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Kendall was only a clutch player when compared to most other Brewers.

You do you come to that conclusion? Based on Tom's made up stat? kendall was the LEAST clutch hitter on the entire team, based on WPA:

http://www.fangraphs.com/...?team=Brewers&season=2008

Cameron gets downgraded because of the expectations that were placed upon him.

There was absolutely NO reason to believe that Cameron would be any better offensively than he was this year. I don't think anyone sold him as some .900+ OPS hitter that was going to carry the team.

Jeff Suppan is another story. Haudicourt even admitted that his grade for Suppan was almost a D and would have been a D if not for a pretty dominate stretch from after the allstar break to September. People forget that he was pretty darn good there.

Like I said, I don't see how having a good stretch makes his overall value higher. It just means he had to stink even worse during another stretch. Just look at his overall numbers.

Take all the emotion out of it, take all parts of the season into account vs. expectations and see where your grades line up.

It's easy to take the emotion out of it on offense. Just use projections.

So, are we to judge from Branyan's C that they expected all along that Branyan would be called up from AAA, carry the team for a month, and be a major factor in saving the team's season? Ridiculous.

And in his case, I don't think it would be hard to sell to the fans regarding his offensive worth. A HR every 11 AB isn't a tough sell.

If we are more concerned with the impact of player's performances (in terms of winning and losing), I would just stick with WPA. Again, WPA just looks at how much the probability of a team winning changes per AB, summing up the net change for each batter. It can be somewhat unfair, since not every player is given an equal opportunity to impact a game (Branyan, for instance) but I guess we don't care about such things.

Here are how some of the batter's did in terms of WPA/600 AB:

Rivera: 6.68
Braun: 3.61
Fielder: 3.27
Branyan: 3.27
Kapler: 3.17
Weeks: 2.20
Hardy: 2.00
Cameron: 1.12
Dillon: .24
Hall: -.53
Hart: -1.04
Counsell: -1.79
Kendall: -1.79

Interesting stuff. Rivera, Branyan and Kapler all made the best of their limited opportunities. Weeks did well with translating his mediocre offensive numbers into a positive impact. Hart being right next to Counsell and Kendall, while playing a corner outfield spot, shows how silly his B- really is.