With yesterday's win, we crept up to a 89-win pace, at least with rounding.  (It's 88.53, if you're keeping score at home.)  Since the Cubs and Cards are playing this weekend, we were bound to gain ground on somebody; as it stands right now, we're one game out of the wild card, and if the Cubs hold on to an early lead, that could be down to a half-game by the time the first pitch is thrown at Miller Park.

The matchup is Dave Bush vs. Paul Maholm.  At the macro level, that seems to tilt in the Pirates favor--Maholm's ERA is nearly a full run lower than Bush's.  On the other hand, Maholm is a lefty, as as team we OPS about 50 points higher against southpaws.  (For his part, Maholm has an even more dramatic split, and he can expect to see Prince plus a bunch of righties in the lineup tonight.)  Bush, as you probably know, has been considerably better at home, with an ERA of 3.18 at Miller Park.  (Amazingly, that makes his home ERA fourth best among the current starting five.)

Game time is 6:05 CT, and here's the BR Game Preview.

Go Brewers!

If there is one development in the last couple of years that has drastically improved the casual fan's ability to understand the game, it is the appearance of baseball-reference.com's splits pages.  It's especially true of the team and league splits pages, which provide us with endless data on norms, so that when we look at a player's production in various situations, we know how it compares to league or team average.

My favorite stat on those splits pages is sOPS+.  OPS you probably know.  OPS+ is normalized OPS--that is, 100 is average, better than 100 is better than average, and less than 100 is worse than average.  At the moment, Jason Kendall has an OPS+ of 89 while Prince Fielder is at 117.  (Last year he was among the league leaders at 156.)

sOPS+ takes that one step farther.  The "s" stands for "split," so for any split (say, how a lefty batter does against lefty pitching), sOPS+ tells us how a performance is relative to the average for that split.  For instance, Fielder's OPS against lefties is 727--way below average--but it's better than how lefties typically do against southpaw pitchers.  So his sOPS+ is above average, at 112.

My favorite application of sOPS+ is seeing how players compare to positional averages.  We all know which positions have the most and least offense--you expect a masher to play first or left field, and it's rare to have a middle-of-the-order threat playing middle infield.  But those are only general concepts.  Do you know how catcher offense compares to shortstop offense?  Left field to right field?

So, getting to the point that got me writing today, think about the various production we're getting around the diamond.  Braun is mashing the ball, as is Hart; Hardy is hot, Branyan is giving us more from third; Weeks isn't good by any standard at second, while Cameron and Kendall seem rather middling for their positions.

Here's my question for you: At which position are the Brewers getting the best offense, relative to league average for that position?  In other words, at which position does the Crew have the highest sOPS+?

(Take a guess, I'll wait.)

(I know, it's a tough one.  Don't worry, I'm a patient guy.)

(You haven't guessed yet?  Come on.)

(The Jeopardy theme music is about over.)

(Just pick somebody.)

If you said shortstop, you'd be right.  Through yesterday's games, it isn't even really close.  Brewers shortstops have an sOPS+ of 126.  LF is 117, RF is 114, while 1B and CF are 109 and 108, respectively.  Here's the whole list.

Those aren't the exact numbers for the starters, since no one has played every single game at their position.  But for LF, RF, and 1B, they are pretty close.  What's interesting is just how far Hardy is ahead of the pack.  His OPS+ is up to 117, tied with Fielder and just behind Braun and Hart.  Relative to position, however, his sOPS+ is 135.  That ranks him higher than the shortstops of any NL team except for one (Florida).  He's certainly not the batsman that Hanley Ramirez is, but his defense may well make up the difference.

We all know that Hardy is white/red/so/extremely hot right now, but sOPS+ puts it in proper perspective.  Among non-pitchers, and taking defense into account, it's possible--even likely--that Hardy has been the most valuable player on the Brewers in 2008.

And he's younger than Miguel Tejada, too.

Like battlekow, I am disclaiming all knowledge of events in Arizona yesterday.

A good way to get that taste out of your mouth is to focus on the matchup today: Ben Sheets and his sub-3.00 ERA against Tom Gorzellany and his 6+ mark.  It's best not to think about how Gorzo has pitched against the Crew.

Game time is 1:05 CT, and here's the BR Game Preview.

Go Brewers!

The starters this afternoon are Manny Parra and Brandon Webb.  Webb is probably the better pitcher, but for what it's worth, Parra has been better over the last seven starts.  (Or six starts, or five starts, doesn't really matter where you draw the line, as long as you're focusing on the last month to six weeks.)

Game time is 2:40 CT, and here's the BR Game Preview.

If you haven't already, be sure to scroll down and check out battlekow doing...well, he did something, and you should see it.

Go Brewers!

Matchup is Seth McClung and Yusmeiro Petit.  We're back within 5 of the division lead, but as long as the Cubs are playing the Giants, we'll need to keep winning to stay there.

Game time is 8:40 CT, and here's the BR Game Preview.

Go Brewers!

In the 2008 National League, batters don't fare as well against relievers as they do against starters.  This shouldn't come as a surprise--batters only see relievers once; relievers can throw harder in their shorter stints; and many relievers are called upon because they are well-suited to retire one or more of the batters they are going to face.

More specifically, the average NL batter hits 258/329/408, for an OPS of 738.  Against relievers, he manages only 244/325/379, an OPS of 704.  It's not an enormous difference, but it's noticeable, and it's not a fluke.  In 2007, league average was 757 and average vs. relievers was 724--almost an identical difference.

Of course, the next logical step is to look at the Brewers by this measure.  By OPS, the Brewers have the 6th best offense in the league, at 750.  Against relievers, they are tied for 8th with the Rockies at 696.  In other words, our OPS versus relievers is about 20 points lower than you'd expect it to be.

This does raise something of a chicken-and-egg issue.  Relievers aren't all the same (thank you, Captain Obvious).  In close games, we're likely to see the best relievers a team has to offer; in blowouts, we get the worst.  Anecdotally, it seems like the Brewers have played a disproportionately high number of close games this year, suggesting that the relievers we're seeing are of higher quality than average.

(The other team that springs to mind, the Braves, offer something of a counterpoint.  Despite losing more one-run games than a soccer team, the Braves are right about average, hitting relievers with an OPS about 30 points lower than their average OPS.)

It's always tough to compare one year's team to another, but there is a lot of continuity between the '07 lineup and the '08 lineup.  It turns out that the '07 Brewers, much like the '08 Braves, are almost exactly average in this regard.  785 overall OPS, 750 OPS versus relievers. 

You might also be interested to know how individual Brewers are doing against relievers.  The laggards are Hardy, Hall, and Cameron, while Fielder is the only guy with a lot of ABs who is hitting well.  (That surprised me, since he's the one guy who often results in a pitching change for the opposition.)  Here's the complete report.

I suspect this, like most splits, will even out before long.  But more importantly, if we're going to talk about it (which seems like a foregone conclusion), we need to have our numbers straight.  The Brewers are about average against relievers, and the difference between their vs-relief numbers and their overall performance is a little worse than average.  Like the variety of "clutch" stats I touched on yesterday, it's probably not a cause for concern.

I think Daron Sutton is out to get us.  In the first inning last night, he was talking about how the D-Backs just can't seem to beat the Brewers.  He might as well have announced during the pregame that Dave Bush was throwing a no-hitter.

Tonight's starters have a combined age of 155 77, with a lot of that burden carried by Randy Johnson.  RJ is starting to pitch like an old guy, only not as well as Jamie Moyer, the quintessential old pitcher in the 21st century.  He coughed up 7 runs in two of his last three starts, and his ERA is only a smidgen better than Dave Bush's.  That said, he did hold the Red Sox to two runs in his last start, and that's nothing to sneeze at.  (Also, don't sneeze at Randy.  Literally.  He'll get angry, and he'll also get hurt.)

Jeff Suppan goes for us, and despite a blip a couple of starts ago, he's still in the middle of an impressive run.  His ERA in May and June combined is 3.38, and he's given up only four longballs in that time.  (Could be luck, but either way, I'll take it.)  Another interesting note from Supp's gamelog: he's only gone over 100 pitches four time this year.  Despite that, he's averaging just a tiny bit below 6 innings per start.

Enough of that...game time is 8:40 CT, and here's the BR Game Preview.

Go Brewers!

It wouldn't be a Brewers broadcast without a mention of the Crew's struggles with RISP, especially with 2 outs and RISP.

(Actually, I don't know if they're still talking about this--it feels like weeks since mlb.tv has given me Brian and Bill.)

Anyway, it is technically true that the Crew is below average in this department.  With RISP, the Crew is a bit below league average, with an sOPS+ of 97.  (sOPS+ is a handy Baseball-Reference stat meaning OPS relative to league average for that situation.  100 is average, less is worse, more is better.)

Look at RISP with two outs, and it's worse: That's down to 86.  The worst offenders are Weeks and Kendall, both of whom are OPS'ing under 500, though Braun is at a mere 590.  We should probably bench him, or at least pinch-hit for him in clutch spots.

However, there's an interesting contrast if you keep hunting through the splits.  Broadcasters love to talk about 2 outs/RISP because it is a proxy for clutch...but it's only a proxy.  Obviously, there are important moments in a game with less than two outs, and key at-bats without runners in scoring position. 

One way to measure them is by leverage (details here), which takes into account the base/out situation as well as inning and score.  (Bottom of the 9th in a one-run game is pretty important, even with the bases empty.)  Despite the numbers above, the Brewers are above average in high leverage situations.  Also surprising, Braun is among the best on the team, with an OPS of 881.  Prince is dominating in such spots, at 1.203. 

Along the same lines, the Crew is above average when a game is "close and late," as well as better than the norm in one-run, two-run, three-run, and four-run games.  (Just below average in tie games, though that's kind of meaningless, since a lot of games are ties in the early innings, which is hardly the definition of clutch.)

Of course, many of these numbers come in relatively small samples--Prince has had 45 high-leverage at-bats, and the team as a whole has had fewer than 400 PAs with 2 outs and RISP.  Given that important situations (high leverage ones, anyway) don't seem to faze the Crew, it may be that the 2 out/RISP numbers will come around, resulting in a few more runs simply due to luck.

Or, I guess, Doug Melvin has signed, drafted, and traded for a bunch of guys who can't handle the pressure.  Your call.

It's no surprise that the D-Backs are leading their division, but it is a surprise they're doing so with a .500 record.  I guess that lower-class NL Central has to beat up on somebody, right?

Starters tonight are Dave Bush and Doug Davis.  Bush has three quality starts in a row plus a 3.89 ERA in his last seven outings, while Davis has done even better lately--all three of his most recent starts were QS's, all three came in interleague, including one against the Red Sox.

Game time is an alarm-clock unfriendly 8:40 CT, and here's the BR Game Preview.

Go Brewers!