Is Counsell the Right Manager for the Brewers?

[Bombers]

If we look at the coaches the Brewers have had over the years we have

1. Ned Yost - Ned couldn't manage a bullpen but part of it was Melvin never gave him a bullpen. It ended with his dismissal and possibly too soon.

2. Svuem - Lets face it. Dale wasn't perfect but he was light years better for this team than what they got next

3. Macha - lets just call this the failed Macha experiment. He was horrible.

4. RR - his pitchers arms fell off all at the wrong time and we limped to the finish line in the best season in a long time. One could argue he didn't forecast the post season well

5 - CC - I am a fan of his. Some of me being a fan is I didn't like much of the above. Especially blowing prime years with a talented core on Macha. CC pulled a lot of the right strings last year. This year, it is a combination of things not working. Our bullpen is hit or miss and mainly it's been a miss. Our hitting is inconsistent and dependent upon HR's as pointed out by Stache in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=63&t=38962. Lots of injuries on our starting rotation.

 

At the end of the day the Brewers are not far off from a NL Pennant team. I actually like the build of the team. Give me average type starters (low cost) with an awesome bullpen (Higher cost) and a team that can hit. (Mix of high and low cost) That is my recipe. Sure, I agree maybe a little too reliant on the HR and the injury bug has really hurt our pitching but there is a lot to be excited for next year especially with CC at the helm and not some unknown person. As the saying goes, sometimes the grass isn't always greener on the other side and I just don't see CC as the issue.

[FVBrewerFan]

Imo, 2019 has been a bad year for Counsell. But he’s done a good job overall prior so, like Stearns a mulligan is in order. One thing I don’t like, and I’m pretty sure it’s the personnel, but, let’s put some runners in motion, hit and run, if nothing else it might just help mentally with the team’s ridiculously bad RISP failure.

 

Hit and run is dead, just like sac bunts. Analytics show giving up outs on the basepaths is not a good idea. Especially these days when K rates are so high across MLB. So if you don't like CC, you're not going to like any other manager.

 

Just guessing but I'm sure that's not your only beef with CC, probably something about bullpen use. Yet he has the team on the fringe of playoff contention with a -35 run differential. As long as he gets a mulligan from you though, CC will sleep well tonight.

 

Of course his bullpen decisions have not been good, I think most would agree.

 

With the right personnel, it is done, the Braves and pirates as an example. I was bringing it up because, as bad as this team is at getting runners to cross home plate without benefit of the home run, maybe just maybe what have we got to lose by changing things up, like I said maybe mentally it can help the batter? I’d hit and run with Grisham. Maybe the worst RISP batters Moose Cain Arcia, it could help?

 

No, most wouldn't agree. Just a handful of fans that believe they would make better decisions than a MLB Manager, coaching staff, analytics dept, and an entire advanced scout team.

[Daubs]

Only 2 real complaints about Craig:

 

1. His love affair with crappy veteran players. Although this goes back before Counsell and Stearns and is probably a league wide issue.

2. His ho-hum demeanor/expression about everything. Every time he goes to the mound to make a pitching change he looks like he has other things he would rather be doing. And while I know it probably does not make one bit of a difference it would be nice to see him lay in to an umpire every now and then. I really like last year when he finally did after losing like 1000 replay challenges in a row.

 

How many times is “every now and then” with regards to laying into an ump? He’s been ejected twice this season and that included the shouting match with Mike Estabrook. Best I can tell, over his managing career it looks like he’s been ejected 14 times.

 

Just because he isn't on the field arguing with an umpire doesn't mean he's not laying into them, either.

 

On Tuesday night, they caught Counsell giving the ump a piece of his mind from the top step on TV. I thought he was going to be tossed.....

[Warning Track Power]

In a vacuum, I think 2019 has been a bad year for Stearns & Counsell. I don't believe this means they need to be fired. However, I do think they need to take a real hard look at a couple of things.

 

1. Chris Hook and Andy Haines: Yes I know it's easy to blame hitting an pitching coaches when you have a season like this. However, can you name one player on the Brewers roster who you would consider is overachieving? I can name a number of players who I believe are underachieving (Shaw, Burnes, Peralta, Jeffress, Cain, etc...) but I cannot think of one player I believe is exceeding what could realistically be expected from them. Houser perhaps? My larger issue is that when it comes to the season long slumps that have occurred, from an outsider's point of view, it seems as if they have no clue as to how to get them out of it.

 

2. Re-signing Inexpensive Options: I think we all loved the idea of Burnes, Woodruff and Peralta in the rotation to start the year. However, moving them to the rotation significantly hit the Brewers bullpen and, when two of them failed, severely hurt their rotation. Given Miley signed a very cheap deal and Gio had to take a minor league (and fortunately was available given Burnes and Peralta's struggles), these are options the Brewers have to pick up in the future. Cheap quality depth is something the small market Brewers cannot pass up on.

 

3. Diversifying the Offense: I understand the game has universally gone to a 3TO system and part of that may be due to shifting, but man it is frustrating to watch. A lineup with the players the Brewers have should not have this many problems scoring runs consistently. Is it coaching? Is it approach? I don't know but Stearns and Counsell have to address this in the offseason.

 

4. Stop Undervaluing Your Own: Yasmani Grandal is an amazing offensive catcher. However, his defense (despite what the advanced stats may say) does not equate to $18m worth of value. We saw this firsthand in the NLCS. Pina, while no world beater, is a great defensive catcher and really didn't need replacing. Grandal's $18m could be spent elsewhere to shore up deficiencies in the roster.

 

Bottom line, hindsight is 20-20. Stearns and Counsell are going to be fine but there are some significant lessons they should be taking from this season. I for one trust that both of them will take some of these lessons and the Brewers will be right back in it in 2020.

[Baldkin]

If we look at the coaches the Brewers have had over the years we have

1. Ned Yost - Ned couldn't manage a bullpen but part of it was Melvin never gave him a bullpen. It ended with his dismissal and possibly too soon.

2. Svuem - Lets face it. Dale wasn't perfect but he was light years better for this team than what they got next

3. Macha - lets just call this the failed Macha experiment. He was horrible.

4. RR - his pitchers arms fell off all at the wrong time and we limped to the finish line in the best season in a long time. One could argue he didn't forecast the post season well

5 - CC - I am a fan of his. Some of me being a fan is I didn't like much of the above. Especially blowing prime years with a talented core on Macha. CC pulled a lot of the right strings last year. This year, it is a combination of things not working. Our bullpen is hit or miss and mainly it's been a miss. Our hitting is inconsistent and dependent upon HR's as pointed out by Stache in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=63&t=38962. Lots of injuries on our starting rotation.

 

At the end of the day the Brewers are not far off from a NL Pennant team. I actually like the build of the team. Give me average type starters (low cost) with an awesome bullpen (Higher cost) and a team that can hit. (Mix of high and low cost) That is my recipe. Sure, I agree maybe a little too reliant on the HR and the injury bug has really hurt our pitching but there is a lot to be excited for next year especially with CC at the helm and not some unknown person. As the saying goes, sometimes the grass isn't always greener on the other side and I just don't see CC as the issue.

 

Macha was perfectly fine as a manager. There was nothing he was going to do to win more with Braden Looper, Yovani Gallardo and Randy Wolf topping the rotation.

 

The fact that they won 80 and 77 games over his two seasons is incredible.

[Baldkin]

In a vacuum, I think 2019 has been a bad year for Stearns & Counsell. I don't believe this means they need to be fired. However, I do think they need to take a real hard look at a couple of things.

 

1. Chris Hook and Andy Haines: Yes I know it's easy to blame hitting an pitching coaches when you have a season like this. However, can you name one player on the Brewers roster who you would consider is overachieving? I can name a number of players who I believe are underachieving (Shaw, Burnes, Peralta, Jeffress, Cain, etc...) but I cannot think of one player I believe is exceeding what could realistically be expected from them. Houser perhaps? My larger issue is that when it comes to the season long slumps that have occurred, from an outsider's point of view, it seems as if they have no clue as to how to get them out of it.

 

Grandal. Moustakas. Hiura. Woodruff. Albers. Yelich. Lyles. Hauser. Gio. Davies. Claudio. Guerra.

[3and2Fastball]

I love it when fans think they know which relief pitcher should be brought in when..when in reality they have zero inside info as to how each pitcher's arm is feeling on a given day...

[homer]

I'm sure many people that wanted Ned Yost fired now think he's a great manager for participating in two world series and winning one.

[Thurston Fluff]

I'm sure many people that wanted Ned Yost fired now think he's a great manager for participating in two world series and winning one.

 

I never wanted him fired and felt somewhat vindicated by what he did with KC. His bullpen management was a major issue most had with him here yet that was the biggest strength of those World Series teams.

Now we have a thread that starts out by saying he didn't like Counsell at first and made up his mind a couple years ago that he wasn't the right man for the job. One of his first complaints is the bullpen management. What do these two managers have in common? They both had deep playoff runs by leaning heavily on a great bullpen.

I say lets fire him now and watch him win a World Series for Seattle by relying on the bullpen. It's the Brewer way.

[Roderick]

In a vacuum, I think 2019 has been a bad year for Stearns & Counsell. I don't believe this means they need to be fired. However, I do think they need to take a real hard look at a couple of things.

 

1. Chris Hook and Andy Haines: Yes I know it's easy to blame hitting an pitching coaches when you have a season like this. However, can you name one player on the Brewers roster who you would consider is overachieving? I can name a number of players who I believe are underachieving (Shaw, Burnes, Peralta, Jeffress, Cain, etc...) but I cannot think of one player I believe is exceeding what could realistically be expected from them. Houser perhaps? My larger issue is that when it comes to the season long slumps that have occurred, from an outsider's point of view, it seems as if they have no clue as to how to get them out of it.

 

Grandal. Moustakas. Hiura. Woodruff. Albers. Yelich. Lyles. Hauser. Gio. Davies. Claudio. Guerra.

 

You consider these players as overachieving?

 

I would say that Woodruff has been somewhat overachieving, but I figured one of Burnes/Peralta/Woodruff would be at least this good.

 

Lyles just got here and Houser too small a sample size.

 

Grandal, Moose, Claudio, Hiura, Albers and Davies are about what I expected. Yelich is having his career year.

 

Guerra has been bad.

[jjfanec]

4. Stop Undervaluing Your Own: Yasmani Grandal is an amazing offensive catcher. However, his defense (despite what the advanced stats may say) does not equate to $18m worth of value. We saw this firsthand in the NLCS. Pina, while no world beater, is a great defensive catcher and really didn't need replacing. Grandal's $18m could be spent elsewhere to shore up deficiencies in the roster.

 

What is Grandal so bad at defensively? He had a bad NLCS but scouts and stats say he is a good defensive catcher. His bat is definitely worth replacing Pina. Pina is a good back up catcher, but if we was our starter at the trade deadline next year we would asking for an upgrade.

[Thurston Fluff]

The only thing I wonder about with Grandal is how well he calls a game. I really have no clue if he is part of the problem with our pitching staff this season but the pitchers ERA is better with Pina than Grandal and he is one factor that's different between this year's staff and last year. I have no clue how well he does nor how much it really matters but nothing shows he is better at it than Pina for sure.

[xisxisxis]

As for the batting order thing - I think there are studies that say your best hitter should hit #2. I don't have the data for you right now but I trust that they've got some data behind that.

Yes there are. Have you looked at how they did their analysis or just looked at the conclusion? How many here actually looked at the methodology and the assumptions when looking at these analysis vs. just restating the conclusion? I have a problem with their methodology and we could go into it in another forum/thread, but when one of the most referenced studies says you put your best hitter at #1, #2, or #4 you have to wonder what did the #3 do to them as a child!

 

Someone brought up the Angels and Mike Trout. Here's some data:

 

 

What this table summarizes is the LA Angels players from 2017-2019 with the highest opportunity to knock in a baserunner (baserunners on for each) and their Plate Appearances (PA). I've included a BR/600 PA to normalize the data to compare easily across batters. I think we can all agree that Trout is the best hitter on the Angels by a long-shot. I think we can also agree that players like Kole Cahoun, Andrelton Simmons, Albert Pujols and Justin Upton are significantly average/below average batters. What is shocking in these number, is the number of baserunners that poor hitters "see" where they bat compared to Mike Trout at the mostly #2 spot in the Angels lineup. In 2018, Justin Upton, Pujols and Ohtani had about 100 more baserunners on when they batted in the #3/#4 spot compared to Trout at #2. Trout obviously contributes to that due to his high OBP, but if you adjust for his OBP compared to an average hitter in his spot, he is accounting for only ~40 of the 100 and probably less as you likely wouldn't/shouldn't put a league average player at #2.

 

One of the assumptions of the previous analysis which lead to the selection of #2 as the best slot for your best hitter was that the opportunities for having men on base was not significantly different from the 2&4 slots. In reality, the Angels have introduced a worst case scenario (almost). Mostly the difference for Trout in number of runners on when he bats is the fact that the OBP for the #1 hitter in 2019 is the highest it has been in the last 3 years and if you look at OBP of runners before trout and number of baserunners when Trout bats you get this graph:

 

 

This isn't rocket science. Higher OBP, higher baserunners for Trout. Which is exactly the point I was making with Yelich. Put high OBP guys in front of him (not just 1 at the #1 position), but also at #2 to increase the chance of baserunners on when an elite hitter comes to the plate. (BTW, in 2019 Moustakas has had 50 more baserunners than Yelich in almost identical PA's - it would really be nice if Yelich was hitting with more batters on than a worse hitter).

 

Is this a major factor in the teams success? No. The overall impact is likely in the 10-15 runs a year. So about 1-1.5 games. So what many will say, but that's an important 1-1.5 games. Brewer shifting is probably in the same ballpark of impact, but most don't question that. So why is putting your best hitter in a position to have the most impact so controversial? Also, most managers get the big things correct. Where a manager can stand out is getting those last few win(s) out of each and every situation. Counsel does the big things just fine, I think he needs to work on this.

 

And the issue of lower hitting position = lower Plate appearances, that is correct. On average there is a 15-18 PA drop for each batting position, but the reason you don't put your best hitter #1 (especially in the NL with the pitcher hitting #9) is that there's much fewer baserunners for them to drive in. As you drop in the order the baserunners go up and the PAs go down so it is a balance, but looking at the baserunner numbers, it would be easily justified to lose 15-18 PA from Yelich/Trout if dropping that 1 slot increase the number of baserunners they see by 50-100.

[tmwiese55]

The only thing I wonder about with Grandal is how well he calls a game. I really have no clue if he is part of the problem with our pitching staff this season but the pitchers ERA is better with Pina than Grandal and he is one factor that's different between this year's staff and last year. I have no clue how well he does nor how much it really matters but nothing shows he is better at it than Pina for sure.

 

Somebody on here as this debate has gone on went through all this data in his time with LAD and found nothing to it. If I recall, he usually beat his replacement but maybe some years was a smidge behind and of course LAD has had great pitching his whole time there. Chances are this is a small sample thing with him and Pina, though I grant Pina is great at D. But that doesn't mean Grandal is bad.

 

[sarcasm]Heck, lets not forget PIna was apparently half benched last year for his supposed lesser ability than a 40 year old journeyman in his ability to call games.[/sarcasm]

[homer]

I'm sure many people that wanted Ned Yost fired now think he's a great manager for participating in two world series and winning one.

 

I never wanted him fired and felt somewhat vindicated by what he did with KC. His bullpen management was a major issue most had with him here yet that was the biggest strength of those World Series teams.

Now we have a thread that starts out by saying he didn't like Counsell at first and made up his mind a couple years ago that he wasn't the right man for the job. One of his first complaints is the bullpen management. What do these two managers have in common? They both had deep playoff runs by leaning heavily on a great bullpen.

I say lets fire him now and watch him win a World Series for Seattle by relying on the bullpen. It's the Brewer way.

 

I still don't think Ned was a good manager. Good Ra Ra guy but bad in-game strategist. You could make the argument that anyone could have managed the Royals bullpen in 14 - 15 and looked smart regardless of role.

[Baldkin]

In a vacuum, I think 2019 has been a bad year for Stearns & Counsell. I don't believe this means they need to be fired. However, I do think they need to take a real hard look at a couple of things.

 

1. Chris Hook and Andy Haines: Yes I know it's easy to blame hitting an pitching coaches when you have a season like this. However, can you name one player on the Brewers roster who you would consider is overachieving? I can name a number of players who I believe are underachieving (Shaw, Burnes, Peralta, Jeffress, Cain, etc...) but I cannot think of one player I believe is exceeding what could realistically be expected from them. Houser perhaps? My larger issue is that when it comes to the season long slumps that have occurred, from an outsider's point of view, it seems as if they have no clue as to how to get them out of it.

 

Grandal. Moustakas. Hiura. Woodruff. Albers. Yelich. Lyles. Hauser. Gio. Davies. Claudio. Guerra.

 

You consider these players as overachieving?

 

I would say that Woodruff has been somewhat overachieving, but I figured one of Burnes/Peralta/Woodruff would be at least this good.

 

Lyles just got here and Houser too small a sample size.

 

Grandal, Moose, Claudio, Hiura, Albers and Davies are about what I expected. Yelich is having his career year.

 

Guerra has been bad.

 

Grandal has a 116 OPS+ and has an OBP 25 points higher than any season.

Moose is having his best year ever.

You expected Alex Claudio to have a 117 ERA+? To have a sub .600 OPS against lefties?

Guerra hasn't been bad. 70 innings at a 117 ERA+ isn't bad. In fact it's damn good.

Davies has a 121 ERA+. You expected him to be 21% better than a league average pitcher? As the Brewers #5 starter? His next best season he posted a 112.

[Thurston Fluff]

I'm sure many people that wanted Ned Yost fired now think he's a great manager for participating in two world series and winning one.

 

I never wanted him fired and felt somewhat vindicated by what he did with KC. His bullpen management was a major issue most had with him here yet that was the biggest strength of those World Series teams.

Now we have a thread that starts out by saying he didn't like Counsell at first and made up his mind a couple years ago that he wasn't the right man for the job. One of his first complaints is the bullpen management. What do these two managers have in common? They both had deep playoff runs by leaning heavily on a great bullpen.

I say lets fire him now and watch him win a World Series for Seattle by relying on the bullpen. It's the Brewer way.

 

I still don't think Ned was a good manager. Good Ra Ra guy but bad in-game strategist. You could make the argument that anyone could have managed the Royals bullpen in 14 - 15 and looked smart regardless of role.

 

That is what most Yost haters did argue. But couldn't the same be said of every manager on every team? If you have enough good arms you can't screw it up. If you don't there is little to nothing you can do to make it better. I've always agreed Yost wasn't a good in game manager. I just didn't think it was that big a deal. But he did get players ready to fill roles that needed filling and was generally liked by his players. Counsell IMHO does that as well but has the added ability to make decent in game decisions. I'm really not sure what more anyone can expect out of any manager.

[bill hAll Star]

As for the batting order thing - I think there are studies that say your best hitter should hit #2. I don't have the data for you right now but I trust that they've got some data behind that.

Yes there are. Have you looked at how they did their analysis or just looked at the conclusion? How many here actually looked at the methodology and the assumptions when looking at these analysis vs. just restating the conclusion? I have a problem with their methodology and we could go into it in another forum/thread, but when one of the most referenced studies says you put your best hitter at #1, #2, or #4 you have to wonder what did the #3 do to them as a child!

 

Someone brought up the Angels and Mike Trout. Here's some data:

 

 

What this table summarizes is the LA Angels players from 2017-2019 with the highest opportunity to knock in a baserunner (baserunners on for each) and their Plate Appearances (PA). I've included a BR/600 PA to normalize the data to compare easily across batters. I think we can all agree that Trout is the best hitter on the Angels by a long-shot. I think we can also agree that players like Kole Cahoun, Andrelton Simmons, Albert Pujols and Justin Upton are significantly average/below average batters. What is shocking in these number, is the number of baserunners that poor hitters "see" where they bat compared to Mike Trout at the mostly #2 spot in the Angels lineup. In 2018, Justin Upton, Pujols and Ohtani had about 100 more baserunners on when they batted in the #3/#4 spot compared to Trout at #2. Trout obviously contributes to that due to his high OBP, but if you adjust for his OBP compared to an average hitter in his spot, he is accounting for only ~40 of the 100 and probably less as you likely wouldn't/shouldn't put a league average player at #2.

 

One of the assumptions of the previous analysis which lead to the selection of #2 as the best slot for your best hitter was that the opportunities for having men on base was not significantly different from the 2&4 slots. In reality, the Angels have introduced a worst case scenario (almost). Mostly the difference for Trout in number of runners on when he bats is the fact that the OBP for the #1 hitter in 2019 is the highest it has been in the last 3 years and if you look at OBP of runners before trout and number of baserunners when Trout bats you get this graph:

 

 

This isn't rocket science. Higher OBP, higher baserunners for Trout. Which is exactly the point I was making with Yelich. Put high OBP guys in front of him (not just 1 at the #1 position), but also at #2 to increase the chance of baserunners on when an elite hitter comes to the plate. (BTW, in 2019 Moustakas has had 50 more baserunners than Yelich in almost identical PA's - it would really be nice if Yelich was hitting with more batters on than a worse hitter).

 

Is this a major factor in the teams success? No. The overall impact is likely in the 10-15 runs a year. So about 1-1.5 games. So what many will say, but that's an important 1-1.5 games. Brewer shifting is probably in the same ballpark of impact, but most don't question that. So why is putting your best hitter in a position to have the most impact so controversial? Also, most managers get the big things correct. Where a manager can stand out is getting those last few win(s) out of each and every situation. Counsel does the big things just fine, I think he needs to work on this.

 

And the issue of lower hitting position = lower Plate appearances, that is correct. On average there is a 15-18 PA drop for each batting position, but the reason you don't put your best hitter #1 (especially in the NL with the pitcher hitting #9) is that there's much fewer baserunners for them to drive in. As you drop in the order the baserunners go up and the PAs go down so it is a balance, but looking at the baserunner numbers, it would be easily justified to lose 15-18 PA from Yelich/Trout if dropping that 1 slot increase the number of baserunners they see by 50-100.

 

Have you considered the fact that Upton, Pujols, etc. see more runners to knock in because they're...batting behind Mike Trout?

 

 

EDIT: OK, I do see one reference to it in the middle of the post but...that is a massive deal in this analysis.

 

Trout gets on at about a .450 clip these days.

 

600 PA * 45% = 270 times on base

 

600 PA * 33% (Calhoun/Upton territory) = 200 times on base.

 

That basically makes up your difference of guys on base.

 

There is also the idea of one of your guaranteed at bats (the 1st inning) could result in 2 out, nobody on for Trout or Yelich roughly 10% of the time making it very easy to pitch around them and just live with facing the next guy.

[xisxisxis]

EDIT: OK, I do see one reference to it in the middle of the post but...that is a massive deal in this analysis.

 

Trout gets on at about a .450 clip these days.

 

600 PA * 45% = 270 times on base

 

600 PA * 33% (Calhoun/Upton territory) = 200 times on base.

 

That basically makes up your difference of guys on base.

 

There is also the idea of one of your guaranteed at bats (the 1st inning) could result in 2 out, nobody on for Trout or Yelich roughly 10% of the time making it very easy to pitch around them and just live with facing the next guy.

That's the beginning of the calculation, then you have to reduce the 70 by the times Trout removes baserunners because of his high OPS and HR rates. Every HR contributes to his OBP, but removes all baserunners for the next batter. Also, you need to account for hits that reduce the baserunners from 2 (trout knocks in) to 1 (trout on) or from 1 (trout knocks in) to 1 (trout on) as he gets an OBP for each of these events, but he reduces or doesn't add to the baserunners for the next batter. I used a rough calculation for these as I didn't have time to go get individual game level data. That's why I used a ballpark of 50 for Trout's contribution to baserunners and that clearly contributes to the elevated numbers for batters behind him, but is hardly the majority of the impact for the other positions baserunner numbers.

 

I will make 1 comment about the previous studies. Most incorporate stats for runner on base when deciding the best position for your best hitter. The issue I have is that they use a combination of all data for MLB, yet, they state repeatedly that most teams are using a poor strategy for deciding on the batting order. So the data they are relying on to make a conclusion about where to put your best hitter is flawed by the cumulative bad lineups of teams in baseball. So bad data in leads to a "good" conclusion? That also is likely why the 3rd position in the batting order takes a hit overall. To prefer the 4th position over the third means there are significantly fewer baserunners at 3 then the drop in overall PA going from 3rd to 4th. That difference is likely driven by all the teams that put poor OBP players 1/2.

[homer]

 

I still don't think Ned was a good manager. Good Ra Ra guy but bad in-game strategist. You could make the argument that anyone could have managed the Royals bullpen in 14 - 15 and looked smart regardless of role.

 

That is what most Yost haters did argue. But couldn't the same be said of every manager on every team?

 

Yost refuses to put guys in when leverage matters. Greg Holland never pitched outside the 9th inning except one or two times. Wade Davis never pitched outside the 8th inning unless Holland was hurt or unavailable. He says "You are my 9th inning guy, I can't use you when there are two outs in the 8th even though it's a favorable matchup"

[Thurston Fluff]

 

Yost refuses to put guys in when leverage matters. Greg Holland never pitched outside the 9th inning except one or two times. Wade Davis never pitched outside the 8th inning unless Holland was hurt or unavailable. He says "You are my 9th inning guy, I can't use you when there are two outs in the 8th even though it's a favorable matchup"

 

Some pitchers do better in strict roles while others are more versatile. The trick is finding enough if that type of pitcher to fit the way the pen is going to be used. If you have the wrong players each way will fail. Kimbrel might be an example of a 9th inning only guy. How would he have done being used like Hader? Does getting more versatile pitchers mean we are Counsell proofing the pen like so many said KC did for Yost?

No, it means they're finding the players for the strategy. The better the players the better each way works out. See our bullpen vs last season for example.

Personally I don't think one way is better than the other. I think having the right pieces for each way is most important.

Ideally I'd like to see a manager use the way that fits that year's players the best but I'm not sure that is realistic considering the player movement during any given season.

 

To bring this back to the topic Counsell fits what the Brewers want. Ned probably wouldn't. But the same might be said in reverse for other teams/situations.

[bill hAll Star]

Some pitchers do better in strict roles while others are more versatile. The trick is finding enough if that type of pitcher to fit the way the pen is going to be used. If you have the wrong players each way will fail. Kimbrel might be an example of a 9th inning only guy.

 

There is almost no proof of this other than an old baseball adage that is suddenly disappearing as analytics continue to infiltrate baseball.

 

Kimbrel only has 22 innings in the 8th inning over his career, but he certainly isn't a bad pitcher in that inning.

 

I understand the idea that a certain guy wants to warm up at a certain time or his adrenaline is higher in the 9th, but it's not as if they're pitching on mars when they come in for a different inning. It's still a major league baseball game.

 

In fact, we need to look no further than Wade Davis, who was an absolute stud in 2014 for the Royals in the 8th inning when they made it all the way to the World Series and lost in game 7...and he did fine in the 9th inning the following year.

 

I don't agree wholly with xisxisxis 100% on the #2 vs. #3 hitter thing (even if he is right, it is a very small matter IMO) but at least he has presented some data. Almost every other complaint on here is, "I think Counsell is a bad manager because [insert pre-2010 baseball adage here]."

[topper09er]

I will make 1 comment about the previous studies. Most incorporate stats for runner on base when deciding the best position for your best hitter. The issue I have is that they use a combination of all data for MLB, yet, they state repeatedly that most teams are using a poor strategy for deciding on the batting order. So the data they are relying on to make a conclusion about where to put your best hitter is flawed by the cumulative bad lineups of teams in baseball. So bad data in leads to a "good" conclusion? That also is likely why the 3rd position in the batting order takes a hit overall. To prefer the 4th position over the third means there are significantly fewer baserunners at 3 then the drop in overall PA going from 3rd to 4th. That difference is likely driven by all the teams that put poor OBP players 1/2.

 

Excellent, I totally agree. I remember looking at those studies with the #1, #2, #4 conclusion and thinking that data is based on a sample of previous MLB games where the best hitter was overwhelmingly already hitting #3 and I never found a satisfying answer to explain how that was accounted for.

 

Sorry not enough time to read your thorough post, but did you account for the fact that the #2 hitter I think gets something like ~20 more PAs over 162 games than the #3 so that is one benefit.

[645]

Really, Anyone with an open mind can see the Brewers don't have a good pitching stuff and they should not be still in the Playoff race and that It's Counsell Outstanding management of what he has as the only reason they are still are in it.

[Sal Bando]

I have lived in a number of states as an adult. I can attest to the fact that every fan base criticizes their manager’s bullpen usage and line up construction. 100%.