ESPN's Brewers fantasy team preview

[Tisko]

http://sports.espn.go.com/fantasy/baseball/flb/story?page=mlbdk2k8milpreview

 

The guy obviously threw this together in a few minutes. No mention of Corey Hart at all, Fielder hit 40 homers apparently last year, and Dave Bush is going to be the second starter.

 

 

(modified thread title --1992)

[Ennder]

Articles like that are always funny. Cubs breezed past us by taking the division with 2 days left in the season and it basically came down to them winning the H2H matchup on a 3 run shot by Aramis.

[GenoSeligPrieb]

Wow.

 

It's amazing to almost smell the condescension from someone from Fox.

 

OK, of course the Brewers dashed a lot of hopes last year, mine included. And I can't call them the best team in the NL right now. But migod, the "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" line he stole from Pete Townshend simply doesn't apply. The Brewers no longer have Bando and Taylor shaping our drafts, our farm system is feeding capable players to the parent club, and the new boss, Mark Attanasio is NOT the old boss because he's outspending the Seligs nearly 3 tiimes over.

 

It's OK to read a dissenting opinion, but as you noted, it seems like Karabell didn't take the time to ready any trends, and because we're not a New York team, he wasn't interested enough to bother.

 

If anyone's basing even part of their fantasy draft on what this careless "journalist" writes, then I hope they're in my league this year!

[GAME05]

what bugs me is he is one of their top fantasy guys and these are people who you'd expect to be looking harder at the smaller teams like the Brewers.

 

it's so hard to really pinpoint one thing he says to argue with, because a half-page later he contradicts himself. there were more than a few examples of that.

 

Karabell is paid to thump out articles like mad, so in some ways i'd expect him to lean more on experience than research. i think it's more about the poor editor who let this thing pass through. numbers aside, it's just plain poorly written. my own editor would have torn this thing apart.

 

and heck, forget editing, don't they have factcheckers over there at espn? Fielder's HRs last year? is that hard to look up? Karabell re-reads this, the editor looks at it, it goes through factcheck, and then the web editor posts it, so right there is four people, and none of them know how many HRs the NL-leader hit last year?

 

and did i read it wrong, or did he actually say Munson would be a viable NL-only fantasy option? I'm not saying Munson will be bad, but in a 10-team league, would you be drafting a teams' backup catcher?

[SeriesFinale]

This article is barely worth the effort people are going to put into trashing it... I see better analysis on a daily basis right here at bf.net.

 

 

(cleaned up code --1992)

[Invader3K]

Pretty sloppy, but it's ESPN, so unless it's Boston or New York, I don't expect a whole heck of a lot.

[Oldcity]

That was garbage. I find it funny that a fantasy baseball writer failed to even mention Corey Hart, who's probably even more valuable "fantasy-wise" than he is in "real life."

[ILuvDaBush]

Maybe they just recycled last year's preview with a bit of an imbelishment...

[sgtcluels]

Meh.. let em cast doubt. Then they can release the "We knew it all along" articles later in the year when the Cubs do what the Cubs do (Choke) and we win... the world.

[TheBrewer]

"While Braun destroyed left-handed pitching to the tune of a sick 1.480 OPS, Fielder hit 40 home runs mostly against right-handers, so opposing teams won't be able to mix-and-match pitching so well."

 

He's saying that Fielder hit 40HR's against right-handers, of which he did exactly.

 

 

I didn't read every single detail, I skimmed a little, but it really wasn't that bad guys. They've done worse before. He didnt' mention Corey Hart which is the only really flaw I saw on his article.

[1992casey]

He's saying that Fielder hit 40HR's against right-handers, of which he did exactly.

 

No, he isn't. He's saying that Prince hit a total of 40 homers and that most of them were against righties. This indicates that he looked at the Prince's splits, but didn't cross-check his verbiage for accuracy.

[jazzytrav]

Fielder hit 40 home runs mostly against right-handers

As Casey just said, he was clearly stating that he hit 40 home runs and that they were "mostly" against right-handers.

 

Craig Counsell being mentioned anywhere in a fantasy article shows the worth of the article. That is, unless you have a 500 player team.

 

And for some reason, Karabell has been in love with Dave Bush for a long time. Doesn't seem to care about anyone except Fielder, Braun, and Dave Bush.

[crewcrazy]

Karabell loving Bush doesn't surprise me much...a lot of the fantasy experts have been high on Bush for the past couple years due to his K rate stats, which can make him a valuable fantasy pitcher depending on what kind of league you play in.

[BrewCrewForever]

Pretty sloppy, but it's ESPN, so unless it's Boston or New York, I don't expect a whole heck of a lot.

Isn't that the truth. The east coast bias is getting on my last nerve.

 

[TooLiveBrew]

What bugs me about the crap network isn't any sort of geographical bias. It's their lack of accuracy & attention to detail. It's probably the worst place to go out of sports outlets to actually get informed about any given sport, since all they care about is highlights & making each other feel more important.

As SF said, there's better analysis at BF.net on a daily basis than you'll ever find on the crap show.

[crewcrazy]

I can understand ESPN's love of Red Sox and Yankees coverage on the air, because that's what gets them the most ratings -- since they're owned by Disney, all that matters is how much cash they make. I just wish that they would try to provide good analysis online that isn't tucked behind the "Insider" logo. Unless you're looking for game recaps or game photos, ESPN.com is pretty much useless if you don't have Insider, and it's really a shame because it's not like they don't have the resources to improve that area. Lately they're shelling out huge bucks to bring in all these investigative reporters like T.J. Quinn, Mark Fainaru-Wada (I probably butchered that spelling, but he's one of the guys who co-wrote Game of Shadows), etc. but they could just as easily use that money to improve their basic baseball coverage.

 

Honestly, they have the money where they could assign a beat writer to each team like MLB.com if they really wanted to. As a person who's not a fan of the MLB.com beat writers (nothing against McCalvy, who's a very good writer, but I just feel like they're pressured to be very optimistic considering it's the team's official site), I would love to see something like that, especially since the J-S leaves a lot to be desired as far as coverage goes during the season.

 

But I suppose I'm getting too worked up about these season previews considering they're just throwaway columns that are a result of not having anything to write about for the next week. I'm sure I'll be a lot more upset with Sports Illustrated's Brewers preview than I am with Karabell's fantasy preview. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Beer and Braunies]

Here is my favorite quote

 

"One of these years, Bush will figure out how to avoid untimely home runs, improve at pitching from the stretch or whatever his problem has been. Could be 2008."

 

What a general statement that includes only about 75% of the pitchers in baseball. Yes, if Bush figures out that problem of his, and if he does it in 2008, the Brewers could be good. National baseball writers always have the funniest things to say about the Brewers.

[TheBrewer]

For me I knew Fielder hit 40HRs off of righties last year so when I read that it made sense, I guess after re-reading that his verbiage is a bit off with that, I think his intent was to say that Fielder hit 40HRs off of righties.

[Ennder]

Here is my favorite quote

 

"One of these years, Bush will figure out how to avoid untimely home runs, improve at pitching from the stretch or whatever his problem has been. Could be 2008."

 

What a general statement that includes only about 75% of the pitchers in baseball. Yes, if Bush figures out that problem of his, and if he does it in 2008, the Brewers could be good. National baseball writers always have the funniest things to say about the Brewers.

Bush has a career long problem of well below average strand rates. 90% or more or pitchers out there have a better career LOB% than Bush does, even really bad pitchers don't generally sit in the range he does. So that is a very valid statement by him.

[dlk9s]

Can a mod change the title of this thread to reflect that it is the "fantasy" preview, rather than the "official" ESPN preview of the Brewers? They don't do their official preview until sometime during spring training.

[1992casey]

Can a mod change the title of this thread...

 

Está completado.

[GAME05]

of course, at this point, it's easy to say that pretty much every member of brewerfan knows well more about the Milwaukee Brewers fantasy-wise or otherwise, then any national sports outlet. even besides this article, there's been nothing that's ever come as a surprise to me or really informed me of anything, and to a large part it's not about the quality of their writing, but just how much we've all studied Brewers players on our own. yeah, it's neat to read a Brewers article, but nothing has surprised me for a long time.

[JoeHova]

Milwaukee's Miller Park is pretty neutral in terms of runs scored factor, ranking Nos. 16, 15 and 16 the past three seasons. Tough to get more neutral than that. The Brewers do bring a lot more power to the table than most teams, though it still doesn't push this ballpark toward favoring hitters or pitchers.

That's my favorite part of the article. I generally like Karabell, but that quote indicates that he has no idea how park effects work. Maybe a so-called expert should know something like that?