Road WOAAHS. When is it no longer 'bad luck'?

[DuWayne Steurer]

Ok, so I've been dreading this road trip for a few months now. If the Cardinals come out of the ASB and even play halfway decent ball, they could easily put up a 3-4 game lead (at least on the Brewers), if this road trip goes the way everything indicates it will.

 

So when the season is more than half over, and a team is playing .333 ball on the road, when can we STOP saying "it's just bad luck" and "the numbers will even out" and when can we start saying "this team sucks on the road"?

 

I'm not even asking for a reason WHY they suck on the road, I'd just like to know when one pathetic road trip after another stops being bad luck.

 

Sadly, I predicted a 3 - 8 road trip before the ASB hit, and I don't even thing I'm joking. And that might be optimistic.

[ilovebeer]

I really believe it is in there head now.

[BrewCrewForever]

I think it is mental. They clearly play very sloppy on the road and it is in there head and a lack of focus.

[hawing]

And now that the media has got hold of the issue, it'll be that much harder to get out of their heads.

 

I've been advocating for hypnosis for several seasons now, for a variety of reasons. Could it hurt? Would it be illegal?

[rluzinski]

Every year, 1 or two random teams perform terrible on the road, relative to expectations. It's odd that the teams changes every year, though. At least that means that the Brewers will probably do better on the road next year!

[pebadger]

Sadly, I predicted a 3 - 8 road trip before the ASB hit, and I don't even thing I'm joking. And that might be optimistic.

 

Sadly, if the Brewers play to their established percentages, 3-8 is right on the mark for this trip.

[markedman5]

Maybe the home record will be the one to "even out"?

 

Just sayin.................

[rluzinski]

Maybe the home record will be the one to "even out"?

 

Just sayin.................

The Brewers have been outscored overall, so it's not like they've proven to be anything more than average on the field.

[brewmann04]

If the Brewers Home record does even out it could be a long long season.

[rluzinski]

Really, what PLAYERS have performed poorly on the road this year and have they ever shown an issue in the past? That's the question that should be asked.

[danzig6767]

My best friend is a big Brewers fan like i am and for awhile now he's been going crazy over how terrible the team plays on the road this year, but i kept telling him to not get so worked up over it because by simple odds things will have to turn around for the better to at least some degree.

 

Well, i'm officially no longer convinced of that. I have absolutely no clue why this team is Houston Astros caliber on the road and Philadelphia Phillies caliber at home, but i now just have a much harder time believing the it's a fluke belief for the deep road woes. At some point a team plays enough games to where bad luck or fluke starts feeling more like wishful thinking given just how woeful we are on the road.

 

We have the worst road record in the NL. That's really hard for me to fathom for a team that has on it Weeks, Fielder, Braun, Greinke, Marcum, Gallardo, and Axford.

[TooLiveBrew]

Well honestly part of the problem is that this team just really has too many players who are either bad or performing poorly overall. I don't mean that sarcastically -- you have Kotsay, Betancourt, McGehee, Loe, Braddock, Greinke, Gomez*, Wilson, Counsell, & Estrada -- that's 40% of the 25-man roster. Ultimately it's probably just a small sample thing, but it's related to not having enough talent. I mean, this team's pythagorean W-L record right now is 45-48. Let that sink in; that's how effective the Brewers have been at scoring runs & preventing runs simultaneously.

 

 

* I know Gomez has been very good in the field. He probably shouldn't be on the list, really. Dropping him off puts that number at 36% of the 25-man.

[danzig6767]

Well honestly part of the problem is that this team just really has too many players who are either bad or performing poorly overall. I don't mean that sarcastically -- you have Kotsay, Betancourt, McGehee, Loe, Braddock, Greinke, Gomez*, Wilson, Counsell, & Estrada -- that's 40% of the 25-man roster. Ultimately it's probably just a small sample thing, but it's related to not having enough talent. I mean, this team's pythagorean W-L record right now is 45-48. Let that sink in; that's how effective the Brewers have been at scoring runs & preventing runs simultaneously.

 

 

* I know Gomez has been very good in the field. He probably shouldn't be on the list, really. Dropping him off puts that number at 36% of the 25-man.

I totally agree with you about between the guys on the roster who have been total liabilities, the terrible bench, bad defense, Greinke having a season so baffling that one like it to this point may not have happened before in baseball, and Gallardo just being unable to make that jump to consistently really good, it's combined to make the team be very inconsistent.

 

That said, it doesn't explain having the second best home record in the NL and the worst road record, worse even than the miserable Houston Astros.

[TooLiveBrew]

I really am of the belief that this can't be said enough: this team is really not as talented as we'd like to believe it is. It has the star players, but it has so many liabilities in the complementary players that it's just painful. Hopefully Melvin will change that.

[logan82]

I really am of the belief that this can't be said enough: this team is really not as talented as we'd like to believe it is.

and some of the players we expected to be stars are not performing as well as we had expected.

 

I think this team was expected to only win 86ish games so it really could be looked at as we are performing about to our talent on the road and way over our heads at home.

[TooLiveBrew]

Well the bad news is that this team is probably only about a 82-86 win team, in terms of talent. The good news is that Melvin has the hard-to-get pieces (aka stars), and the improvements that should be made are relatively affordable & available.

[DuWayne Steurer]

Every year, 1 or two random teams perform terrible on the road, relative to expectations. It's odd that the teams changes every year, though. At least that means that the Brewers will probably do better on the road next year!

Russ, of all people, I'd not expect you to even hint sarcastically that next year's performance will be affected by this years horrible road split.

 

I mean, it's a serious question though, it seems like EVERYTHING around here lately is 'it's bad luck', 'it's bad luck', 'it's bad luck.'.

 

Whenever something is happening, that is not up to expectations (Greinke, road performance), it's not just a poor performance, it's 'bad luck'.

 

At SOME point, playing like a AAA team on the road has to be something more than bad luck. We're talking 50 games here.

I know there's nothing statistical to analyze, all the road stats will show as that they suck. But this team is absolutely shizophrenic. The road/home OPS splits are absolutely atrocious, and at some point it can't just be written off due to statistical variance.

 

It just so happens that all the 'bad' hitting is done on the road? I'll buy that, to a degree, but when you're 60% into a season, there's got to be more to it than that. Just because the 'why' of it is not statistically measurable doesn't mean it's not a real thing.

[DuWayne Steurer]

Well the bad news is that this team is probably only about a 82-86 win team, in terms of talent. The good news is that Melvin has the hard-to-get pieces (aka stars), and the improvements that should be made are relatively affordable & available.

The improvements that should be made are blatantly obvious, and at least a few of the needed imrpovements should have been addressed before the regular season even started. I digress, that's a discussion for another thread, not this one I suppose.

[danzig6767]

I really am of the belief that this can't be said enough: this team is really not as talented as we'd like to believe it is. It has the star players, but it has so many liabilities in the complementary players that it's just painful. Hopefully Melvin will change that.

It's true that Melvin's terrible decision to allow Yuni Betancourt to be his everyday shortstop has been the disaster that tons of people tried warning Doug it would be, but for some baffling reason, he ignored all of the warnings. Doug also put together this terrible bench. Doug did sign Nieves and allow him to infect the roster before being finally released.

 

That said, even for those who questioned if McGehee could continue being an .800-.850 OPS hitter, i don't think anyone could have envisioned Casey going 2 1/2 months with an OPS around .500-.525 during that long stretch of games. I don't think anyone could have envisioned Greinke having a 5.45 ERA, especially while having a 99/16 K/BB ratio. Hart has a quality .823 OPS, but he's really hurting chances to score more runs with his .218 BA and .699 OPS with RISP.

 

So without question some poor decisions by Melvin have come back to haunt him this year, especially Betancourt. I still can't believe Doug allowed Yuni to be the Brewers everyday shortstop. Melvin has also been hurt by some things out of his control, particularly the struggles of McGehee and Greinke. Then again, Doug also deserves blame with Casey by stubbornly sitting on his hands for 2 1/2 months now as McGehee has been in this epically bad slump at the plate along with terrible defense, while just refusing to give Green a chance at least in a platoon situation.

[adambr2]

Yeah, Green still being down in AAA is looking odder and odder every day. I almost think it's to the point that Doug is afraid to do it because he's afraid of how he'll look for not doing it sooner if Green succeeds.

[Marc Newfield of Dreams]

I really am of the belief that this can't be said enough: this team is really not as talented as we'd like to believe it is. It has the star players, but it has so many liabilities in the complementary players that it's just painful. Hopefully Melvin will change that.

I agree with you, but I'm not so sure Melvin will get the chance to change it. No playoffs could easily mean no more Doug.

[logan82]

I mean, it's a serious question though, it seems like EVERYTHING around here lately is 'it's bad luck', 'it's bad luck', 'it's bad luck.'.

 

Whenever something is happening, that is not up to expectations (Greinke, road performance), it's not just a poor performance, it's 'bad luck'.

 

I don't think it is bad luck. It is a fine line but I would say it is random variance. Their bad games just happen to be on the road. Maybe there is some reason for it but it isn't readily discernible.

[Ennder]

It would take probably at least 3 or 4 years for the road sample to actually be meaningful statistically. The NL central is full of 85 or so win talent teams though, I think most of us knew that going into the season.

[pebadger]

Three to four years of data also obscures the main question regarding THIS team. The team 2 years from now will be different from this year's team. Different enough that what it does on the road probably will have very little to add in terms of providing insight about what is happening now, even in retrospect.

[Raw Biz]

I wonder how closely Attanasio follows the minors. I'm not usually for owners getting involved but he should know that McGehee has been awful all season and that Taylor Green is tearing it up in AAA. He should just tell Melvin to call up Green and get rid of one of Counsell/Yuni/Wilson or send down McGehee.