Do you believe the 2014 Brewers, talent wise, were better than an 82-80 record?

[3and2Fastball]

If not, then certainly you don't believe that merely adding Adam Lind is going to get us in the playoffs, do you?

 

If you believe that Ryan Braun can get back to being a 6-7 WAR player, and Segura can get back to being the 3.2 WAR player he was in 2013, then do you also believe that Gomez & Lucroy can sustain their 2014 pace? (Because if Lucroy & Gomez fall back a little, improvements from Braun & Segura just put us right back at 82-80 and that is if we can replace K-Rod's production in the bullpen. Please don't tell me we can count on Broxton for that!)

 

Meanwhile, I think a lot of people have underrated Rickie Weeks' .274 BA, .357 OBP and 1.2 WAR in 2014.... who replaces that production? Scooter? Seriously? You just expect that all of a sudden Scooter Gennett is going to hit LHP (at a .357 OBP pace, no less) and go from a 1.8 WAR guy to a 3 WAR guy? I suppose that is possible but seems foolhardy to count on

 

(edited for grammar)

[pacopete4]

I believe people are trying to place statistics way too much towards what the record would be. Certainly a lot of what you just said, could happen and it might but either way, each season is its own beast. We see it all the time with teams. The team we had last season could have very easily gotten hot the last month and won the world series. They were good enough to. Did that happen? Obviously not. But thinking we need a complete upgrade all over the diamond is very foolish thinking to me. We can do a few little things throughout this offseason (and maybe something big too) and compete for a world series in 2015.

[patrickgpe]

I think they overachieved for most of the season and are somewhere between a 82 win team and the 90+ win team they were projected to be.

 

I agree that simply replacing Overbay with Lind is not enough.

 

The 2nd base platoon worked last year and I don't know if Scooter will be able to handle 2nd base every day.

 

The closer situation is unknown at this point

 

Overall I think they are probably a little worse than they were last year, but its too early in the offseason to freak out over it.

[3and2Fastball]

A 3.0 WAR from Scooter puts him into or close to the Top 10 of all MLB 2B's.... I'm a Scooter fan but that seems like a stretch

 

1 Ben Zobrist Rays 5.7

2 Ian Kinsler Tigers 5.4

3 Robinson Cano Mariners 5.2

4 Jose Altuve Astros 5.1

5 Brian Dozier Twins 4.6

6 Howie Kendrick Angels 4.6

7 Dustin Pedroia Red Sox 4.4

8 Chase Utley Phillies 4.1

9 Neil Walker Pirates 3.7

10 Dee Gordon Dodgers 3.1

[patrickgpe]

its because he only hit against righties this season. With Weeks gone, not sure if there will be a platoon player with him. If he played every day he would be far away from the top 10.

[Bombers]

I think too many people put too much emphasis on numbers. Not trying to be rude, but do the litmus test of looking across the diamond. We have good players spread out all over. And to think that they can't finish better than .500 again is discarding many factors including a huge one in luck. Teams get hot at the right time (see the Royals) and teams fall off at the worst times (See the Brewers) ...

 

In reality, you have no idea who will improve and who will not. One thing I am pretty positive on is I feel they are more of an above .500 win % team than a less than .500 win % team. Lets take a look at their overall win %, their 3 big streaks, and the rest:

[pre] Wins Losses Total Win %

Overall……. 82 80 162 0.506

Win Streak 20 7 27 0.741

Lose Streak 1 1 11 12 0.083

Lose Streak 2 1 13 14 0.071

Remaining 60 49 109 0.550[/pre]

If you take the .550 win percentage against 162 games, that gives them 89 wins. I do honestly feel, that is a good representation of how good of a team they are. If things go right, they will win 90, if they go really sour, the will win 74. If things repeat from last year and they have these horrible streaks, then .500 seems about right. I do think adding Adam Lind does make an improvement over last year (even with losing Rickie Weeks.)

 

The largest unknown of this team is going to be the bullpen. If the bullpen turns out well (and lets be honest, no one has any idea on if it will or won't) then this team has a real shot at 90 + playoffs. If the bullpen isn't good, even with good play from the rotation + positional players, I just don't think it's good enough to overcome a bad bullpen. So in the end, my non statistical - quick glimpse analysis says, yes I do believe they can be better than 82-80 record.

 

And one last note, as I have said all along; if we are going to pick a year to have a clunker and be out of the race by June - well this is it. Teams overpay during races, it just is what it is. With expiring contacts of Yo, Lohse, Ramirez, Parra - I really do feel that could net a decent haul into our farm.

[3and2Fastball]

Overall I think they are probably a little worse than they were last year, but its too early in the offseason to freak out over it.

 

I wholeheartedly agree. Hopefully it is just posturing on Melvin's part, but it seems to me as though they are pretty much done other than getting more bullpen help. There was a lot of talk after they announced they were retaining Roenicke that there might need to be some changes in player personnel. I highly doubt that it was determined that Marco Estrada's attitude lead to the downfall of the '14 Brewers

 

I'm (obviously) on the outside looking in, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of urgency on the part of the Brewers to change much. They seem (again, outside looking in) like an organization that is fairly content with it's lineup, like an organization that believes they are better than their 82-80 record.

 

And one last note, as I have said all along; if we are going to pick a year to have a clunker and be out of the race by June - well this is it. Teams overpay during races, it just is what it is. With expiring contacts of Yo, Lohse, Ramirez, Parra - I really do feel that could net a decent haul into our farm.

 

Well, there is that. Good point.

[brewcrewdue80]

Yes I believe I predicted them to win more than 82games. And Im not a fan of this 20-7 start was a fluke and at some points they had to play to 1-11+1-13 stetches to bring them back down to where "that poster" believed was an 82win Brewer Team.

 

I can understand a 2-8 10 game stretch say or a 3-10 stretch if being on the road vs. Playoff caliber teams and losing tight close games. But the 1-13 stretch happened with 6games at home/ a 3game set on the road vs. the last place team in division.

The 1-11 stretch happened with 7 of the games at home! With just 4 games vs. teams that wound up with a winning record. Experiencing a 4 game sweep at home vs a 73win Phillies team.

 

You just can't tell me that due to them starting 20-7 they logically had to have two runs like that to even it out. 13games at home in that 2-24 stretch run. Facing a bunch of Losing record teams? They should have been expected to win at least 6games at home even with believing they were due to regress to the individual's "norm"

[SRB]

Looking at WAR is parsing things too much. All that needs to happen for the 2015 team to win 90+ games and make the playoffs is for them to play anywhere close to the way they did for most of last season, and then just not collapse at the end. There's no law of averages - they were incredibly hot to start the season, and then they just played improbably poor at the wrong time. Anything could happen next year.

[MVP2110]

Without knowing specific stats off the top of my head, I'd say we will improve by a few wins minimum at first, and having parra be our fourth outfielder instead of Schafer for an entire season will help. I would also expect segura to bounce back somewhat, not to all star level but to be average at the plate. I don't expect Gogo or luc to have quite the same season they did but I don't think they take a major step back. I think a lot of this season will depend on Braun and how he reacts to the surgery and how our bullpen does... which to me at least is impossible to predict, as bullpens vary so much year to year.

[owbc]

They ended up right where they should have. No aspect of the team was exceptional and no aspect was terrible. The offense was slightly above average, pitching was slightly below average. When you look at the individuals on the roster, most of them performed about what was expected...a few slightly better (Lucroy), a few worse (Braun). The inconsistency was the biggest surprise to me. The hot streak was just as inexplicable as the cold one.

 

Next year has the potential for them to be in the 80s again with some upgrades. Who knows if Braun will be any better or not, it's a complete mystery. First base is finally improved which is nice. However, playing nearly the exact same roster and expecting different results is asking for disappointment. Hopefully they make some more moves before the season starts.

[logan82]

They had some luck that injuries were minimal this year. If Gennett is the full time 2B there is a strong possibility he not only negates Weeks positive contribution but diminishes his own.

 

Fiers could help the rotation improve and we can still hope Peralta improves a bit.

 

My guess is that were will be somewhere between 80 and 86 wins in 2015.

[JohnBriggs12]

The Brewers 2014 season can be broken down pretty easily. One of their biggest bats the first 81 games when they reached 19 games over .500 was Ramirez. Over the final 81 games he drove in a grand total of 26 runs mostly from the cleanup spot. If you believe he can rebound (frankly I don't) then you should be optimistic. I just think the offensive issues that plagued them in 2014 will now be at 3B instead of 1B.

 

The more lefties Gennett sees, the better he will hit them and I think seeing them regularly will actually help him against RH too by keeping his swing from getting too long and forcing him to not pull off pitches. I don't think it's a coincidence that Gennett started off hot after seeing a lot of lefties in Arizona. If they find a real quality RH bat to platoon with him then fine, but I wouldn't just stick some career minor leaguer in there.

 

Melvin seems content with his current roster which tells me he's getting decent health reports on Henderson and Thornburg. If those two are in fact ready to go next year, the pen should be okay with a tweak here and there.

[hawing]

If someone had told me last March that the 2014 Brewers' record would be 82-80, I would have pretty much nodded and felt that was plausible - a modest improvement over 2013.

[IndyCrew]

I believe every SP in the rotation has an above average chance of winning any game started. We aren't counting the days until Sheets pitches anymore. If the offense is even league average, I think we can contend for a playoff spot.

[reillymcshane]

No, I don't think our talent level was better than our 82-80 record. Here's what I saw in last year's team before the year began:

 

Average rotation. Starters ended up with a 3.69 ERA. NL average was 3.74. Just about average.

 

The starters, for the most part, met my expectations. I don't think anyone expected these guys to suddenly become all-stars. But solid starters - yes. That's what we got. Even when we had a problem (Estrada and then Nelson), it was balanced by Fiers' excellent performance.

 

And one huge thing - no major injuries.

 

Average to slightly above average lineup. We scored 650 runs. The average NL team scored 640, so we were right about average.

 

I think we faltered a bit here, but not massively. A-Ram, Gomez and Davis pretty much performed as I thought. I expected more from Braun, Segura and the Overbay/Reynolds platoon (I also expected more from some bench guys - Bianchi and Schafer). We got better performances from the Scooter/Weeks platoon, and from Lucroy.

 

Ultimately, the offense was slightly disappointing - but it wasn't massive.

 

Here there were no major injuries (unless you count Braun's hand). There were minor ones, but nothing major that forced a guy out 1/2 the season or more.

 

Average bullpen. 3.62 while the NL average was 3.53 - slightly below average.

 

All over the place - but not a shocker. Bullpens are like that. K-Rod, Duke and Smith weren't expected to do what they did. Same with Jeffress. But Kintzler, Thornburg and Henderson regressed or had injuries. And the slot Wang took up hurt as well.

 

So, can we expect much difference in 2015? Not really. I think the team is about .500ish. But that doesn't mean we can't be better.

 

Several players I expect to improve - Braun, Segura, Lind/RH platoon partner. But I also see red flags. A-Ram's age and fragile nature scare me. What versions of Braun and Segura show up? Scooter and Davis both faltered a bit in the 2nd half of last year. Were their limitations being exposed? Will they adjust? (On the flip side, Scooter and Davis could get better - but I don't we can realistically expect huge improvements from either.)

 

A couple of other positives - I think having a quality back up OF will help. Parra will allow the team to have a competent player if someone does get hurt or struggles. And in the rotation, Peralta could certainly improve.

 

The bullpen is a wildcard. I see the potential, but it could implode.

 

A big thing is if we can avoid injuries at key positions. That will be crucial. We did last year, and it really helped.

 

Ultimately, I think the pitching staff can be league average. The lineup has room for improvement - but I think, realistically, not huge amounts. Enough to get us 8-10 more wins? I don't know. A healthy Braun adds a few wins. A competent Segura gives you 2 more. An .800 OPS from 1st base adds another couple of wins. It's all incremental. The tough part is that even if all those things happen, someone is likely to regress. Maybe Khris Davis turns into a .220 hitter. Or A-Ram misses half the games.

 

If we stay mostly healthy and we have a few key rebounds (Braun, Segura, 1B), and no one really goes into the crapper too badly, this team could contend. But that's a lot of ifs.

 

I've said this before - management is making a team that says 'if most everything goes right, we can contend'. That's what we did last year - that's what we are doing next year. But in the end, things usually even out, meaning (like 2014), we end up pretty much how we expected - .500ish.

[MNBrew]

A few comments:

 

- I truly felt all along the 2014 Brewers could be a 90-win team with legit playoff chances. As with most Brewers teams, it would've taken about everything going right or nothing going heinously wrong, which was definitely the case until the final 11-25 stretch. . . . Also, I think the point above that takes out their uber-high & uber-low extreme stretches and projects .550 ball for the year is the most level way to look at last year's team.

 

- Perhaps other than St. Louis (because they're pretty current-Packers-like since 2011), darn never every NL team faces lots of ifs. We just know the Brewers' ones painfully well. To discount the Brewers' playoff chances in mid-November with most of the offseason remaining (the World Series ended less than a month ago!) on account of optimism being based on "too many ifs" gives disproportionate credence to the Brewers' ifs without similarly carefully considering in great detail the potential significance of the ifs of all the other teams.

 

- Re: one of the first posts above, Rickie Weeks' numbers seemed pretty hollow much of last year. He was usually a very poor hitter in terms of clutch situations -- yeah, some of the numbers look good now, but he was rarely the guy who would drive in runs, get on base, whatever, when it was really needed. He was just a better version of Mark Reynolds. Need a rally started? Don't expect Rickie to do it. Need a hit to advance a baserunner or, Heaven forbid, drive in a clutch run? Nope. 0-6 with totally bad approach at the plate with the bases loaded, including 3 strikeouts. Ouch.

 

- The notion that some have that Adam Lind & Scooter are each only half of a platoon at best seems like it's already assumed to be automatic. I'm not saying it won't prove true. But I'm not about to fully buy it, either. Some of the numbers suggest it could be prudent. On the other hand, to suggest they shouldn't even be given a chance to be the everyday guy at their respective positions seems foolish and, esp. in Scooter's case, calls out for the small sample police to intervene in the discussion.

 

- The stats just stated above by reillymcshane oversimplify how well things were going before the wheels came off. It took that 11-25 finishing stretch to bring the offense down & pitching facets up to league average. To suggest that about 78% of the year was really just a fluke (a 78% which included the dominant opening stretch and the into-the-ASB buzzkill stretch), that the 22% that was the final collapse was more the reality and therefore should carry the weight, seems like nothing more than a blatantly cynical, glass-half-empty outlook which, because it's how the season ended, gives naysayers the convenient but flawed upper hand in the "prove they weren't this bad" recent memory sweepstakes. (Note: I'm not saying the evident concerns should be dismissed -- not at all. Rather, I'm saying the positives should be comparably considered, too.)

 

- Finally, to the point made about the offense being mostly league-average-ish, I think that's sheer folly which has simply taken the recent-memory thing to an extreme. The Brewers have had one of the top offenses in the NL from 2011 through the 2014 ASB. It took the utter implosion of the offense in the 2nd half, esp. Aug/Sept, to finally bring the offense down to league-average after 3.5 years of being one of the teams most other clubs were chasing. To say they were only average all along is to blatantly close one's eyes to the past 4 years. Were there still obvious flaws in the offense over that span? Of course. But the Brewers were still a higher-end offense than most clubs were in spite of those shortcomings.

[lcbj68c]

Overachieved. Probably closer to a 77-win team talent wise.

[brewers4eric]

The hot start was a pleasant surprise. I will echo hawing's sentiments.

 

Our roster resembles some of the all hit/no glove teams of the 1990s, with the exception that we're strong up the middle with LuCroy, Segura, and Gomez. The rotation has some depth, the bullpen will probably determine if we improve on 82 wins.

 

Go Brewers

[davego]

All I know is Vegas set the over/under at 80.5. I hit on the over but certainty sweated it out in September. I'd say 82 wins was about correct for this team.