Murphy it is

[Jopal78]

13 minutes ago, sveumrules said:

Nobody quit anything. Neither Stearns nor Counsell were beholden to Milwaukee.

Did Sabathia or Fielder quit when they signed elsewhere as highly regarded free agents?

Read carefully, I said Stearns quit. Which is 100% true. He resigned as President of Baseball Operations.
 

Next I said less than a year later Counsell followed him. Again 100% true. Never said Counsell quit. 
 

I don’t really care that Counsell left. I do think he looks kind of foolish after all his “baseball in Milwaukee is personal to me” to run for Chicago for a huge payday, but then again he’s a former pro athlete so it’s not all that surprising—it’s a business and most people go work where the pay is best.

[Joseph Zarr]

1 hour ago, homer said:

what if they signed Murphy to a contract worth $8.000.001 per year

[Fear The Chorizo]

2 hours ago, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

Boring hire, but also the right one. This team is not in tear-down mode. They are coming off a 92-win season, and anticipate having the core of that team coming back. The loss of Woodruff for what likely will be most of if not all of 2024 hurts, but it isn't like he was around for most of 2023. Perhaps Burnes is dealt, but if he is, it's going to be for a very good package of young players. 

The way Counsell left sucks, but let's not forget that he is the most successful manager in this team's history. And Murphy has been his mentor his whole career. Murphy is very well respected both within and outside the organization. Time will tell whether its the right hire, but of the candidates out there, it by far makes the most sense.

I'd also add that while Murphy was CC's bench coach, he's not a CC clone.  I'll be interested seeing if there are any noticeable differences to the type of players the Brewers have on their MLB bench and bottom 10 spots on their 40 man roster compared to recent seasons, to see if many of my roster decision frustrations over the past few years were influenced strictly by payroll limitations of the organization or if CC carried weight keeping some scrappy veterans around much longer than their onfield performance deserved.

The Brewers have an opportunity to infuse their 40 man with a bunch of young talent that's probably ready to make an opening day MLB roster (Quero, Gasser, Chourio, Black)...would love to see that happen, and frankly if CC was still managing the team I'd have zero expectations of it actually taking place and would instead assume Quero would be the only 40 man add to protect him from Rule V and he still wouldn't be in Milwaukee next season.

[sveumrules]

2 minutes ago, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

I don't know about that. Arnold's batting average as far as moves working out is looking pretty decent right now. 

Yup. Contreras (5.4 WAR), Miley (3.4 rWAR), Payamps (+3.01 WPA), Peguero (+1.42 WPA), Wilson (+1.32 WPA), Rea (1.3 rWAR), Perkins (1.2 WAR), Canha (1.0 WAR) Miller (0.9 WAR), Teheran (0.8 rWAR), Santana (0.7 WAR) and even Anderson (0.5 WAR) all came out in the positive to the tune of about 20 wins versus Winker (-0.8 WAR), Voit (-0.4 WAR), Singleton (-0.4 WAR), Tapia (-0.3 WAR) costing only a couple wins on the negative side. Even stretch run IGT whipping boy Chafin ended up with a dead nuts even zero point zero WPA on the season.

What will offseason two yield? I don’t know, but there are many viable possibilities all across the buy sell spectrum and I’m excited to see how it all plays out over the next few months.

Jackson Chourio is hitting 391/472/565 in winter league, that means way more than anything happening in this thread.

[MrTPlush]

8 hours ago, Jim French Stepstool said:

Not thrilled about Weeks. Would much rather see McKinven or Quintin Berry as bench coach.

Why would we not want Berry on the field directing baserunners? 

[MVP2110]

Do we have old threads archived anywhere? I'd love to go back to the thread when we hired Counsell to see how we reacted back in 2015

[Matt Breen]

2 hours ago, homer said:

what if they signed Murphy to a contract worth $8.000.001 per year

Even better, increase payroll to $200m+. Extension for Burnes, add some big FAs. 

[sveumrules]

10 minutes ago, MVP2110 said:

Do we have old threads archived anywhere? I'd love to go back to the thread when we hired Counsell to see how we reacted back in 2015

Maybe @Brock Beauchamp has stuff that old archived somewhere?

Searched posts with Counsell in the title and looks like the oldest hit was April 2021.

[MVP2110]

-In college as a Manager Murphy went 947-400-2.

-As a manager in the minors he went 320-252 in 5 years

-His 1 year as interim manager with the Padres he went 42-54

 

He has alot of experience and success as being the head guy in charge. Will this translate to success in the majors? Who knows

[brewers888]

I look at this hiring as a sign that we are going to rebuild and just wanted to go cheap because this is nothing more than a stopgap hiring. What bothers me is that I don't really think Weeks is the guy for the future and I would guess he is pretty much the manager in waiting.

[folly412]

Eh, the thing with these "heir apparent" situations is there's a low chance they ever come about.  Could be Murph is successful and keeps going so another team plucks Weeks if he proves to be good, everything is such a train wreck that they start over completely, or a dozen other things.

[areacodes]

3 minutes ago, brewers888 said:

I look at this hiring as a sign that we are going to rebuild and just wanted to go cheap because this is nothing more than a stopgap hiring. What bothers me is that I don't really think Weeks is the guy for the future and I would guess he is pretty much the manager in waiting.

Besides Counsell, isn’t every other new hire so far been cheap?  I don’t think you can look at the dollar value alone and assume this is some sign of a looming rebuild.

What about Weeks makes you feel he won’t be “the guy for the future”?

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

11 minutes ago, brewers888 said:

I look at this hiring as a sign that we are going to rebuild and just wanted to go cheap because this is nothing more than a stopgap hiring. What bothers me is that I don't really think Weeks is the guy for the future and I would guess he is pretty much the manager in waiting.

Oh brother. What in the world could you possibly know about Rickie Weeks' baseball acumen to make you deduce that?

[brewers888]

3 minutes ago, areacodes said:

Besides Counsell, isn’t every other new hire so far been cheap?  I don’t think you can look at the dollar value alone and assume this is some sign of a looming rebuild.

What about Weeks makes you feel he won’t be “the guy for the future”?

He had a great eye at the plate which is a great fundamental to have but his poor defense makes me question the rest of his fundamental knowledge. 

[brewers888]

1 minute ago, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

Oh brother. What in the world could you possibly know about Rickie Weeks' baseball acumen to make you deduce that?

I question how much anyone cares about fundamentals when they never improved their defense which was awful from day one till he retired. On the other hand his OBP was always good for a guy with a low average and thats a positive so we'll see.

[homer]

1 minute ago, brewers888 said:

He had a great eye at the plate which is a great fundamental to have but his poor defense makes me question the rest of his fundamental knowledge. 

That's interesting. I didn't realize defensive acumen was a desirable trait in a coach.

[dlk9s]

I couldn't really care less about who was hired because honestly, I have no idea who is or will be a good manager. But those wanting to go outside the organization in a "change for the sake of change" scenario, look at the Bucks right now.

Murphy may do well, he may not. He may be the reason for success or failure, he may not. But just because he's not a "fresh face" doesn't mean he's a bad choice. Plenty of fresh faces end up terrible.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

1 minute ago, brewers888 said:

I question how much anyone cares about fundamentals when they never improved their defense which was awful from day one till he retired. On the other hand his OBP was always good for a guy with a low average and thats a positive so we'll see.

Defense has been a hallmark of this organization from the bottom up since David Stearns took over as the GM. That didn't change with Matt Arnold taking the GM role last year. The Brewers aren't going to suddenly decide that defense doesn't matter now that Rickie Weeks is the bench coach. 

I also think it's an enormous stretch to say that Weeks' defense didn't improve throughout his career, or to imply that he didn't care to improve it.

[MrTPlush]

12 minutes ago, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

Oh brother. What in the world could you possibly know about Rickie Weeks' baseball acumen to make you deduce that?

Half the comments about this manager search are strong opinions on guys with zero managing experience ever. Both positive and negative. I mean, sure, but I don't know what the criteria they are getting judged on at that point.

To be quite honest...I don't know if Weeks would be good or absolutely terrible. Vogt? Same with him. I don't even know how you can really base any kind of assumption on these guys with no managerial past. David Ross seemed like a perfect players coach, but he doesn't seem like that great of a manager. 

[patrickgpe]

51 minutes ago, MVP2110 said:

Do we have old threads archived anywhere? I'd love to go back to the thread when we hired Counsell to see how we reacted back in 2015

Im sure it was mostly positive, we were all sick of RR also, so any change would have been well received. 

[MrTPlush]

2 minutes ago, patrickgpe said:

Im sure it was mostly positive, we were all sick of RR also, so any change would have been well received. 

People were sick of retread managers and especially sick of ones that were retirement age. I recall people being pretty excited to get a no experience guy at the helm that didn't have adult kids. 

Of course, it helped it was hometown boy at the time too.

 

[Thurston Fluff]

I wanted them to hire from within so I'm happy. I think rewarding your guys with promotions is the antithesis of what the Cubs did and why the Brewers will be able to hire new talented people to the front office while the Cubs will have to pay through the nose to poach other team's talent. Treating your people right matters. Negotiating with a managing prospect behind your manager's back is not treating people right. Especially one who has a history with your club. Perhaps one of the market inefficiencies is in the front office more so than on the field at this point.

Whether Murphy pans out or not is to be determined. The same could have been said about any hire. Honestly whether he pans out or not isn't as relevant as showing your employees they have a chance to progress here. If he fails we move on and every one still knows he got his shot.

[Turnbows Barber]

1 hour ago, Fear The Chorizo said:

I'd also add that while Murphy was CC's bench coach, he's not a CC clone.  I'll be interested seeing if there are any noticeable differences to the type of players the Brewers have on their MLB bench and bottom 10 spots on their 40 man roster compared to recent seasons, to see if many of my roster decision frustrations over the past few years were influenced strictly by payroll limitations of the organization or if CC carried weight keeping some scrappy veterans around much longer than their onfield performance deserved.

It's very limited evidence but the whole Brian Anderson situation sure seemed like it was the front office wanting to hold on to a scrappy veteran longer than onfield performance deserved, not Counsell.

[edfunderburk]

3 hours ago, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

Pretty sure he was asking what evidence you used to form that opinion.

This is a fan forum … I thought opinions were allowed

if I enjoy a meal & say - that is the BEST hamburger ever - evidence would be hard to provide … I simply hate the choice … both Murphy & Weeks … I’d like a clean break from Counsell rather than best buds in Murphy … I don’t think much of Weeks but I could be wrong … just simply a preference thing & a desire for something different 

[edfunderburk]

3 hours ago, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

Boring hire, but also the right one. This team is not in tear-down mode. They are coming off a 92-win season, and anticipate having the core of that team coming back. The loss of Woodruff for what likely will be most of if not all of 2024 hurts, but it isn't like he was around for most of 2023. Perhaps Burnes is dealt, but if he is, it's going to be for a very good package of young players. 

The way Counsell left sucks, but let's not forget that he is the most successful manager in this team's history. And Murphy has been his mentor his whole career. Murphy is very well respected both within and outside the organization. Time will tell whether its the right hire, but of the candidates out there, it by far makes the most sense.

I’d love to catch your enthusiasm … I always appreciate your posts & generally agree with what you share