huntsvillefan

At this point I think nearly everything has been said that can be, so I'm going to wrap up my thoughts and make this a last post for a year or so anyhow. First I want to make it clear that I don't in any way feel that I've been forced out, its entirely my decision and made for complex reasons that I hope this post will clarify a little more. I'd like to thank the people who have asked me to stay and who have posted to my EZBox, I will respond properly over the next day or so. But I didn't make this decision to pander to my ego or have a public pout. I think there is nothing worse than the message board prima donna who threatens to leave just so he can be asked to stay. And to that extent once I announced a considered decision to go (as opposed to my first flare of temper), I felt pretty much committed to that course of action. The main reason for withdrawing from posting is to draw attention to what I consider to be an ethical blindspot in an otherwise great site. I accept that you are all sincere in your tolerance for the mode of expression that I condemned. And on that issue I feel I owe Team Canada an apology as he was merely presenting the 'company view' while trying to pour oil on troubled waters. I think I've already made the reasons for my objection clear. I feel that this differs from Jamie's aversion to 'pissed' in that while 'pissed' is merely distasteful and unnecessary, 'mental cases etc' is IMO the sort of thing that causes pain and shame in people who already suffer too much of both. I don't expect that any of you will change your minds overnight, but I do hope that by making it obvious how strongly I feel about this, that when this issue arises again (as it inevitably will), it might contribute to a group re-think. The other reason for not posting is more complex and may clarify why I'm happy to continue to read though not to contribute (though as I said, if so requested I'll do neither). When I read the 'mental case' phrase initially with its reference to Hendrickson and Krynzel, my gut literally churned. I know that their relatives read these threads and I could only think of the pain they'd feel on reading that. And that pain was caused by my initial post and response. If I hadn't initiated that discussion, or even if I had followed my inclinations to ignore the follow up question, that statement would never have been made and two decent people wouldn't(in all probability) have found themselves angry and upset. Don't get me wrong, anyone who is attrempting a career in professional sport has to learn to live with criticism as do their relatives. But there is a difference between criticism and insult and I feel that increasingly often these days that boundary gets crossed. I have no desire to be the person who provokes the insult that twists the knife just a little bit more in that caring father or mothers heart. I know that if I continued to post, especially in the minor league forum, I'd continue to invite the sort of invective that(IMO) does so much damage and that on its own is enough to persuade me to discontinue. I realize that there are many shades of grey within this argument and that it isn't a black and white issue. But the bottom line for me is that I don't think that seeing my opinion in print is worth the pain it indirectly causes. I hope this clarifies things a bit and I'll happily answer questions in my EZBox if anyone has any. I've enjoyed the vast majority of my arguments here and I'd like to give a hat tip to Brett as he and I have managed to disagree about everything from Moneyball to fielding runs without ever getting uncivil. I'd also like to say that I really do appreciate the difficulty of being a moderator and that on the whole you guys do a really great job. If nothing else comes from this, at least the next time someone accuses Brian of censoring too much, he can point out he just had someone leave because he censored too little http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

suggesting that a player has some sort of mental hangup is quite common is baseball and therefore, a common term to a baseball site. If a guy gets rattled because of an error in the 3rd inning and blows a play in the 5th because he's timid, he'll be analized as needing to address a mental aspect of his defensive ability. Players have heard it from their own coaches. Parents have heard it of their athlete sons or daughters. It's been a part of sports and will continue to be a part of sports. Simple. Agreed. But,if you don't see the difference between what you just said and saying someone is 'a mental case ready to fall apart at the drop of a hat' then I can't honestly enlighten you or communicate with you in any meaningful way. For the difference between refusing to contribute and still wishing to be aware of what is going on and reading the contributions of people who I deeply respect, I'd have thought that was a simple matter of freedom of choice about how to register my protest. However if it offends, I'm happy to abandon the site completely if so requested.

I'm afraid we have to disagree and I feel strongly that casual and derogatory use of phrases like that continue to stigmatize and debase people with mental iIlness, and make it very difficult for them to confront and treat their problems and make their illnesses more traumatic than need be. I confess I really do find it difficult to see you using that phrase in front of your 10 year old child, or even that you find it acceptable that a player's father or mother should open a thread and see it written about their son. But if you say so then I believe you. I hope no-one uses it in front of your friends children or your distressed relatives, so that your tolerance on this issue won't be tested. I do accept that I am obviously the one out of step on this site on this issue. However, as previously said, I find it equally obnoxious to the racial slurs that hopefully most people despise. I could not in conscience support a site that condoned use of them and therefore I must withdraw from a site that endorses this sort of language. On the whole our discourses have been pleasant and constructive and I wish you and the site well, though obviously I hope you in future come to see this particular issue in a very different light.

I have a simple question is the phrase: mental cases that fall to pieces at the drop of a hat. considered suitable for use in describing players (or anyone else) on these boards? I have a vested interest in this question, in that I have withdrawn from this site in protest at its use by one moderator, followed by the defense of its use by another moderator. I'll continue that protest apart from this thread, but I do think, that it is a question important enough to need resolution for reasons other than my tender sensibilities. I had thought that phrases that made use of abusive terms for mental illness for any purposes, nevermind those of mockery or 'hyperbole' ,had passed out of acceptable usage along with the racial epithets most decent people despise. I certainly can't imagine being comfortable using that phrase 'in front of my 10 year old' as site guidelines suggest. Yet the phrase was used by one moderator and defended by another, so I can only presume that I am the one totally out of step with the sensibilities both of this site and current ethics. I pose the question anyhow in the hope that its acceptability may either be a minority view among staff, or if not, it might encourage some staff to at least think more deeply about the site ethos in this regard. I think this is a wonderful forum and civility encapsulated compared to most. It may just be that I am too tender a flower to thrive in the cut and thrust of 'honest debate', so I'm content with my decision to withdraw from posting. I raise this question because I do think that this sort of language reflects very poorly indeed on a site that I have grown to appreciate and care about.

And while I can appreciate your feelings about "mental cases", it's not really fair to assume that everyone is going to feel the same way without some sort of personal experience to behind it. I was going to drop this but apparently I'm not allowed to. If you honestly think that use of the phrase 'mental cases' is only offensive to someone with personal experience, then I think you should phone a few mental health organizations and ask how they feel about its use especially in this sort of context. Its just as offensive as those words that begin with 'n' and 'f' that would hopefully get someone banned from a site that considers itself family friendly. If its not bad enough that someone would trot it out anyway, Peavey actually puts it into my mouth The way you talk about these guys (Hendrickson and Krynzel) you'd think that they're mental cases that fall to pieces at the drop of a hat. Apart from being not even a close approximation of anything I have ever said, I find just as offensive as if he'd suggested I was calling Rickie Weeks a 'n-----', . Those kids have families who visit this site and I don't think they should have to read offensive bigotry like that. To be blunt, I don't think that anyone who either uses or endorses that phrase should be a moderator on a family friendly site. But thankfully that isn't my business. You may feel that this is somehow over sensitive or overly politically correct, but I'd be willing to bet that any family based organizations you chose to contact would be closer to my view than yours. You may have worked out that I have no intention of hugging and in fact I'll stick to my original plan of ignoring anything Peavey says. If this transgresses a site rule please feel free to ban me. EDIT Actually on due consideration, save yourself the trouble, I'll ban myself. That way moderators can go back to using Mental Illness as a source of humor, hyperbole and insult without anyone objecting. I understand that its 'not really fair' to expect anyone here to behave differently.

In both threads I withdrew because we seem to be incapable of having a civil discussion. I'm going to make that impossible in future by ignoring all of your posts - so be happy this is a last reply. If you choose to think that iI'm dropping out of conversation with you because I cower before your irrefutable logic, please do so and I hope it makes you feel warm and fuzzy. The truth is that I find it thoroughly unpleasant to have a discussion with someone who throws about words and phrases like 'Evil' ( a word I use about people like Hitler rather than the Brewers as you characterise me), 'mental-cases' (a phrase I happily don't use at all and thought had been dropped by most thinking human beings) and 'talking out of both sides of your mouth' (a phrase I find unnecesarily rude). And those are only samples from our last two 'discussions',. I come here for relaxation and polite intelligent discussion, interacting with you provides me with neither of those things, therefore I choose to ignore you. But believe what you will.

I'm not going to get into this again with you, I'm entirely happy you disagree and you're free to paraphrase my arguments in whatever wild fashion you care to. The only point I'm going to make is that despite your incredulity, it is entirely possible for the same organization to promote some players too quickly and others too slowly, even though that isn't anything I actually mentioned. I'd also imagine that I'm not the only one on this board who has had dealings with mental illness and you throwing around phrases like 'mental cases', is not only distasteful but entirely unnecessary in the context of a supposedly civilized conversation about baseball. I'm done with this thread

Have you seen Weeks play D? Normally people work on that in the minors and don't get a free pass . They let a potentially excellent 2B pay little or no attention to his D, promoted him continually despite his failures and I hate to think that they may have left it all too late and robbed us of the privelege of seeing a guy who could have been a genius in the field as well as at the plate. Krynzel I think is entirely more tenuous, but I think they screwed very badly with his confidence in the middle of his second year at Huntsville. Neither of these ideas are things I didn't post at the time and I've seen nothing since to particuarily convince me that I was off track, though I'm sure you'll disagree http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

In your opinion, who has been mishandled other than Rottino? Of the top prospects, Krynzel, Hendrickson, Hart, Sarfate, Eveland and Weeks just off the top of my head. Just because some of them will survive it and even prosper doesn't mean I've been impressed by how they've been handled. Some guys have the mindset to come through no matter what happens, others need more help. I've made posts about all these guys and how I thought they were being mishandled quite frequently. That doesn't mean I'm correct, but I certainly have an argument on all of them. But what I actually said (and you quoted) was, I'm just honestly permanently unimpressed with everything I hear about communications, targets and planning for these guys. I'm not going to name names and you can think me a liar if you wish, but I know more than one story of a player (not necessarily a prospect) who felt he had been given a target at the start of the season, met the target he felt he had been set and then heard - nothing. Guys who felt they had been promised promotion when they reached certain agreed targets and yet didn't receive any communications at all after it happened. Worse, they didn't even really know how to go about talking about it without feeling they were making waves. Obviously the bigger the prospect and the more prominent the agent, the less this happens. But the Brewers can do with developing guys who aren't first or second round draft picks.

Sorry DHonks, but none of that explains why they dumped the experiment after about a month last year and you yourself said in a post earlier this year that Vinnie had no clue why it stopped then. I'm just honestly permanently unimpressed with everything I hear about communications, targets and planning for these guys.

Just keeping up the Vinnie watch, glad to see he caught again tonight, but a bit perplexed why they let it slide for so long if they have serious intentions of developing this aspect of his game. 2 throwing errors and 4 stolen bases against a team that averages 1.5 attempts per game and gets caught 33% of the time. He needs a lot of serious time on this and he probably needed it more last year at the lower level. I'd love to see something approaching a plan in this kid's development - but then why should he have it different? Edit: To be fair they stole 3 times the previous night against Johnson.

Nice to see Vinnie being given a chance to catch and on a positive note, no WP or PB. On the other side of the coin, out of 7 guys who stood on first base against him, 3 successfully stole second, two of those guys had a previous grand total of 2 stolen bases between them. This against a reasonably conservative team who generally get caught once in every three attempts. I think his arm strength is good enough to eventually overcome this, but he needs regular practice. I hope this is the start of him getting some.

Rogers Schmogers!!!!!! Don't you guys realize the night's truly significant news ? The Stars won, The Stars won, la la la la la la The Stars won!!! Ok you can go on with Rogers and Salome now.

We really do need help at Huntsville and these two could certainly supply it. The peculiarity of being a minor league supporter is that though I'm glad to see the team improved, I feel gutted for Greg Sain. Its almost certainly the right decision, but, despite his atrocious BA he was still by far the most thrilling of the currennt team to watch at the plate. I really hope he gets another chance elsewhere and turns it round. I'd be happier for G-Rod if I thought he'd get regular playing time, but that looks unlikely with their line-up. His D is very sound, he can play anywhere well and it would be nice to see him get an extended run and a chance to use his bat reguarily. Anyhow on a purely selfish note lets hope the change of personnel brings the Stars a few more wins.

Its obviously not good, but I wouldn't get too downcast until the full story comes out. There are some pretty fancy bat rules in the minors and I have memories Brandon Gemoll getting thrown out of a playoff game for simply using a bat that wasn't on the SL approved list of makers. You could still find that the breach was more of a technicality than anything that was giving him major assistance. Lets hope so anyhow.

The Stars players are big boys, they need to tough it out for now and show the organization something. I'm kinda with Mass on this one. I'll whine plenty when I think the Brewers are giving the Stars a rough deal and it has happened more than once, but not this time IMO.Between acquired veterans and guys repeating a year, I think that they actually did their best to put out a team with a chance of winning. It just so happens that just about every position player has chosen the last two months to show how bad they can be. I'll slightly disagree with Mass, in that I think that the 500 ball they played up until recently was more of a statistical anomaly than anything else. They're not a bad defensive team, but in no way exceptional and the pitching is about SL average. If their offense didn't pick up, the law of averages was pretty much bound to catch up with them eventually and it has. I certainly don't think that the Brewers should promote anyone who might not be ready and it would be just plain mean to move anyone from Brevard while they're making a run at a first half win. Apart from anything else, I doubt if the present Stars locker room is liable to be psychologically beneficial to a young ballplayer. However, once the first half is over, I do think the Brewers owe it to the Stars to at least think about who is not liable to improve and perhaps give a few guys from Indy ball a chance instead. I hate saying that, as I'm always sad when any player is released, but to allow this team to continue in its present form is an embarassment to both Huntsville and the Brewers. I'm not even thinking that such changes would necessarily start the team winning, no-one can guarantee that. But it would at least show that the Brewers were taking an interest in what was happening and were active in trying to improve the team. My real hope is that some of the guys start to improve in the next few weeks. They were never going to be a powerhouse of a team, but one could reasonably have expected the offense to have performed better than this. If nothing else, guys repeating a year usually improve rather than deteriorate. To summarize, I certainly don't blame the Brewers on this, but that doesn't make it any easier to watch. If tomorrow is hot and humid, I'll probably stay at home rather than go to the ballpark and thats not something I ever imagined myself saying.

You think you're sad Mass - I just got home from watching it! Still at least I was there when history was made. Yesterday we became the first SL team to be swept in a 5 game series, today we established a Franchise record for longest ever losing streak and tomorrow we can complete the trifecta and break the record for the longest ever home losing streak! I always enjoy watching Thurman pitch and tonight was no exception, but this team is getting really hard to derive any enjoyment from.

Just remember that Huntsville has the nice ability to hit the reset button mid-season and try this whole thing over again. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thanks for the nice thoughts Peavey. Sadly we had that the last two years as well. Both times I predicted a second half awakening and both times they got worse. This time I'm going to stay quiet. To be honest, I think the pitching turmoil at Milwaukee right now makes it hard to throw any blame in the direction of Brewers management. Everyone is just doing what they can to stay afloat. This was a pretty bad team to start with and none of the necessary shuffling has helped it at all. At least Ezi's speed is something wondrous to watch. But I confess its really hard to work up the enthusiasm to go out and watch this lot, they manage to make yard work in the Alabama sun seem appealing. Mostly I just feel sad for all of the position players who were once even marginal prospects, its hard watching so many careers go down the toilet at once. Lets hope the second half does bring a revival in fortune for some of these guys, but even if it does, for most of them its probably going to be too little too late.

I'm agreeing with WestCoastBrewer here, error totals from minor league games tell you almost nothing. A classic example is Weeks at Huntsville. I remember a golden period on this very board when his errors almost stopped for about three weeks towards the end of the season. There were many posts heralding this as his defense improving wonderfully, Reid Nicholls even made one of his pronouncements about it. I felt like Jeremiah himself trying to say that a combination of charity from the scorer and Weeks realizing you didn't get charged if you didn't make any play was responsible. Its harder to hide in the majors and once he got there it was seen that the myth of Weeks improvement was just that - a myth. The only place I disagree with WCB is about the Brewers' scouting doing a better job on assessing D than error totals. Reid Nicholls of "Weeks defense has improved considerably", "Corey Hart is Major League ready at 3B" and "We know that Vinnie can play catcher" fame, hardly impresses one that the Brewers have a clue how good their prospects D is. The failure to get Weeks to a stage where he could do something as simple as setting his feet before he throws, speaks volumes about the ineptitude of Brewers defensive coaching and assessment in the minors.

Sounds like Villanueva has things figured out. Well even before tonight he was allowing a miserly 437 OPS against on the road. So that is going to shrink even further. However, at home he is conceding a quite gruesome 875 and tonight's effort won't help that. Weird thing is IIRC, when he was called up last year he was exactly the same, fine on the road - awful at the Joe. It really does begin to feel that there is something about Joe Davis stadium or the town of Huntsville that brings out the worst in Carlos. I'm going to have to take that road trip to see him at his best.

I'm not arguing, just pointing out that its a problem the Brewers have been aware of and working on for almost two years and it still hasn't got through. They weren't 'getting on him', they were actually taking him and a first baseman out there and giving him extra practice. Now I don't know how long they kept that going and one hopes that Yount might get through where Kremblas couldn't. But its obviously not going to be in any way an easy fix.

99% of Weeks' errors are on throws. They need to force him to set himself and not do his crazy 'behind the back jumping throws' and he'd eliminate 2/3 of them. An excellent idea, so good someone thought of it before you. August 2004 Huntsville, they announced to the press that they were working on getting Rickie to set himself before he threw and once that was sorted his defense would be fine. It didn't work out real well for them.

Nice win for Huntsville tonight, despite Don Money smallball gifting outs to a pitcher who couldn't buy a strike. I really am starting to like Earl Weaver more and more. I heard at the game that they had settled on 60 days for Young, don't know if it is true or not, but if it is he got off lightly IMO.

Tough extra innings loss tonight, but 2TO makes a bid to become 3TO by walking in a run as well as hammering his almost standard 2 run homer. How often does a guy with a .200 average lead the team in OPS?

Hey he walked today!!!! 2TO is exactly how I described him to Brian last week. I remember him destroying us a couple of years ago and even when he was playing against us, there was a peculiar fascination in watching him come to the plate. He really doesn't look like a slugger, physically in some ways he actually reminds me of Pick. He doesn't seem to have a favorite pitch to hit and he doesn't even seem to hit it particuarily hard. Its a totally random event but when you hear the connection you know its going. I've seen him hit them to extreme left field and extreme right field. Today's was the Greg Sain equivalent of a bloop single only it blooped right over the wall in center field. Hes not a bad glove at 1B. Every team should have one.