Impressions of Roenicke 2012

[logan82]

Consistency please, RR.

 

If you're willing to empty out your bench in one game and pinch-hit for position players with no one on the bench available if the game ends up tied, and then a few days later, presented with the exact same situation except you have players on your bench left, and you play it completely differently, it really looks like you're just winging it out there.

I think that is pretty consistent. He seems to be unable to accurately distinguish the difference between talent unless it is obvious like Braun. He also values experience more than talent in cases like that.

[adambr2]

Pinch-hitting Izturis for Ishikawa in a big spot in the 8th is a pretty big managerial offense. Leaving in Ishikawa to try and tie the game, even with the L/L matchup, or going with any of Aoki, Kottaras, or Gamel were all better options. You could make a pretty good case that Gallardo, who certainly has more power and sadly, a better career OPS than Izturis, was a better option.

 

There are certain guys that are such a liability at the plate that you need to put any illusions of a favorable R/L matchup out of your mind. Izturis is one of those guys. He has no business pinch-hitting for anybody in any situation that doesn't involve emptying the bench in a blowout game.

[Marc Newfield of Dreams]

The Izturis decision is especially bad considering the pitchers spot was up next.

 

So he needlessly burned an extra bench player, and hurt his team's chances of tying the game. Brilliant managing.

[SenatorShriv]

RRR seems to do a decent job of balancing respect for the player that needs to "work things through" and giving the team the best chance to win. The major exception to that would be McGehee last year but I've always wondered if that was a decision that was made for him to some degree. He's not Ned Yost - clearly hiding better talent behind veterans, but he isn't yanking guys out of there on cold streaks either. I think overall its a pretty good balance that allows the team to win more games in the long run.

 

The Izturis decision was just weird.

[logan82]

The Izturis decision was just weird.

but sadly par for him. He played Kotsay plenty with better options behind him. He kept McGehee almost all of last year when he could have gone to Doug and said, "Hey, Casey is stinking up the joint, how about we give that Green kid who is raking in AAA a shot at 3B."

[Ennder]

The Izturis decision was just weird.

but sadly par for him. He played Kotsay plenty with better options behind him. He kept McGehee almost all of last year when he could have gone to Doug and said, "Hey, Casey is stinking up the joint, how about we give that Green kid who is raking in AAA a shot at 3B."

 

Simply not true. McGehee was terrible early, decent in the middle of the season and terrible again right at the end. They should have let someone slot in for McGehee more early in the season but they didn't handle him anywhere near as badly as people want to suggest.

[Baldkin]

I suppose if you consider his .666 OPS in July as "Good" or "Decent" then yes, maybe you can say what you're saying.

 

He basically had one good game in August, and beyond that was awful for four straight months.

.739 April

.593 May

.422 June

.666 July

.804 August (.671 after Aug 3rd 3 HR game).

 

He was never really good.

[brwrsfan]

I've said it before and I'll continue to say it that I just don't simply think RR is that great of a manager. He might motivate his players and think outside the box sometimes, which I like, but he consistently does things that makes it MORE difficult for us to win games. And often times last year it seemed like we won despite his decisions and manuevers, not because of them.

[Ennder]

I suppose if you consider his .666 OPS in July as "Good" or "Decent" then yes, maybe you can say what you're saying.

 

He basically had one good game in August, and beyond that was awful for four straight months.

.739 April

.593 May

.422 June

.666 July

.804 August (.671 after Aug 3rd 3 HR game).

 

He was never really good.

 

Large gap between great and bad enough to lose his job though. You have a guy with 2 straight good years for your club, gets off to a pretty normal April and then struggles for 2 months, that isn't enough to bench him. Then in July and August he shows signs and then when he starts to flounder again late August you start to sit him some for Hairston. I just think the comments are overblown. Players are going to have 2 month bad stretches, a manager can't just bench a guy every time it happens or he won't have a team left. They could have sat him down a couple games in May and June for sure but this wasn't some horrible mismanagement.

[Thurston Fluff]

You have a guy with 2 straight good years for your club, gets off to a pretty normal April and then struggles for 2 months, that isn't enough to bench him.

 

The decision one when to pull someone is always controversial mainly because there isn't a simple answer as to when. I think how the team is doing overall plays into it as much as the player's performance does. If the team is doing well and the player is an established one with a decent track record it makes sense to leave him in longer. Especially when the alternative is a AAA player who hasn't had a full season there yet.

[TooLiveBrew]

Large gap between great and bad enough to lose his job though.

 

The stretch of May through July is exactly what people refer to when they say RR stuck with McGehee too long. It wasn't like he was just getting unlucky, he flat-out forgot how to hit last season. You could see it when you watched his PAs, & you could see it in the results.

[Ennder]

Large gap between great and bad enough to lose his job though.

 

The stretch of May through July is exactly what people refer to when they say RR stuck with McGehee too long. It wasn't like he was just getting unlucky, he flat-out forgot how to hit last season. You could see it when you watched his PAs, & you could see it in the results.

 

And it is the same as Yost sticking with Hardy and then him figuring it out or with managers sticking with Jenkins during his cold stretches. Sticking with Hart in 2009 when he was awful in May and half of June etc. If McGehee had hit well in September people wouldn't even be talking about this anymore, it would have just been a typical cold streak that is frustrating and then forgotten.

[Thurston Fluff]

I guess it should be mentioned he is doing ok in Pittsburgh now. Maybe not great but as a part time player he seems to be doing as well as can be expected. Better than Green is in AAA at this point anyway.

[TheCrew07]

And it is the same as Yost sticking with Hardy and then him figuring it out or with managers sticking with Jenkins during his cold stretches. Sticking with Hart in 2009 when he was awful in May and half of June etc. If McGehee had hit well in September people wouldn't even be talking about this anymore, it would have just been a typical cold streak that is frustrating and then forgotten.

 

The situation between Hardy's rookie season and McGehee's 3rd season are so dissimilar there's not even an adequate comparison to made there. Hardy was a 22 year old rookie coming off a major shoulder injury with 112 AAA PAs after a respectable but not stellar AA campaign. McGehee was 28 year old with limited athleticism and skill who had never performed in the minors near what his 2009 line was. His best MiLB OPS was .776 and he put up an .859... his decline was as predictable as every player with limited talent that had come before him and had a great season like Brady Clark.

 

The difference between McGehee and every other player you mentioned is that they had/have legit talent and athleticism while Casey clearly did not. He can put the bat on the ball but that's all he brings to the table and if he loses that mental edge he's got nothing left to offer as his OBP is only +50-60 points higher than his BA, his range is terrible, and his glove and arm are average at best.

 

It's a good thing Hairston came along when he did, in no way am I a huge Taylor Green guy, he's a slightly more athletic version of McGehee with the exception that he's a left handed bat. However I don't believe there's any way that Green would have done worse than McGehee's .626 OPS for the season, we had a very cheap internal option available all season but Melvin didn't make a move until Weeks went down. Fortunately when Weeks came back they had enough sense to move Hairston to 3rd which was only thing that saved us from McGehee starting in the playoffs.

 

Edit. As for Green's performance this season in AAA, he's clearly dejected after his demotion and is trying to get back on track. It's not an excuse, he needs to pick it up and he knows he does, he just hasn't handled the demotion back to AAA well at all. He talked about it in an interview posted on the minor league forum last week and the Nashville team as a whole is looking historically bad.

[Ennder]

I was talking about 2008 when Hardy was sitting at a .617 OPS on May 17th and didn't break a .700 until late June. The point is if a manager is going to bench a proven player every time he struggles for a couple of months he is a bad manager. You might sit him for 2 or 3 days and give him a mental break but after 1000 quality PA you don't bench him over 150 PA where he struggles.

 

On May 24th last year McGehee had a .711 OPS. From May 25th until July 24th he had a .468 OPS and got 6 games off. He then went on a month and a half stretch of over .800 OPS and collapsed again for the last half of September. It is a very valid opinion that he should have sat more than just 6 games during that horrid stretch but I completely disagree about it being complete mismanagement.

[JohnBriggs12]

From July 6 through Sept. 5, the team was 39-15. McGehee raised his OPS from .582 to .659 and had 8 HR and 32 RBI in those 54 games. If you prorate that production over 162 games, its 24 HR, 96 RBI.

 

He fell off after that, driving in just 2 runs the rest of the season, but one could understand why a manager wouldn't make a change until he finally did.

[TooLiveBrew]

The point is if a manager is going to bench a proven player every time he struggles for a couple of months he is a bad manager.

I never felt McGehee was a proven player.

 

From July 6 through Sept. 5... McGehee raised his OPS from .582 to .659

With a stunning .797 OPS over said time period.

 

I get that he was adequate at the plate for a small part of last season. The problem is that he was terrible for the bulk of the season, along with being awful on defense.

 

With all this said, I'm actually really warming up to Roenicke overall. I think the act of keeping Gamel out of a few recent games after the collision at the plate is discussion-worthy. One way in which RR can help the team is working towards injury prevention (as best he's able), and I think he's probably been an asset overall in that respect so far in his tenure with the Brewers. For as much as us fans like to clamor that 'player X doesn't need a day off! his replacement is so much worse!', RR really seems to have a great bead on how his guys are feeling... both physically & mentally.

 

I realize the in-game strategic moves will probably always be the main way in which fans evaluate managers, but the more exposure I have to Roenicke, the more it seems obvious that he's providing value behind the scenes.

[Funketown]

TLB, I too, am warming up to Roenicke. I generally think the bar is set pretty low for in-game managerial decisions, but I'm comfortable in saying that I don't think Roenicke's decisions this year have been that poor.

[TheCrew07]

Again, Hardy has legitimate talent, McGehee does not... the relative veteraness has nothing to do with it. There was simply no reason to believe McGehee's true talent was close to what he put up in his first 2 seasons, he simply overachieved.

 

I think McGehee can put a league average OPS through out his prime, something in that .750 range, but he's a stop gap player, he's someone who's good enough when you don't have anyone better... only we did have someone who could have performed better. Just like Narveson, Estrada, Gonzalez, and so on down the line. These aren't guys you build around, these are guys you hope produce until you can upgrade the position.

 

Hardy's worst OPS by month in 2008 was .603... he went .603, .701, .969, 1.031, .873, and .751.

 

Hardy was certainly bad in April but a slow start to the season is a far cry from putting up a .422 or a .497 OPS. There's a bad month and then there's completely terrible, McGehee had 2 months with a sub .500 OPS, a month with a sub .600 OPS, and a month with a sub .700 OPS. If Hardy would have hit that bad you can bet I would have been clamoring for Escobar much earlier than I to give someone else a chance.

 

A .422 OPS is so horrible it baffles the mind, and that was the end of a steady 3 month decline in production.

 

JB12... seriously? You're going to take his best hot streak and extrapolate that out over a season as proof? Cripes you can do that for just about any player and they look All-Star if not HOF worthy.

[Thurston Fluff]

As for Green's performance this season in AAA, he's clearly dejected after his demotion and is trying to get back on track. It's not an excuse, he needs to pick it up and he knows he does, he just hasn't handled the demotion back to AAA well at all.

 

I don't want to sound like I'm bashing Green. I think he can and will get back on track. I was pointing out Casey has turned himself around to a degree as well while Green has had a setback. Seeing that just shows how hard it is to determine who would have had the better odds of being the better player last season. Both had shown they can play and both have had setbacks. To blame a manager for deciding to stick with one vs the other when both could sink or swim is like blaming him for the results of a coin flip.

[Oxy]

JB12... seriously? You're going to take his best hot streak and extrapolate that out over a season as proof? Cripes you can do that for just about any player and they look All-Star if not HOF worthy.

 

His best hot streak? it was a 2 month period of time that corresponded almost exactly with the time period that people are saying he should have been benched. The point was that Roenicke stuck with him and he produced during that time when most around here thought he should have benched him.

[TheCrew07]

Well he didn't really start hitting until July 17th, JB12 cherry picked a larger sample based on HR totals which wasn't representative of the actual hitting results. Going 1-4 or 1-5 and hitting a HR every 3rd day around some 0-fers doesn't mean you're actually hitting. McGehee entered July with a .221 AVE and still had a .221 AVE on 16th. His AVE peaked at .243 on Aug 20 and after that it was a slow and relatively steady fall back to .226 to end the year. It's nice that his only hits were HRs, but he was pretty much done with multiple hit games by Aug 20th. In fact he only had 2 multi hit games the rest of the season after that point.

 

So I stand by my "hot month" comment and regardless what does the timing of that month have to do with the conversation? He should have been on the bench no later than the middle of June, not the middle of July, the talk only got louder on the forum through mid summer because Casey is a likeable dude and people were slow to jump off his bandwagon. Those of us that never trusted the guy would have made the switch much sooner. Furthermore how do we know that Green wouldn't have outhit McGehee regardless? He likely wouldn't have had the 3 HR game to skew his power numbers, but who's to say he wouldn't have been more productive overall? Taylor's confidence was at an all time high, he was absolutely raking in AAA. I'd put the odds at slightly over 50% in Taylor's favor that he would have outproduced McGehee's best month, and I'm certain he would have outproduced his June-September.

[Ennder]

Sounds like a lot of bias to me, you would be quick to bench McGehee because you didn't believe in him and you are quick to forgive Green because you seem to like him. That is fine and dandy but you can't blame a manager for not having the same biases you do. Unfortunately this is how many complaints about managers happen, you can't expect them to have 100% the same opinion of every player that you do and they aren't wrong when they disagree with you. Something like playing Kotsay can easily be attacked just by looking at stats but with McGehee there is way too much opinion being thrown in.

 

For what it is worth I also feel like McGehee had over performed, but his rate stats had been good enough to give him that 2 month leash that they did as well and when you break down the numbers that is what it really was, a 2 month rotten stretch surrounded by some pretty average chunks of time.

[thebruce44]

1. Hardy wasn't as bad offensively in 2009 as McGehee was in 2011.

2. Hardy was a more talented player coming up and had enjoyed far more success at every level.

3. Hardy provided defensive value at a position higher on the defensive spectrum.

 

This isn't a worthy comparison.

[Ennder]

The point was more that players struggle for 2 months at a time all the darn time and you can't just go benching them over such a small sample, but the discussion is pointless at this point, just forget I mentioned it.