Grading the Brewers - The Infield (Pt 1)

Don't take this the wrong way but the grades are beyond generous. Rowdy with his .305 OBP and below average defense deserves at best a C and no way a B+.

If Wong doesn't get an F I don't know who would but I won't argue too much with a D. I like Adames and appreciate the power and defense but I can't give a grade higher than a C for a player with a .220 average and OBP below .300. Urias deserves a D as he should be a high average, high OBP guy and he has been neither.

The infield as a whole deserves a D as not one of these guys has outperformed and Wong in particular has been completely awful.

Maybe Bunzell's could sponsor a promotion because looking at that infield defense and the only thing that comes to mind is butcher.

10 minutes ago, Kyle Ginsbach said:

I did debate going the pessimistic route, but decided against it. 

Why is it pessimistic to be less generous?  I don't think the grades should be as low as brewers888 suggested, but I think a half grade lower across the board isn't pessimistic. Also, part of the current problem with baseball is that there are so many teams in tanking/rebuilding mode (the "Have Nots").  Shouldn't the Brewers be in the "Have's" group?  I think the frustration with this offense is that it's at the bottom of the Have's and those teams are the ones that are going to be advancing in the playoffs at the expense of the Brewers. 

19 minutes ago, Kyle Ginsbach said:

You're probably right. 

I did debate going the pessimistic route, but decided against it. The offense hasn't been nearly as bad as people make it out to be, (Brewers rank in the top half in pretty much every major offensive category) so I wanted the grades to try to reflect that.

How dare you fray from the "offense=bad" path...

Just grading the starters? I would argue that Jace Peterson is effectively a starter and should get a grade of around B+/A- with the defensive value he has provided this year alongside a solid batting line. As such, I'm hoping they make him the regular 3B against RHP while moving Urias to 2B and benching Wong. 

5 hours ago, Kyle Ginsbach said:

You're probably right. 

I did debate going the pessimistic route, but decided against it. The offense hasn't been nearly as bad as people make it out to be, (Brewers rank in the top half in pretty much every major offensive category) so I wanted the grades to try to reflect that.

I’m not going to quibble about specific grades because they are so subjective and depend so much on what the baseline is.
 

You say that you based these on what could reasonably be expected from a player, and that’s fine. Presumably if you based the grade on a league average, or what a playoff contending team should be striving to get from that position, the grades would be different. If you expect a player to be average for his position, and his actual performance is average, that would be a C in my book. And that would leave the Brewers with a lot of C’s.

The Brewers being in the top half of the league in most offensive categories is great if your goal is to have an average team or if you expect the pitching to be so exceptional that it can lift an average offensive team to one of the top playoff positions.

The comments about the “offense is so bad” narrative seem to miss what that “narrative” really is. The offense was a question mark coming into the season and it’s hard to identify many players who have exceeded their expectations. And the troubling thing is that the offense has been progressively slipping as the season has progressed. If the performance in the games following the 19 run outburst in Pittsburgh are a sign of things to come, the Brewers have a real problem.

2 hours ago, Kyle Ginsbach said:

 The "pessimistic" route was more along the lines of nobody getting above a C. That mindset is more along the lines of "everyone's bad because they're not an All-Star" type thinking, which no one has come close to suggesting. 

If you have an OBP around .300 you don't get higher than a C in my view.

20 minutes ago, brewers888 said:

If you have an OBP around .300 you don't get higher than a C in my view.

Other stats like defense and OPS relative to position matter a heck of a lot, too. See Adames, who has been one of the best SS in the NL this year despite a lower than hoped for OBP. 

27 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Byron Buxton has an OPS under .300.

He's also the fourth most valuable CF in baseball according to FanGraphs.

Thats fair enough because Buxton is a gold glove caliber center fielder but my comment was about Tellez who is bad defensively and isn't getting on base.

These grades are obviously all subjective but this infield as a whole just hasn't played well at all.

I don’t know what stats anyone would want to use to put an objective measure to it, but how would we compare the performance of the Brewers infield to the infields of the other NL playoff contenders?

Position by position, I don’t think it would stack up very well, especially against the top teams (Dodgers, Mets, and Braves) and the Cardinals

13 hours ago, brewers888 said:

These grades are obviously all subjective but this infield as a whole just hasn't played well at all.

Agreed.  I think Urias in particular has been awful along with Wong and I'd give him no better than a D.  

I don't agree with the statement that Tellez "performed up to expectations" but he has also been a bit unlucky. Certainly hasn't played at a B+ level but I expect an uptick in the second half. Agree that Peterson should be on here, has played 80 games and probably the most valuable position player of the first half. Hopefully he doesn't disappear like he did last September. Overall the infield has underperformed as a whole but there is reason to believe the second half will be better.