

Looking at pitching peripherals some of it is almost certainly bad luck. The defense is bad but even with that a .344 BABIP is just ridiculously high, especially given how many of the guys are FB pitchers. Variance or luck or whatever you want to call it accounts for at least 10% of the leagues wins and losses so hard to just look a teams record and say what they are. If the Brewers are an 81 win true talent team they can easily win 72 games or win 90 games while playing to their talent.

 

We have reduced the load of our weakest pitchers on the year as well which should theoretically help. Stetter, Hoffman, Bush, Suppan, Estrada and Wolf all have xFIP over 5. Given his history I'd expect Wolf to improve and most of the rest of those pitchers aren't throwing many innings anymore.

You want to see the absolute poster boy for bad luck, look at Doug Davis. Everything across the board is up from last year except for BABIP and ERA.

 

I do think Stetter can be a key component to our BP as a Loogy....well...as "key" as a Loogy can be, but he can be very good in that role, and alright as a full inning guy provided he's down the list.

 

I do not like Hoffman, and to be honest I didn't last year when he was exceptional, but I think he HAS to bounce back and improve a ton on what he's done thus far. He hasn't lost velocity(didn't really have it to lose, many of us could come close to matching his fastball), you don't forget how to throw a change after all these years. Not exactly sure with him, but I think he'll figure something out and be serviceable.

 

I'm very, very worried about Axford. I think Turnbow had less of a chance to turn into...well..."Turnbow" than Axford does. Here's a guy who has almost no track record. Sometimes those guys come out of nowhere, more often they come out of nowhere, have a nice stretch and return to nowhere.

I spent the first two weeks watching this team, results be damned, just watching them and thinking, "this is a good team". I don't know what happened. Their pitching taken individually is NOT this bad. Their defense taken individually is not this bad. They're actually less than the sum of their parts to me. Parra stepping up and grabbing hold of the #3 spot would be monumentally important. I would still like to see a complete tear down happen, but it's not likely.

[endaround]

Some think Axford can't get lefties over a long period out making him very iffy as a closer long term. That said most relievers don't to the majors until their late 20s since most are failed starters who still have somathing but not enough for 3 pitches of more than an inning at a time.

[HiAndTight]

Some think Axford can't get lefties over a long period out making him very iffy as a closer long term. That said most relievers don't to the majors until their late 20s since most are failed starters who still have somathing but not enough for 3 pitches of more than an inning at a time.

 

 

 

My concern isn't nearly so much about getting lefties out as it is getting the ball over the plate.

 

With his stuff, I think if he can command it, or at least be "effectively wild", he'll get out RH'ers or LH'ers. I'm more worried he's going to revert to his astronomical BB numbers that may be his undoing.

[markedman5]

Wolf having real bad luck again tonight.

 

Those 5 bombs he gave up could have been caught if we were playing in the Grand Canyon........

[Invader3K]

At some point the bad luck excuse goes away and the team is just bad. I think that point is quickly approaching.

[markedman5]

I've noticed we seem to have better luck when Gallardo pitches.........................

 

After watching this team play for 1/3 of the season games like last night seem to be the lucky ones.........

 

 

Tonight 8 runs allowed by our #2 starter ......3 hits and 3 runs(2 driven in by said pitcher) by our anemic offense.....

 

Just another bad game in a long line of bad games.

[DougJones43]

Both. They're not good, and some of the below average luck hasn't helped. Even with above average luck for the season, they might have ended up around .500.

 

I don't see any way a team with this kind of lack of pitching, and lack of overall direction, could be considered a playoff contender. The future is rather grim in my eyes. With the way they're handling things like Lucroy, Gamel, and the constant jerking around of the starting pitchers, I don't see the team gaining traction any time soon. I have no faith in the current regime, from Melvin on down to Macha and the assistants, to competently guide this franchise into the future.

[rluzinski]

At some point the bad luck excuse goes away and the team is just bad. I think that point is quickly approaching.

Not often is it just one or the other. There's a lot of dice rolls in baseball. It's not very often that those dice rolls average out to exactly the expected number. The Brewers have had some bad luck but have also played poorly, IMO. They certainly don't "deserve" to be even .500, though.

[logan82]

I don't see any way a team with this kind of lack of pitching, and lack of overall direction, could be considered a playoff contender.

 

As far as I know the were not considered a playoff contender unless they got a little lucky. The future isn't really as grim as it seems right now. We should have some good pitching up by 2011 and a decent rotation by 2012.