2007 Vent Thread, Part 3

[Bucky Rules]

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Vargas and Bush and even Cappy should be on short leashes. Gallardo does not deserve a DEMOTION to the pen after pitching as well as he has thus far.

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How does Suppan escape your wrath, but Capuano doesn't. That doesn't make much sense to me. Suppan's last good start was April 30th.

[Yaz]

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How does Suppan escape your wrath, but Capuano doesn't. That doesn't make much sense to me. Suppan's last good start was April 30th.

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Well ok I guess I understand this point but do you really think Ned is going to put a $10 mill a year pitcher in the bullpen?? GRRRR...

[Menotti80]

Suppan has had a few good starts since then, with his start in Detroit being one of them. But still overall VERY frustrating...

[Invader3K]

My ideal rotation would be:

 

Sheets

Capuano

Gallardo

Suppan

Villanueva

(doesn't have to be in that exact order)

 

I think it's obvious that is what it will become at some point, and I don't get why the Brewers are avoiding it. I understand they don't want to overstress their young pitchers, or save them for down the stretch, but Bush and Vargas really haven't been cutting it lately.

[Ennder]

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but Bush and Vargas really haven't been cutting it lately.

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In the last month and a half Bush has been the 2nd best starter in the rotation with an ERA under 3.50 and an OPS under .700.

 

It has become my vent that people keep ragging on him and how he has sucked recently and is hurting the team. He gave up a couple big innings early in the year but he easily could end the year as the 2nd best established starter on the team.

[bklynbrewcrew]

Losing 3 out of 4 to the Pirates is flat out embarassing. To make matters worse the Pirates play the Cubs this weekend and wont be pitching Snell or Gorzellany. The game we had to win was tuesday against Yeoman who is a journeyman scrub that looked like he was throwing batting practice. We better win minimum 2 of 3 against Washington.

[Klements Bratwurst]

While Pittsburgh is an improved team, it isn't completely embarrasing to lose to them. They are not necessarily a 60 win team anymore.

 

What does suck is as others mentioned losing to Youman the other day. They just didn't show up that game. Take that game and you split the series. I knew that if they didn't win against Youman, it would be real tough to beat Snell and Gorzelanny at that House of Horrors that is PNC Park.

 

If we win two of three in Washington our record will stand at 50-38 at the break. Not bad. (silver lining thread?)

[mikevan1818]

PNC Park....enough said.

[adambr2]

For a team that prides itself on being scrappy, fighters, gamers, etc. etc, they really suck at late rallies. You know how some teams have that shutdown closer that they feel very confident with a small lead in the 9th? Well, they don't need one against us, they have the fact that we aren't apparently capable of rallying late and finishing the job.

 

I think we have won one game where we trailed going into the 8th inning, against the Cubs where we went on to win in extras.

 

I do not believe we have won a game the entire season when we trailed in the 9th inning. Not one. Correct me if that is wrong. Every time we do manage to rally back to make it close, (9th inning against the Royals, 9th inning against the Twins, 9th inning against the Astros ,) we either come up just short or blow the game later.

 

Well, almost doesn't count in baseball. This team gets far too much credit for fighting til the very end, not giving up, etc. etc. Not saying they do give up, but I've got news -- if we're trailing after the 7th inning, it's pretty much over this year. Just no real exciting late rallies to speak of.

[jloos19]

I do not believe we have won a game the entire season when we trailed in the 9th inning.

 

Like the 9th game of the season against the Marlins. Hardy doubled to tie it in the 9th. Then the game got called off, and we won it in the 13th the next day on a Fielder single.

[Ennder]

We are 4-1 in extra inning games, not exactly what you are looking for but its not like this team is losing all the close games. We have the third highest OPS in the NL in close and late situations so its not like the bats are just going cold late in games.

[Bucky Rules]

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Suppan has had a few good starts since then, with his start in Detroit being one of them. But still overall VERY frustrating...

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He's had a few mediocre starts since then, but I wouldn't call any of them good. To me, you don't get a good start unless you get thru 7 while giving up 3 or less ERs.

[Ennder]

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He's had a few mediocre starts since then, but I wouldn't call any of them good. To me, you don't get a good start unless you get thru 7 while giving up 3 or less ERs.

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Then very few pitchers except aces are ever going to be good enough for you because I can count on two hands how many NL pitchers go 7 IP with 3 ER on a regular basis.

[Bucky Rules]

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Then very few pitchers except aces are ever going to be good enough for you because I can count on two hands how many NL pitchers go 7 IP with 3 ER on a regular basis.

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I'm talking about evaluating a single good start. There are plenty of pitchers that get good starts. I'm not sure what makes a 6 inning 3 ER performance a good one. Is a 4.50 ERA all of a sudden considered good? I'd call it mediocre.

 

Maybe, I'd call a 6 inning / 2ER (or less) performance good. But Suppan hasn't had any of those since April either.

 

And if you don't go at least 6 innings, you're likely burning 3 or 4 arms in the pen.

[Ennder]

If every pitcher on the team went 6 IP with 3 ER every single game for us we'd have an average starting rotation. If the worst game any pitcher ever had was 6 IP with 3 ER we'd have a great rotation. A 4.50 ERA is not sexy but 6 IP and 3 ER kept your team in the game without killing the bullpen and is a good job by the starter.

[Bucky Rules]

No... that would be a level of acceptability. Not bad, not good --- but mediocre. You have a different standard for good than I do -- which is fine, but arguing it isn't going to make me change my mind.

 

There are four SPs (Sheets, Cappy, Yo, and Bush) on the Brewers roster that have met my criteria for good games since April -- and five (Vargas) if we accept 6 innings with 2 or less ERs (which I have already conceded). That's every SP on the roster except Suppan. Some of his starts have been acceptable. I wouldn't call any of them "good".

 

Furthermore, there's only one pitcher (Vargas) who I would consider removing from the rotation before Suppan. The overall body of work from Suppan since May 1 has not been very good at all.

[adambr2]

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We are 4-1 in extra inning games, not exactly what you are looking for but its not like this team is losing all the close games. We have the third highest OPS in the NL in close and late situations so its not like the bats are just going cold late in games.

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No, I'm not saying we lose all the close ones, but it seems like when we trail late, we're pretty much done.

 

My bad on the Florida comeback, forgot about that one that we came back to win in the 13th.

 

Okay, I looked up some numbers for this year.

 

When trailing after the 7th inning, we are 3-29.

When trailing after the 8th inning, we are 1-33.

 

Now, I don't know what the league averages are, but I have to imagine that those numbers are pretty dreadful. For a team so good offensively, a team that usually comes out swinging the bats early and well in the 1st and 2nd innings, that's a little disappointing. I certainly don't expect us to win most of the time when we're trailing late, and again, I don't know the league averages, but that looks pretty bad to me.

 

As you can see, if we're trailing late, you can pretty much stick a fork in us. If we're such battlers, such gamers, I'd like them to show me it. Give me a reason to believe that we actually have a chance if we're down by 1 with 1 inning to play.

[M Skjellyfetti]

I did some research as well, and I found that the likelihood of any team this year scoring 1 run in any given inning is about 51.93% (Edit: That's wrong. The brewers should expect to score .5193 runs per inning, not have a 51.93% chance of scoring 1 run. See rluzinski's post below for explanation). (Here's how I found that in case I didn't do it right: I summed each team's total number of games played, then multiplied by 9. I also calculated total extra innings games played, and multiplied that number by 1.5--my guesstimate of the average extra innings played. The total of those two was 22,968 innings. I then found the total amount of runs scored, which was 11,749. I then divided runs scored by innings played to get .5193 runs scored/inning.)

 

Anyways, that's about where my knowledge of probability and statistics declines. I know it has something to do with combinations and/or permutations, but I can't really remember. If anyone wants to carry this on and figure out the actual probability of scoring runs in a specific late inning situation, please do so. But I think that regardless of what those results are, the Brewers' current record when trailing is just a small sample size deal anyways. I just don't think that the odds of winning when behind are going to be very good nonetheless.

[DougJones43]

The Brewers are 0-17 in games when they score less than 3 runs. Our starting pitching needs to step up and find a way to win some low scoring games.

[brettac1]

I'd bet that evens out some in the second half (at least to the % that an average team wins), though I'd bet the average team wins a very, very low percentage of games where they score 0-3. I'm too lazy to look, though.

[rluzinski]

The total of those two was 22,968 innings. I then found the total amount of runs scored, which was 11,749. I then divided runs scored by innings played to get .5193 runs scored/inning.)

 

That doesn't give you the probability of scoring at least 1 run an inning but rather the average runs scored per inning. You have to consider the actual run distributions per inning.

 

The Brewers have scored 4.9 runs/game, so if we assume a typical run distribution for a 5 runs/game team, we can say they have the following probabilities to score so many runs per inning:

 

0: 70%

1: 16%

2: 8%

3: 4%

4+: 2%

 

LINK

 

That lines up pretty close with what you would expect an average team to score an inning:

 

run frequency

 

So, we'd expect the Brewers to score 0 runs after the 7th about 50% of the time (.7 x .7) against an average pitcher.

 

In realty, in close and late situations, you are typically facing the opposing teams' best relievers, so the actual chances of scoring after the 7th are even worse.

 

The Brewers are 0-17 in games when they score less than 3 runs. Our starting pitching needs to step up and find a way to win some low scoring games.

 

The Brewers have given up 4.4 runs per game. That means they should give up 0 or 1 runs about 15% of the time. That suggests the Brewers "should" have a record of 2-15 or 3-13 in games they score less than 3 runs.

[DougJones43]

That suggests the Brewers "should" have a record of 2-15 or 3-13 in games they score less than 3 runs.

 

2 or 3 extra wins would look pretty good to me right now.

[rluzinski]

2 or 3 extra wins would look pretty good to me right now.

 

And they "should" only be 3-2 in extra inning games (instead of 4-1). Really, you can look at all kinds of splits and find the Brewers over performing or under performing all over the place. When you look at their runs scored and given up, they have 1 more win than expected. I think that's the best, overall indication of whether or not the Brewers are converting their talent into the appropriate number of wins.

 

I know, I'm not venting. Sorry. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/frown.gif

[DougJones43]

Well, I don't care what should or shouldn't happen based on probabilities while I'm in the vent thread. I come to the vent thread to act like a greedy child. I want to win some low scoring games. Lots of 'em, in fact...

[DuWayne Steurer]

I know that mathematically, good teams lose a number of series each year. I know mathematically that a good team will lose some series to bad teams. I know mathematically that a good team will lose a series on the road as often as they'll win them.

 

That all still doesn't stop me from being righteously pissed that we STILL can't go into Pittsburgh and play some decent ball. against a team sporting a flat .700 OPS, with a whopping 2 batters who have an OPS over .800.

 

This series is no bigger than any other, yes, I know, blah blah blah. Just let me be chapped for now, and I'll get over it eventually.