TooLiveBrew

I don't know all the details, but I am so used to Prince Fielder and his all-out dedication to do whatever it takes to be successful. Except on defense. I think AKA augie 46 said it best so far. With young players, people (imo) should trust scouting reports much, much more than stats. Gamel's swing has always drawn high praise, he's going to hit. Just remember that once upon a time, Hardy, Weeks, & Hart were all to be DFA'd by (at the least) a very loud minority on this site, as they clearly couldn't hit MLB pitching.

I assume that song video didn't doctor the audio at all, and if that's true, Prince actually tripped up & said it was an honor to sign with the "Brewers". I thought that was pretty wild.

All of the top pitchers seem to have extreme spikes in their performance in any given season. I remember reading someone on BF.net's forums (don't remember who) talk about how overrated Justin Verlander was, and not surprisingly that was after his 2008 season (4.84 ERA). Then, of course, there was Verlander 2011. After the Brewers traded for Greinke, I posted a comparison of several top SPs with Greinke, going just year to year with ERA. All of the other guys had extreme high & low seasons, and Greinke was one of the more consistent performers. Greinke got hurt, missed a lot of time, & had his routine thrown out of whack last season. So I can't say I'm too surprised he had an off-year. He's a tremendous athlete, and exactly the type of risk you should take if you decide to offer a long contract. The Prince & Greinke situations are really interesting to compare, to me. The super-athlete v. the guy who some think will eat himself out of the league, hitter v. pitcher, both about the same age, from the same region & competitors since they were kids. I'd guess Greinke is probably going to be a lot less expensive than Fielder was, but if he isn't, there's probably close to zero chance for the Brewers to re-sign him. If he is cheaper, then the comparison gets crazy. I'm not of the mind that position players have more value because SPs only go every 5th day, so to me the Brewers could theoretically be getting the more-impactful player for less than half of the money guaranteed to Fielder.

Well, I admit I just froze for a split-second when I saw this headline: Angels Sign Francisco Rodriguez I thought maybe there was some wrinkle to the new CBA that I hadn't heard about yet. But thankfully MLBTR will usually include a player's Baseball-Reference page in the text of their articles...

Have you had to write any cover letters? If so, have you addressed the distance between the job(s) & your current location? Even if a job doesn't require a cover letter, perhaps in your case (specifically meaning the distance) writing one would be helpful.

He also loved Dave Bush Who, up until taking a laser-beam line-drive off his pitching-side elbow, was also not a soft-tosser.

I'm guessing this will be a Brett Carroll-type signing. I don't expect them to add anyone who projects to be too useful at the big-league level. If it's even someone who gives Conrad a run for his money in ST, hitting-wise, I'll be happily surprised.

The 'competitive balance' angle is precisely what I was wondering about when typing that part of my earlier post.

Clearly, the Royals didn't learn anything from Milwaukee, or themselves... as they actually, voluntarily signed Yuniesky Betancourt.

The other point is our scouts just did not seem to care much about pitching. This is a bit of a tricky point, as there's been a pretty decent amount of turnover in the Brewers' FO staff & scouting staff in the past 5 or so seasons. Under Jack Z as scouting director, the scouting department definitely didn't do very well in terms of pitching. But I think there's a difference between not being good at something & not caring about something. I would love our team to draft a LOT of high school pitchers in the mid, later rounds. And throw over slot or college promises at them. The new CBA put a pretty large wrench in the plans of organizations who want to continue with over-slot drafting practices. Iirc the amount a team can spend on the draft was limited. So you can keep drafting over-slot guys in the middle rounds, but you might have to take signability picks with your higher draft slots in order to facilitate/fund it. I can guess there are a lot of high school seniors that throw 87 - 88 mph and maybe they will GROW into 93-94 mph guys. If they do not grow... oh well. I don't really understand what you're getting at here as being different from what teams already do in drafting. I'm also unfamiliar about whether or not MLB teams can promise college tuition to draftees out of H.S. (at least that's what I think you meant with "college promises"). That is just an idea. But the way we have done (badly) there sure needs to be some changes. I agree that the approach the Brewers used up until Jack Z left for Seattle should've been changed, and from all appearances of the scouting dept. under Seid so far, it has been. I think the results of said change in approach will start to become more & more apparent over the next few years, and in some ways they already have. But you're right, the Brewers definitely still have a looong way to go in making drafting & developing pitchers a strength of the organization.

Yep, sign me up for that lineup. If I could pick, Hart wouldn't lead off. But I think Corey's preference to lead off, combined with his performance in said role last season, means he's your leadoff man.

I'll guess they do move Rizzo to Maryvale, but only because he did very well in the DSL last season at a young age. They moved Jeffrey Saba stateside last year in his age-19 season, but Rizzo '11 was > Saba '10. Joel Dicent will be 20 next season, Rizzo 18. Only two pitchers for last year's AZL team were in their age-18 seasons, and one of those was 2nd rounder Jorge Lopez. So Dicent seems like a good bet to start in the AZL to me, with Rizzo a bit of a tossup. You could see some really good young arms in Maryvale this coming season. Along with Saba, Dicent, & perhaps Rizzo, lefty Will West was a bit of a revelation last season as an undrafted free agent. 2011 6th rounder Daniel Keller will probably start off repeating the AZL. Michael Schaub pitched well last season. And of course any arms the Brewers add in the upcoming draft could spend time in Arizona, too.

For example there is simply no way that all pitching coaches are equal, if that were true then Lee Tunnel wouldn't have had the impact he's had on the Brewer system. Obviously there are better & worse coaches. What I'm wondering, though, is how much bigger an impact one team's 7-10 or so MiLB pitching coaches could realistically have over any other team's coaching staff. The gap in talent produced by a team like ATL or Tampa over Milwaukee has been so great, there just has to be a lot more to it. Our MiLB teams have a 1 manager, 1 pitching coach, and 1 hitting coach, it's as barebones as it can get. Right, but there's also at least one roving instructor (more?). I just wonder how big a difference - across entire farm systems - there could possibly be from team to team. I think pretty much all MiLB teams have the 1-1-1 coaching staff, at least stateside, in the minors. I don't understand why a smart small market team hasn't taken this tact, pumping more cash into their system in the hopes of saving significant money on the back end, 2 more coaches at every level could have a significant impact, that wouldn't even cost the team $500,000 dollars to make happen. I ask honestly - are there MLB rules against having more than three officially assigned coaches per stateside level? And as I asked a bit earlier, how many roving instructors do teams use? Because I agree with you that it would seem to be very cost-effective to add even just one more guy per level & call him 'bullpen coach'. So for whatever his salary is, you just doubled your available face-to-face coaching time. Seems too simple.

And when I thought about a goal in some sort of "green" technology it all seemed to fit well. I think your instincts were right on this one. I'd guess many 'green' startups could really use someone like you. It's all about finding where they are... where I can't help in one bit.

Yes. My guess for next season is that Weeks stays healthy & outperforms Phillips. Maybe I'll be wrong. But it's not that big of a deal. Honestly please do one yourself, I'd love to see lots of other people's takes.

Even so, (again I'm speaking from no specific experience here), if you could get a job at a big lab, wouldn't you at worst have the opportunity to pursue both avenues? I also still think that, if framed/presented correctly, your versatility could be a strong selling point even to a large operation. I get where you're coming from in asking about this, since finance & chemistry don't exactly share a lot of prerequisites, but still. http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/smile.gif I would just guess that a chemist with knowledge of finance or an accountant with knowledge of chemistry would have a solid leg up on a lot of competing job applicants.

I preface this by saying that I have zero knowledge of any chemistry-based professions, but it would seem like someone who could work in the lab AND on the finances would be extremely valuable to a company with needs in both places. Is that something that's really unrealistic? I'd think like a smaller company would really see the value in versatility.

All I did was use the depth charts on the teams' websites. I think people are reading too much into this. I still think the biggest fault with this is Phillips not being the top 2B, he has just been better than Weeks over the past few seasons especially when you count durability. Well feel free to do your own, I said right off the bat this was a very informal thing.

You look for outfielders who are left-handed, a first baseman who is young and spots you’ll get an opportunity to get some at-bats. “I’m just searching for the right opportunity. Free agency is not fun these days. Obviously at the end of the day you have to be a realist. Doug, I hope you've already heated up the phone lines. At this point, Jackson doesn't sound like he's expecting too much money.

If the debate lumps evaluation in with development than I completely agree we have not done well. I was thinking development in terms of what happens once the guy gets into your camp. I figured that was the direction of the previous poster as well because he said Lopez would be better off with the Rays and/or Braves. The initial evaluation of talent seems to be the most important factor, that's really all I think I know for sure. I think they just draft pitchers better than we do. This has to be it, I mean how much better can one organization's pitching coaches or program really be? I feel like the problem lies much more with scouting then instruction I agree, and that's kind of depressing. But I also agree with you that they've done better in more recent years.

Maybe Taylor will turn it around but I think he is what he is right now. He is solid but not last years Jordan Taylor. I don't even think last year's Jordan Taylor is actually Jordan Taylor (meaning I think he played over his head). His jumper is pretty ugly for a guy who plays at such a high level, and in general he's just not a very natural-looking shooter. What makes him an elite college player is obviously his physique -- he's just so much stronger than most guards (1-guards, 2-guards, hell probably even a lot of 3s) he faces. But yeah, he's not a true scorer & unfortunately is the closest thing the Badgers have to one right now. They are still struggling to hit threes but at least they are not shooting 30 of them a game Yeah, and honestly (knowing how Bo is) it was surprising that the players got away with ineffectively jacking so many 3's as long as they did, playing on a Bo Ryan team.

Who did the org screw up? I think the better question would be, 'Why have the Rays & Braves been so much more successful developing pitchers?' I don't think you can discount something like the 4 players you name as 'just bad picks' without holding the Brewers accountable. It's not just that Jeffress & Rogers didn't pan out, it's that the Rays (for example) have turned out like 4 or 5 or 6 really legit young MLB pitchers in the past 5+ seasons. They obviously seem to know how to identify pitching better, & identifying is definitely part of the development process imo.* Sorry, I don't want this post to seem ad hominem. I just think that this is an interesting topic to discuss. * In fact, identification might be the single most important part of developing... because let's be honest, the vast majority of why a player makes it or not is the player himself. Rickie Weeks--Mat Gamel is a perfect example of that, imo. Weeks was willing to work his butt off to become the best he could be, and with Gamel you've never gotten that impression from hearing anyone talk about him (as much as I love his skills).

Totally agree on just drafting bats & not worrying yet about the positions. Definitely time, right now anyway, for the Jack Z approach to drafting http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/smile.gif

No way is Greinke the 5th or 6th best starter among these three teams. Where did anyone say anything about this?

I believe the only satisfactory answer to this is "Polar bears on a tropical island"