Entries from December 2008 ↓

Hey if anybody knows how to fix this blog setup to move this column further left so that the graph doesn’t bleed into the links, leave a comment or e-mail me at cody@czwief.com. Thanks!

It is now officially the offseason — trades and signings, with the exception of Mark Teixiera, are pretty much dead until Spring Training in a couple of months. This is part 1 of a 3-part series examining projections for Milwaukee’s 2009 season. Part 1 will be position players, part 2 will be pitching, and part 3 will be a final projection.

Last season’s offense was really frustrating at times, and especially in the final months. Let’s break down projections and possibilities position by position.

First base

With the small possibility that Milwaukee trades Prince Fielder, it’s safe to say he’s the 2009 first baseman. He experienced a bit of a dropoff in production last year. Most of this can be attributed to his rise in GB%. Take a look:

Marcel projections have him doing similar things in ‘09, with a little bit of a bounceback year. Projections have him at .282/.377/.530/.907, and that hasn’t even taken into account his rumored reports of finally eating meat again. I think he’ll bounce back a little bit and have a pretty productive season.

Using the pretty darn good stats created by Justin Inaz, we can estimate Prince having this kind of year (these numbers similar to VORP values):
Offense: 45
Position adjustment: -12
Defense: -12

Of course, this assumes that Prince is as bad defensively in 09 as he was in 08. That’s a 21 rating, which is similar to a 2.1 VORP. None too impressive, but that’s fine by me. More on why I wouldn’t mind trading Prince later (hint: he’s overrated).

Everywhere else after the jump
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First you overpay for the best pitcher, then you make Doug Melvin mad, then you toss out some more money in Teixiera? The Brewers are immediately impacted, as the compensatory draft pick the Brewers were going to get from Sabathia is now going over to the Angels. Boo Yankees.

Good thing that New York taxpayers are able to pay the Yankees organization over $200 million for that new stadium, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to afford the hundreds of millions of dollars that they’ve spent on CC, Burnett, and Teixiera in the last couple of weeks. Damn, and it was stupid of me to think NYC was having money problems.

Here’s an article I wrote for a class. Enjoy.

One of the most overlooked issues in America today is the subject of vampire population control. Covered up by the popularity of terrible vampire movies such as the recently-released Twilight or the ever-forgettable Blade: Trinity or Van Helsing is the side of vampires not glorified by the entertainment industry. In a world where vampires feed on the living, the threat of a vampire sucking on your neck is a very real possibility. However, despite there being a surplus of high-budget, low-quality vampire movies, very little is known about vampires and the functions inside their bodies.

A vampire is a postmortem living being that is characterized by sharp fangs instead of incisors, pale skin, and most importantly, its necessity to feed itself via the blood of a human being. They cannot touch sunlight or garlic, but they can sleep in coffins for hours on end without the slightest bit of fresh air. Because the supposed contradiction between the “alive” and “dead” status of a vampire is overlooked, vampires actually become a serious threat in today’s world. Not only can people think that stupid movies like Twilight can possibly be any good, but any living, breathing human can contract vampirism if they are not careful.

Since man has been able to wander the stars and formulate the words to be able to adequately contemplate his existence, he has also scoured the depths of every cave, dungeon, and coffin for the answers to the mystery of the vampire. What are they? How are they created? Why are they so different?

We now know the answers to most of those questions, but one of the things that needs to be placed on the hot stove is the topic of already-dead vampires expiring. They are dead, so they can’t die yet again; what prevents vampires from piling up like useless junk in a homeowner’s storage room? Shouldn’t there be a thrift sale to keep the storage room walkable? It’s clear that the world we live in is not wrought with vampires littering the streets with a shortage of human blood.

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Braden Looper eh?

If the Brewers can get him at a 1-2 year deal for pretty cheap, I’m pumped. 175 innings of league-average ball with an above-average offense seems totally okay with me.

Gallardo-Parra-Bush-Looper-Suppan. Not very good, but acceptable considering the availability. That pretty much means then that Sheets is totally 100% out of the equation.

In the next couple of days I’m going to write up my 2009 Brewers preview, as well as other stuff I’ve wanted to write about.

Cash called. Cameron’s sticking with the Brewers.

I still don’t like the move, although it’s not too heartbreaking. Cam will net another couple of draft picks once 09 is over.

In the next couple of days, some formatting things might get screwy, and you might notice more content/links/edited posts. I’m putting some of the finishing touches on my blog. So, this page is still under construction — if you see something freaky, I probably did it.

Naturally, the biggest news of the day is still… the Brewers might grab Kei Igawa from the Yankees in the well-publicized Mike Cameron-for-Melky Cabrera deal that makes it seem like the Brewers are getting bullied around.

Cabrera had a terrible year last year for the Yankees, batting a mere .249/.301/.341/.641. Marcel projections put him at a better year next year — however, while he won’t be quite as good as Mike Cameron would be (Marcel projects Cam at a .333 wOBA compared to Cabrera’s .317), the dropoff in performance is definitely worth the $9mm+ shed in payroll by sending him to the Yankees. After losing CC and Sheets already, this team is still a little ways away from contending, and shedding payroll for the future is the way to go.

However, the Yankees either want the Brewers to eat some of Cameron’s salary, or take on the 3 year, $12mm contract of Kei Igawa. Igawa struggled in his brief appearance in the majors, giving up 15 HR and a 6.25 ERA. While his AAA stats don’t entice too much excitement (3.45ERA with about a 2.5:1 K/BB and 117K in 156 innings), they’re not nearly as bad as his small sample size in New York would imply. A year and a half ago, John Sickels of Minor League Ball projected Igawa to have a career of average-to-below average ball, and his stats in AAA would imply that he would have such a career. If he can, in Milwaukee, throw a couple of seasons of 4.5-5.0 ERA ball, $4mm/year wouldn’t be too bad (remember: Jeff Suppan is doing the same thing for over $10mm/year). That’s still plugging a rotation spot with a 4/5 starter for a year or two while Jeferess or other prospects develop (not to mention the discussions right now probably are about how much of Igawa’s salary the Yankees will eat).

If the Yankees will pay 1/3 of Igawa’s salary, two years of average/below average pitching and a light-hitting center fielder is worth sending one year of Cameron to the Yankees for. It’s not like the Brewers with Cameron are going to contend this year anyways. Hopefully the Yankees can take Bill Hall off of Milwaukee’s hands, but that’s a bag of worms that’s not necessary to get into.

Music of the Week for Dec. 15:

System 7 – Phoenix.
System 7 is an electronic band (you’ll hear this quite a bit) unlike most you’ll hear. It’s not your typical techno — mostly because it can be classified in multiple genres. The base of the album is psytrance, however, it’s more ambient than anything. The album isn’t so much a CD of separate songs, but instead, separate experiences — it’s really good with some high-quality headphones when you don’t really want to concentrate on anything. System 7 is Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy, and Phoenix was recently released in 2007. Check ‘em out.

Here’s a piece/interview I wrote up on Aaron Gleeman, writer for Rotoworld, excellent blogger, busy dude, and all-around nice guy. Comment up!

On April 29 of this year, two people fought over an elephant in the room of the sports media. On that day, the hard-nosed, old-school, New York Times columnist and Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Buzz Bissinger went on a profanity-laced tirade during a broadcast on “Costas Now,” a show on HBO where guests debate pressing issues in the sports world, attacking a 32-year-old baby-faced man named Will Leitch. Leitch, in April, was the founder of Deadspin.com, a sports blog.
A “blog” is an online journal or diary – short for “web log.” Many people use these blogs for writing about their own personal life, their children, or pets. Many people blog about sports – some talk every day about baseball, some on football – but Deadspin covers everything that has to do with sports. Blogs work differently than newspapers; while newspapers call sources and squeeze the information out of them, blogs call up newspapers and report the information that they’ve already sent to people, except they range over everything―more than strict sports news.
Leitch was trying to address a legitimate concern against blogs when host Bob Costas asked him what he thought of the mean-spirited potshots that people without journalistic credentials write on different blogs. Not 30 seconds after Leitch began defending his medium did Bissinger interrupt.
“I have to interject – I really think you’re full of shit,” he said. For nearly 15 minutes, Bissinger attacked Leitch without regard to common decency and gave him no breathing room to try to defend blogs. The show sparked a giant discussion across the blogosphere and in the national media about the validity of bloggers and the status of newspaper columnists. The entire world seemed to think of them as two separate entities, and argued like the Capulets and Montagues.
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Hey look, it’s the first post on my new blog!

My name is Cody Zwiefelhofer. I’m going to use this blog as a journal for all of my thoughts (most of them happen to be baseball related).

Coming up soon is going to be a profile of blogger Aaron Gleeman and an analysis of a potential Brewers-Twins trade that has quite a few Twins and Brewers fans up in a button.

I’ll also be tinkering around with this page, so if you see new links, categories, pages, and edits, don’t be alarmed — I’m finalizing everything.