2013 lineup/1B

[wisniewski]

Olney reported the Brewers are front runners for Hamilton? Awful. I don't buy that for one second, and don't think it makes much sense on any level.

I read that article. Olney did not say that the Brewers ARE front runners for Hamilton. It said that the Brewers COULD be in the running for Hamilton. Mostly, based on Johnny Narron being on the Brewers.

 

Definitely PL - after I posted in this thread I saw the thread in the Transactions forum and got to reading the article. It read a lot different than I was expecting. He said the Brewers could be frontrunners if another team doesn't overpay for Hamilton's services, which we all know is likely to happen. To me that is just Olney throwing names at a wall to write a story creating intrigue for Hamilton's services.

 

Some great points all around in that thread in the Transactions forum.

[monty57]

He {Olney} said the Brewers could be frontrunners if another team doesn't overpay for Hamilton's services

 

Sounds like some top-notch journalism... the Brewers may not make much of an offer at Hamilton, but if they happen to end up being the highest bidders then there's a chance Hamilton could go there.

 

In other news, if one candidate gets more than 270 electoral votes in next month's election, he could be the frontrunner at being President for the next four years. Good old ESPN... if there's no news, make some.

[thebruce44]

Do you have any compelling reasons to believe that a 34 year old's defense and offense will stay at a higher level than they have in the past 4 years other than blind faith?

 

I know your post wasn't directed at me, but you say turbo only has blind faith on his side, yet what do you have to base your belief of regression on besides basically just guessing that will happen? The OPS for Ramirez over the last four years.

 

2009-- .905

2010-- .745

2011-- .871

2012-- .901

 

If you go beyond further than the last four years, it's pretty amazing just how consistently close his stats have ended up being from year to year since 2004 when the Cubs traded for Aramis. What he did last year with the Brewers was far from being any sort of aberration, it was near exactly the kind of season he's had since 2004.

 

I'm guessing you missed my previous posts (or really all the previous posts about this particular topic) where I outlined my reasoning as opposed to turbo saying "I believe" as his reasoning. Its cool you want to jump into this discussion, but you should probably know whats going on as opposed to just assuming what happened before based on one post. I'll quote one of my previous posts, but maybe you should go back to the previous page and read the thread:

 

I would expect regression at C, 3B, and CF.

 

Why 3b? Ramirez put up basically the same numbers he has for the last 8 years.

 

Defense, games played, and age are the big reasons I say that. I don't like defensive metrics, but in this instance UZR seems to support the eye test on ARAM (I live in Chicago so I've actually seen him play quite a bit over the last few years). I'll use Fangraphs WAR to make my point since its a counting stat and takes defense into account:

 

2008: 4.7

2009: 2.2

2010: 0.5

2011: 3.7

2012: 6.5

 

So I think it makes sense to expect a minor offensive drop off and a sizable defensive one as well. Of course he was coming off a shoulder injury that hurt his defense the last few years so hopefully he keeps it up.

 

Anyway, I don't expect his ISO and defense to stay as good as they were this past season. But if you want to go out on a limb and take the over on him being within .050 OPS points of the last season I would probably agree with you. Problem is, that's regression on offense. Add in defense and games played at 35 and hopefully you can see where I am going with this. If nothing else, hopefully you can see that I put some thought into this.