[閒聊] 2011 Question Of The Day: Milwaukee Brewers
www.sbnation.com/mlb/2011/3/3/2026776/spring-training-2011-milwaukee-brewers
After two years of good hitting and lousy pitching, the Brewers have
finally addressed their biggest need with two big trades. Will newcomers
Zack Greinke and Shaun Marcum be enough in 2011?
This one's easy.
The Brewers will open the 2010 season with almost exactly the same lineup
as they finished 2009. There's just one change: at shortstop, Yuniesky
Betancourt replaces Alcides Escobar. On most teams, replacing anyone with
Yuniesky Betancourt would constitute a downgrade, but in this case Escobar
was so awful at the plate last season that Betancourt can scarcely be worse.
Granted, the Brewers will take a defensive hit, but overall this is roughly
a wash.
So the same Brewers who ranked fourth in the National League in scoring
last season are likely to do roughly as well this season.
The problem last season wasn't scoring runs; it was preventing them.
Milwaukee finished 14th in the league with a 4.59 ERA, and their starters
were even worse: 4.65 ERA, 15th in the National League. And that after a
2009 that was even worse.
For two straight seasons, the Brewers featured excellent hitting but
execrable pitching, and of course it cost them dearly as they finished
below .500 both years. Clearly, whatever they've been doing to build a
pitching staff -- and a rotation, in particular, just wasn't working.
The Manny Parras and the Doug Davises and the Jeff Suppans and the David
Bushes just weren't getting it done.
Brewers fans have been incredibly patient, and last year nearly three
million of them showed up to watch a 77-85 squad. But even Cheeseheads
might run out of patience eventually, and Prince Fielder's impending free
agency adds just another temporal imperative. The time is now, and so this
winter management pulled the trigger on two big trades.
First, they traded second baseman Brett Lawrie -- their one truly hot
hitting prospect -- straight up to Toronto for starting pitcher Shaun Marcum.
Second, two weeks later they traded a quartet of young players to Kansas
City for Zack Greinke (and Yuniesky Betancourt, but that was just because if
nobody plays shortstop you give up way too many singles and also it's really
hard to turn most varieties of the double play).
The Big Question, then, is pretty obvious: Are Greinke and Marcum enough to
get the Brewers' run prevention into the middle of the National League pack,
and thus push the club into real contention?
In a word, yes.
In this case, the math is exceptionally simple. Last season, David Bush,
Manny Parra, Doug Davis and Chris Capuano combined for 64 starts, and in
the aggregate performed at almost exactly replacement level.
Absent injuries, Greinke and Marcum will make roughly 64 starts, and we
may estimate they'll be roughly eight to 10 Wins Above Replacement ...
and thus eight to 10 wins better than the pitchers they're replacing.
At this point the simplicity breaks down a little. We can't just add eight
or 10 wins to the Brewers' 77 last season, because the other 23 players on
the roster are variables, too. We can't just assume that if Greinke and
Marcum are healthy all season, the Brewers will win 85-87 games.
You know what, though?
If you run the math, that's almost exactly where the Brewers grade out.
And with 85-87 wins going in, a few breaks or a canny trade can push you
to 90 and Nirvana.
Greinke and Marcum really are the keys. As they should be, considering
how much the Brewers gave up to get them. The farm system is now almost
completely devoid of top-tier talent, which means the window might well
close after this season.
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