Taylor Green called up

[TooLiveBrew]

What I actually meant was overall defensive reports -- Green is regarded as being a guy that gets the most out of his tools, but is a good defender with average athleticism.

[cwolf2012]

Don't look at fielding percentage. Bad bad stat for judging defense.

 

Green has been pretty much universally described as about average as a defender at 2B and 3B because of high effort levels. Putting him even in the same conversation as Braun at 3B is ludicrous. Braun might have been the worst defender in the history of 3B to play every day at a position.

[Ennder]

On the flip side the minor league reports on McGehee is that his defense is why he would make the majors and the reality has been he has been below average.

[a3uge]

Don't look at fielding percentage. Bad bad stat for judging defense.

 

Green has been pretty much universally described as about average as a defender at 2B and 3B because of high effort levels. Putting him even in the same conversation as Braun at 3B is ludicrous. Braun might have been the worst defender in the history of 3B to play every day at a position.

I am sorry for making that comparison. I knew it wasn't good, but yeah. The stats are terrible now that I look into them.

I do think McGehee's been much more consistent on defense recently.

I don't know the stats of rookies' fielding percentage in their first month of action, but I'm wondering if there's a drop-off from the pressure?

[TooLiveBrew]

Balls are probably also hit harder on average in the big leagues, but that's just a guess on my part. I don't expect Green to be stellar on defense, but I do think he'd be an upgrade over McGehee. I like Casey's arm, and his glove is solid -- not great, solid. Green will just cover more ground, and I think convert more outs overall.

[And That]

First baseman are usually worse in the minor leagues, field conditions are worse, and scorers down there are a little more liberal with the error calls. Green is nowhere close to Braun defensively at third.

[gregmag]

a3uge, you're still just throwing out assumptions about rookies with absolutely no meaningful evidence to back them up, and now you're adding fielding into the idle speculation. One other thing -- your repeated argument that "other teams have won with a bad ______________, so we certainly can too" is very strange. It reminds me of the arguments we used to hear on behalf of every washed-up 40 year-old LHP -- that Jamie Moyer was successful as a senior citizen with no discernible stuff, so why couldn't ________ be just as successful? Yes, other successful teams have big holes. They win *in spite of* their big holes, and to some extent they're lucky when they do. They would fill those holes if they could. The mark of winning teams is that they never stop making the smartest moves they can to improve, not that they reach a certain plateau and assume they live in the best of all possible worlds. (I actually started to type "passable," which is a pretty good Freudian typo.)

[a3uge]

a3uge, you're still just throwing out assumptions about rookies with absolutely no meaningful evidence to back them up, and now you're adding fielding into the idle speculation. One other thing -- your repeated argument that "other teams have won with a bad ______________, so we certainly can too" is very strange. It reminds me of the arguments we used to hear on behalf of every washed-up 40 year-old LHP -- that Jamie Moyer was successful as a senior citizen with no discernible stuff, so why couldn't ________ be just as successful? Yes, other successful teams have big holes. They win *in spite of* their big holes, and to some extent they're lucky when they do. They would fill those holes if they could. The mark of winning teams is that they never stop making the smartest moves they can to improve, not that they reach a certain plateau and assume they live in the best of all possible worlds. (I actually started to type "passable," which is a pretty good Freudian typo.)

With Green, there's no evidence either way that he's going to be a bust or he's going to be starter-worthy. All that you can do is start him a few times and get him pinch hit at bats and see how he does. After seeing what Gamel has done with the Brewers, I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable inserting him in the line-up over McGehee, and he's been pretty solid in AAA as well. There's a general assumption that McGehee's been terrible lately. He hasn't. He's been .277/.327/.722 since the break. That certainly isn't 'bad' or a 'big hole'. McGehee's an average hitter at this point with proven major league success. If Taylor Green starts and proves he's a great hitter, wonderful. The Brewers have added another great bat to the lineup. Just don't blindly put him as an every-day starter for a playoff team when he's never taken a major league at bat.

It would be an interesting move, but there's no way in hell RR is going to do this. RR would get so much hell if he changed the line-up to have Green the every-day starter and he turns out to have below the .277/.327/.722 line. Then what if McGehee gets inserted back in and can't find his swing again. If this was a month ago, I wouldn't mind it at all, but it's so late in the season to experiment with a guy when we honestly don't know what to expect. And the 'assumtions' I'm making about rookies is that we can't 'assume' anything until they've taken some at bats. If you look at players who lit up the PCL in 2010, it wasn't a given that they continued success immediately in the majors. Therefore, I'm not going to make 'assumptions' that Taylor Green will light up the majors. I think we should give him a shot, certainly, to see what he's got. He's definitely deserved it, but I would be shocked if they placed him in the every-day lineup this late in the season.

Edit: I've looked hard for players who have gotten called up this late in the season for their first at-bats and assumed a starting role for a playoff team. It's had to have happened a bunch before, but if anyone can point a couple people out, I'd love to see the stats on it.

Andruw Jones did it in '96, and went on to have a good playoffs. Wasn't quite the switch out a 'player not performing' case with Klesko, Grisson, and Dye.

[igor67]

Your argument about 'assuming' players performance was proven wrong 30 years ago. Minor league statistics with appropriate difficulty and park adjustments are about as predictive as major league data. That's the trick you can't conflate prediction with postdiction. We don't know for sure what any player (which includes major leaguers too, see Pujols start and Casey as well) will ever do, until he has done it. We can however make reasonable predictions based on the data.

[And That]

I can't figure out how to link to it directly, but there's a quick MLB.com video interview with Taylor Green on his Brewers.com player page.

 

He's definitely Canadian, eh. No doubt aboot it.

[monty57]

With Green, there's no evidence either way that he's going to be a bust or he's going to be starter-worthy. All that you can do is start him a few times and get him pinch hit at bats and see how he does...If Taylor Green starts and proves he's a great hitter, wonderful.

 

What Green (or anyone) does in a few at bats proves nothing. If a player with no power hits a HR in his first MLB AB, it doesn't prove he's a power hitter, and if a player is a good hitter, he won't suddenly turn into a bad hitter because he goes 0-fer-his-first-game.

 

Unfortunately, what I see happening is Green sitting for a week or so while Counsell and Wilson get pinch hit opportunities and starts at 2B/3B. Then, Green will be thrown out there for a pinch hit. If he gets a couple hits in his first handful of PAs, Roenicke will give him a start, and if he doesn't, he'll continue to ride the pine. In Roenicke's eyes, Green and Gamel's careers will come down to how they play in a hadful of opportunities.

 

Hopefully, Melvin will not give Roenicke any toys to start in front of Gamel next year, because the Brewers certainly do not have the payroll to build a team without significant contributions from their farm.

[MNBrew]

Don't look at fielding percentage. Bad bad stat for judging defense.

 

Green has been pretty much universally described as about average as a defender at 2B and 3B because of high effort levels. Putting him even in the same conversation as Braun at 3B is ludicrous. Braun might have been the worst defender in the history of 3B to play every day at a position.

Green has played very little 2B. The guy's a 3B, pretty much plain & simple. That he'd play much 2B seems like wishful thinking.

[NYChez]

Ryne Sandberg transitioned from 3rd base to 2nd base cold turkey after the beginning of his major league career. There are also many utility guys who play both positions well.

[Bernman23]

If Green had booted one ball at 3rd in the 9th inning, let alone back to back, it would have been (probably falsely) attributed to him being an unreliable rookie.

 

McGehee had an 80-100 AB stretch where he contributed virtually nothing to the offense ala Gamel in his 26 AB stretch. Betancourt has had a couple, and he's in one right now. If you isolate 26 AB's they've both had numerous stretches as bad or near as bad as Gamel's.

 

You and Roenicke are employing double standards. When the alternatives are this tenuous, your fear of change is irrational.

[Bernman23]

Don't look at fielding percentage. Bad bad stat for judging defense.

 

Green has been pretty much universally described as about average as a defender at 2B and 3B because of high effort levels. Putting him even in the same conversation as Braun at 3B is ludicrous. Braun might have been the worst defender in the history of 3B to play every day at a position.

Green has played very little 2B. The guy's a 3B, pretty much plain & simple. That he'd play much 2B seems like wishful thinking.

He's played 26 games at 2nd base this season. He came up as a 2nd baseman. I'm going to take a wild guess that the primary reason he was moved to 3rd was because Rickie Weeks was blocking him and they had a desperate need to finally fill the 3rd base position, which is what prompted the Brewers to speculatively try out Braun, Hart, and Gamel at 3rd as well. So he has recent experience at 2nd base and is arguably his more natural position. To say it's wishful thinking that he can fill in at 2nd base until Weeks returns doesn't show an awareness of his background.

[gregmag]

Edit: I've looked hard for players who have gotten called up this late in the season for their first at-bats and assumed a starting role for a playoff team. It's had to have happened a bunch before, but if anyone can point a couple people out, I'd love to see the stats on it.

Andruw Jones did it in '96, and went on to have a good playoffs. Wasn't quite the switch out a 'player not performing' case with Klesko, Grisson, and Dye.

Probably the reason you aren't finding many examples is that playoff teams are good, so they don't need to shake things up as much during the stretch run, unless somebody gets hurt. But good thought to look.

 

I don't disagree with you about just replacing McGehee with Green in the lineup now. Casey, as you point out, has been merely mediocre in the second half rather than terrible, and when a team is doing well I don't think you make big changes unless you have a pretty compelling reason for doing so (like the fact that Yuni Betancourt is your starting shortstop). I would give Green some starts against RHPs.

 

I do disagree, for reasons others have explained well, about your assumption that we can't know how Green will perform while we can know how McGehee will perform. We have just about the same quality of predictive evidence for both players. I think we often make the mistake of assuming that a major league player will simply keep doing what he has been doing, alongside the mistake of assuming that minor league performance doesn't tell us anything about likely major league performance. We know something about how Green is likely to perform, and we also know that McGehee (like any player) is a risk going forward.

 

Also, what Mat Gamel's so-so performance in limited MLB opportunities has to do with Taylor Green completely escapes me. You might as well say that we should bench McGehee because Craig Counsell has had a terrible year.

 

[a3uge]

Edit: I've looked hard for players who have gotten called up this late in the season for their first at-bats and assumed a starting role for a playoff team. It's had to have happened a bunch before, but if anyone can point a couple people out, I'd love to see the stats on it.

Andruw Jones did it in '96, and went on to have a good playoffs. Wasn't quite the switch out a 'player not performing' case with Klesko, Grisson, and Dye.

Probably the reason you aren't finding many examples is that playoff teams are good, so they don't need to shake things up as much during the stretch run, unless somebody gets hurt. But good thought to look.

 

I don't disagree with you about just replacing McGehee with Green in the lineup now. Casey, as you point out, has been merely mediocre in the second half rather than terrible, and when a team is doing well I don't think you make big changes unless you have a pretty compelling reason for doing so (like the fact that Yuni Betancourt is your starting shortstop). I would give Green some starts against RHPs.

 

I do disagree, for reasons others have explained well, about your assumption that we can't know how Green will perform while we can know how McGehee will perform. We have just about the same quality of predictive evidence for both players. I think we often make the mistake of assuming that a major league player will simply keep doing what he has been doing, alongside the mistake of assuming that minor league performance doesn't tell us anything about likely major league performance. We know something about how Green is likely to perform, and we also know that McGehee (like any player) is a risk going forward.

 

Also, what Mat Gamel's so-so performance in limited MLB opportunities has to do with Taylor Green completely escapes me. You might as well say that we should bench McGehee because Craig Counsell has had a terrible year.

You're right that we can't know how a player will likely perform. I generally think McGehee, as bad as he has looked this year, is still a safer option. Maybe RR watched the movie 'Miracle' too many times and doesn't want to upset the chemistry of the team. Maybe he's thinking Casey will pick it up. Whatever his reason is, I don't think it's a terrible move at this point to stick with him, and I don't think a move is drastically needed as everyone thinks it is. As much as RR seems like he's an aggressive manager on the bases, he seems pretty conservative with the line-ups and I don't really see anything big happening. If Casey starts slumping again and the Brewers only lead the division by 4-5 games, I can see him doing the move. But when the team has been on a tear, the last thing he wants is to shake things up.

I would also like Green to get some at-bats. We have him on the roster, so why not test the waters to see if he gets hot early for a potential platoon role?

And Gamel was brought up because he is in the case that all minor league success doesn't immediately correlate with major league success. I also gave the link to last year's 2010 PCL BA leaders, and if you go down the list, instant major league success was not the case. You're absolutely right that we can't know for certain how any player will perform over any stretch. Even Braun and Fielder have both been in slumps this year. If you put Green in, you don't know if he'll tear it up or be a total flop. You also don't know if McGehee will go back to first-half numbers or play like he did last year. The one thing Casey has going for him over Green is that he's been very good before at a major league level. He's proven capable of being a big bat, whereas Green hasn't at a major league level yet. I think that's ultimately what it may come down to for RR. And that kind of sucks because McGehee has been a huge disappointment this year. At the beginning of the season, I would never have imagined a discussion about whether or not to start McGehee. We shouldn't need to have this argument.

Another last thing to add before getting overly repetitive... it's also good that we can have this debate. How often can we argue against calling a player up? I'm so used to this team being out of the race by September that calling someone up and starting him is a no-brainer. It's nice being in the driver seat with a large lead and worried about existing players rather than getting worried about having enough starts for your prospects.

[MNBrew]

Green played all 60 of his rookie-ball games in '06 at 2B. In the 5 games since, he's played 30 games there, w/ 26 of those being this year.

 

Still, it's not unrealistic to make the argument that if he's going to get significant PT, it should be at the position he's played the vast majority of his games over the past 5 years. Otherwise it's like saying Braun should move back to his "indigenous" position of SS and Hart to his "indigenous" position of 1B, both points periodically brought up in various discussions on this site (typically "looking ahead to next year" & "project next year's roster" threads) and pretty consistently shot down as the discussions have played out.

 

On the point about the Brewers "trying out" Gamel at 3B as they did w/ Hart & Braun (heck, even Brad Nelson), Gamel was a 3B ever since he put on a Brewers uniform and had been pretty much a level behind Braun (though they were both picks in the '05 draft) coming up 'til he didn't hit major league pitching well, "got Macha'ed," and kept doing dumb things that resulted in him getting hurt multiple years in spring training. Other than 3 games at 1B in rookie ball in '05, Gamel never played a different defensive position 'til last year, when the Brewers figured that more defensive versatility would be beneficial to Gamel's potential usefulness to the Brewers -- and even then it was a mere 5 games in the OF in the minors.

[Raw Biz]

a3uge, you're still just throwing out assumptions about rookies with absolutely no meaningful evidence to back them up, and now you're adding fielding into the idle speculation. One other thing -- your repeated argument that "other teams have won with a bad ______________, so we certainly can too" is very strange. It reminds me of the arguments we used to hear on behalf of every washed-up 40 year-old LHP -- that Jamie Moyer was successful as a senior citizen with no discernible stuff, so why couldn't ________ be just as successful? Yes, other successful teams have big holes. They win *in spite of* their big holes, and to some extent they're lucky when they do. They would fill those holes if they could. The mark of winning teams is that they never stop making the smartest moves they can to improve, not that they reach a certain plateau and assume they live in the best of all possible worlds. (I actually started to type "passable," which is a pretty good Freudian typo.)

With Green, there's no evidence either way that he's going to be a bust or he's going to be starter-worthy. All that you can do is start him a few times and get him pinch hit at bats and see how he does. After seeing what Gamel has done with the Brewers, I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable inserting him in the line-up over McGehee, and he's been pretty solid in AAA as well.

Do people really think that we can judge Gamel based on his career 194 PAs over basically 3 years? Most of those came in 09 when he was 23 and he OPSed .760 with inconsistent playing time. He had 17 PAs last year and 27 this year. In other threads people are saying they don't feel comfortable with Gamel at 1B next year because he "hasn't done anything" at the MLB level. The guy has dominated in the minors and would probably have been a starter on a lot of teams for the past couple of years. He just hasn't gotten the chance here and he hasn't had any consistent playing time in his very little time up here.

[And That]

Green is not an everyday option at second base - he doesn't have the range. That's why he was moved off of 2B.

 

You could get by with him for an occasional start there, though.

[rluzinski]

a3uge, you're still just throwing out assumptions about rookies with absolutely no meaningful evidence to back them up, and now you're adding fielding into the idle speculation. One other thing -- your repeated argument that "other teams have won with a bad ______________, so we certainly can too" is very strange. It reminds me of the arguments we used to hear on behalf of every washed-up 40 year-old LHP -- that Jamie Moyer was successful as a senior citizen with no discernible stuff, so why couldn't ________ be just as successful? Yes, other successful teams have big holes. They win *in spite of* their big holes, and to some extent they're lucky when they do. They would fill those holes if they could. The mark of winning teams is that they never stop making the smartest moves they can to improve, not that they reach a certain plateau and assume they live in the best of all possible worlds. (I actually started to type "passable," which is a pretty good Freudian typo.)

With Green, there's no evidence either way that he's going to be a bust or he's going to be starter-worthy. All that you can do is start him a few times and get him pinch hit at bats and see how he does. After seeing what Gamel has done with the Brewers, I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable inserting him in the line-up over McGehee, and he's been pretty solid in AAA as well.

Do people really think that we can judge Gamel based on his career 194 PAs over basically 3 years? Most of those came in 09 when he was 23 and he OPSed .760 with inconsistent playing time. He had 17 PAs last year and 27 this year. In other threads people are saying they don't feel comfortable with Gamel at 1B next year because he "hasn't done anything" at the MLB level. The guy has dominated in the minors and would probably have been a starter on a lot of teams for the past couple of years. He just hasn't gotten the chance here and he hasn't had any consistent playing time in his very little time up here.

44 PA and 9 starts in the last 2 years. There's really been nothing to see at all because he hasn't played.

[monty57]

At one point, Melvin dumped a productive Overbay because of an unproven prospect at 1B. He traded Junior Spivey because of an unproven prospect at 2B. He gave an unproven prospect, who missed most of his AAA season with a major injury, the starting SS position. He later traded that proven SS and gave the job to an unproven prospect. He brought up an unproven 3B mid-season to start over the two proven veteran players who had been sharing 3B but underperforming.

 

For some reason, Melvin seems to have done a 180 on his previous moves. We built this team by allowing good prospects to replace underperforming or less talented veteran players. Now we seem to want to suppress talented minor leaguers with less talented, underperforming veteran players. I understand we're shooting for the playoffs, but talent is talent, and as we have done in the past, we should try to maximize the talent on our major league roster. Melvin knows better than to base a player's worth on a handful of PAs, but I'm not sure Roenicke does, so how much influence does Roenicke have over Melvin?

[jjfanec]

At one point, Melvin dumped a productive Overbay because of an unproven prospect at 1B. He traded Junior Spivey because of an unproven prospect at 2B. He gave an unproven prospect, who missed most of his AAA season with a major injury, the starting SS position. He later traded that proven SS and gave the job to an unproven prospect. He brought up an unproven 3B mid-season to start over the two proven veteran players who had been sharing 3B but underperforming.

Green is nowhere near as accomplished of prospect as Fielder, Weeks, or Braun. Those guys were top prospects. Green is solid but Hardy is probably a better example. Escobar got the job in part because we was a good prospect and in part because Hardy was starting to cost more money. These scenarios are far different than Taylor Green and Casey. I dont think any of those were in the midst of a playoff race either. Hardy might be the closest comparison and he really struggled when first brought up. In saying all that I hope Green gets a start soon.

[rluzinski]

I'm fearful that Counsell will get a start at 3B before Green does. RR may be too scared to test McGehee's fragile psyche (I don't think McGehee's psyche is fragile but I could see RR guarding against upsetting a veteran).

[Ando Calrissian]

At one point, Melvin dumped a productive Overbay because of an unproven prospect at 1B. He traded Junior Spivey because of an unproven prospect at 2B. He gave an unproven prospect, who missed most of his AAA season with a major injury, the starting SS position. He later traded that proven SS and gave the job to an unproven prospect. He brought up an unproven 3B mid-season to start over the two proven veteran players who had been sharing 3B but underperforming.

Green is nowhere near as accomplished of prospect as Fielder, Weeks, or Braun. Those guys were top prospects. Green is solid but Hardy is probably a better example. Escobar got the job in part because we was a good prospect and in part because Hardy was starting to cost more money. These scenarios are far different than Taylor Green and Casey. I dont think any of those were in the midst of a playoff race either. Hardy might be the closest comparison and he really struggled when first brought up. In saying all that I hope Green gets a start soon.

Hardy struggled in large part because, following nearly a year off after a shoulder injury, he was promoted to Milwaukee with barely any AAA time. I get what you're tying to say, but it's not quite the same situation. For Green and Hardy's career paths to mirror each other, Geen would have needed to be in Milwaukee last year while still not over his wrist surgery.

 

Yup, just checked, Hardy played all of 26 games at AAA. Looking back, it's remarkable how fast he moved through the system.