PECOTA loves Bill Hall. 49% breakout, 67% improve. And it's not an Ugueto Effect - he did .261 .300 .458 in 137 at-bats with the Brewers in '03. Still, his weighted mean of .247 .305 .392 on almost 300 at-bats is nothing stellar, but he is 24 and has a ton of very good (40 sim index & up) comps that suggest good things for that 24th year. Tony Batista is his top comp, and Batista did another UT year as a 24-year-old, but with the prospects in the Brewers's system, Hall's not going to have much trade value if makes good as a UT guy this year.

Counsell's defense might be a little better, but he'll be 33 and his comps including the declining Micky Morandini and Duane Kuiper, Bill Spiers and Jeff Reboulet. He is from Milwaukee, but why should this perennial cellar-dweller pay Counsell 3.1 mil to bench Hall? Let Counsell show some veteran leadership and step aside to see what the kid can do. If Counsell's glove is worth an extra win, Hall's bat and possible trade value - should he be the next Tony Batista - must be worth more for the Sudsy Dudsies.

Free Bill Hall! He looks cool on his baseball card, too.

When I read this post I couldn't believe it. I knew the Brewers would be better than they were last season but even 9-1 is surprising. Good for them, though. Maybe that can produce some revenue for the team.

lets not all get ahead of ourselves, remember two very important things...

1. ITS THE BREWERS

2. ITS SPRING TRAINING

now that i have brought everybody back from their visions of Brewers WS 2004, that could have been scary, whole reports on espn about delusional brewers fans showing up wearing t-shirts proclaiming themselves world champions, remember their logo, "AAA, its the way we play" whenever you read how good they are doing in spring training

I have agree with Brandon here.

The Brewers could play well enough to finish ahead of two other stinky teams in their division, the Reds and the Pirates, but it is very difficult to see them finishing ahead of the Cards, Cubs, and Astros. This is a tough division and could very likely be the one to provide the wild-card. Both the Cubs and Astros have gotten better, and the Cards have not gotten worse and have the best player in the league not named Barry Bonds.

Even if the Brewers improve by an incredible 15 games over their record last year (68-94) and finish with the same record as the Royals (83-79) last year that still would have left the Brewers in 4th place in last year's division standings.

Note also, both the Royals (+5) and the Brewers (+4) finished last year with actual W-L records above their expected W-L based on Bill James' Pythagorean theorem of baseball: Runs scored [squared] / (Runs scored [squared] + runs allowed [squared]). All else equal, both teams might be expected to digress some this season. Based on expected W-L, the Brewers were 20 to 30 games behind the Cubs, Cards, and Astros. I don't see that the Brewers have improved enough to close that gap.

But with the arrival of spring training, hope springs eternal.

I think the problem with spring training standings is that, you never really know why teams are winning the games, unless you look at every box score. Plenty of times you will see a team like the Brewers rough up some NRI pitcher for 5 or 6 runs, and then hold on to win. That's not exactly the sign of a quality team, they are just facing inferior competition. The sample size is small enough that any sorts of random fluctuations can creep in. Suffice it to say, I agree with the above comment, and the Brewers may definitely be improving, but not enough this year.

As a Brewer fan, it is nice to see their success in ST, but I don't think we're printing our playoff tickets yet. Ali makes a good point about sample size...as a matter of fact, these same Brewers ran off a 10-0 stretch last August. I am optimistic for an improvement tho. Yes, according to last year's Pythagoras numbers, they would be expected to REGRESS (not digress), but this is a different team. They lost Sexson, but the offense is better overall as a result of the return from the trade. Ginter/Spivey, Hall/Counsell, Grieve/Clark will be an upgrade over EY, Clayton, and whatever warm bodies they played in RF last year. Pitching hasn't improved much, but I predict an improvement of about 4-5 games to 72-73 wins. Oh, and they should finish ahead of Pittsburgh and Cincy.