The Brewer Chronicles

Good for Prince.  The Brewers slugger has a huge lead in the National League with 26 homeruns now and the next closest guy is Adam Dunn with 20.  Throw in a league leading 59 RBIs and a .379 OBP and you’re looking at a guy who’s an early MVP candidate.  And the voters have rewarded him as he now leads a tight race at first base for the All Star Game.  I knew Prince had a 50 homer season in him, I just didn’t know it’s be this soon.

The Brewers extended their lead over the (enter name of second place team, currently the Cardinals) to 7 1/2 games after a three game sweep over the struggling Giants.  They got some solid pitching in the first two games and while Claudio Vargas wasn’t all that great in the finale, he was picked up by the offence and he improved to 6-1 on the season.  Bill Hall hit his eighth homerun and he drove in five runs.  With J.J. Hardy an Fielder having the seasons they’re having, Bill Hall has only been okay so you wonder what’s going to happen when Bill Hall finally catches fire.

Ben Sheets is starting to pick it up as he gets back that ace tag.  His strikeout rate is way down, but he’s won his last four and seven out of his last eight.  Just as impressive, when Sheets gets the start, the Brewers are 9-1 in his last ten starts, which is the very definition of ace.  He also finally notched his first complete game and he’s been pitching into the seventh inning more regularly.  The Brewers have a nice lead, but they’ll need Sheets down the stretch if they really want to do something.

Francisco Cordero has been quite the pick up for the Brewers.  He has 44 strikeouts in 31 1/3 innings and he has 27 saves in 29 attempts.  Not too shabby for a guy making just over $5 million.  Then again, he is playing for a contract so there’s some motivation there.  As is the chance to play for a ring.

Johnny Estrada has done what we expected when we dealt for him.  He leads the team with a .291 batting average and while there’s not a lot of pop, it’s there.  The defense has been below average but the offense more then makes up for it.  And you know what you get.  He doesn’t walk a lot, but he also doesn’t strike out a lot so you’re getting a catcher who puts the ball in play more times then not.

This weekend is a three game set against a poor Royals team and the Brewers have a 1-0 lead in the third.  Two out of three and maybe a tough series by the Cards sure would be nice.  I’d like a ten game lead by the All Star break.

The Brewers record in their last ten games isn’t very pretty (3-7) but they have won two of their last three and they’ve done it when the rest of the division is cooling off.  The end result is a 6 1/2 game lead over the Astros and the Cubs with four more games left in their west coast swing.

Prince Fielder is beginning to heat up.  He hit two homeruns on Monday to bring his league leading total to 14 (tied with teammate J.J. Hardy) and he now has a six game hitting streak.  While his batting average hasn’t gone up much during that stretch, he’s picked up some points on his OPS.

And then J.J. Hardy continues to impress.  He hit homerun number fourteen a couple of days before Fielder hit his and he leads the league with 41 RBI.  His career best is 50 so he should be pushing past that pretty soon.  The only knock on him has been his defense, which has been slightly below average (-1 fielding runs below average). 

Jeff Suppan continues to throw the ball well.  He’s now 6-4 and he leads the team in innings pitched and ERA.  His batting average against of .282 isn’t all that great but he’s kept the walk total down and then of course he’s gotten the run support.

The Brewers play the final game in a three game set against the Dodgers and then it’s off to San Diego for three this weekend.  It’ll be interesting playing in such an extreme pitchers park so hopefully the pitchers can get it done while they’re there.

Price Fielder said he wasn’t completely happy with how 2006 went.  Trying to get a jump on the 2007 season, he’s showed up to camp early after he saw several other position players reporting early.  Click on the link for a nice profile on Fielder and some comments about him from Ned Yost.

While one of my favorite publications, the Baseball Prospectus Annual, hasn’t yet come out, the website has released their PECOTA projections.  PECOTA cards to fun to look at so I thought it’d be worthwhile checking out first basemen Prince Fielder’s PECOTA card to see what we find.

The first thing you have to like is the weighted mean average line.  There you find Fielder hitting 28 homeruns with a very nice .292/.373/.531 line.  Even more optimistic are his breakout rate (40%) and improve rate (77%) which makes his 75th percentile line a little more probable.  There you have Fielder hitting 31 homeruns with a line of .305/.388/.562.  Not too shabby for a kid who’s going turn 23 in May.

Boog Powell and Kent Hrbek are Fielder’s two most comporable players at this point in his career.  David Ortiz is third and he’s the only other guy with a similarity factor at or aboe 40. 

Even cooler is the five year forecast.  It’s 30 homerun seasons and WARPs above 5.0 across the board after 2007.  And while BP and PECOTA are never perfect, they seem to do a pretty good job.  They predicted Ryan Howard’s breakout season for one so when the book comes out, I’m interested in seeing what they have to say about Fielder.