TooLiveBrew

This is an honest question, because I don't know: does signing & producing guys like Alcides Escobar, Wily Peralta, Amaury Rivas, & Hernan Iribarren warrant a dramatic overhaul of the Latin American scouting? I'm not familiar with the rates at which other organizations turn out talent from that part of the world. And I thought the Brewers had made a couple of good or respectable signings this past season.

I've never been a big fan of not taking BPA. I don't care if the pick is not protected. Take BPA and pay like you would for any other 1st rounder. And ironically, the Covey situation backs up this stance. Teams can miss on signing a player for any kind of fluky & unpredictable reason.

I love census data, and I can't tell you why. That's funny, Nick. I can definitely tell you that you're the only person *I* know that gets excited for census data. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif Glad you can get your fix, though!

Komatsu certainly had a great year. It'll be (hopefully) fun to see how he fares in Hunstville... hopefully also in Nashville.

Man, that lil' smokies idea sounds delicious.

This is a fantastic idea. I completely agree on the multi-facted entertainment value.

Hey man, gotta stay tuned in on the recruiting trail!

With sharp analysis like this, it's no wonder Gennett is your #1. Rogers's ceiling is a dominant, top-of-rotation starter. Say what you will about his chances to reach it, but if you honestly think his ceiling is a RP... well, yeah. I'm beginning to think endaround is right that you just like being contrary.

It's not that he didn't say Betancourt is a bad player... I wasn't expecting that. It's that he lauded him for his range & talked about him having the chance to be a good fielder. Sounds delusional, even though I hope you're right & it's just spin.

To quote C-3PO, "we're doomed" That's Ron Roenicke talking about his new shortstop. Maybe Ron just doesn't know about the blue font rule? I don't get how you can say a 29-yo is still young & going to get better. That's a head-scratcher.

Yeah, at this point it's probably better for Mat to get used to a part-time role & acclimate himself to the big leagues. Plus I'm sure he'd prefer to be with the MLB club all season instead of riding buses with Nashville.

You have Gennett ahead of Rogers? That seems like a big stretch.

Done. Counsell's grades seem particularly harsh. I think you could safely inflate each guy's overall grade by 10 points & probably have that be more realistic. Obviously that's incredibly scientific & reliable.

Looks like he wore #40 with BC & with Huntsville, and #26 with Nashville

Yeah, that's what I was hoping when he deflected that question earlier today. Hooray!

Wanted to post this for tdeggie, who'd asked about more Fan Scouting Reports yesterday in the Betancourt thread. I used Nick Punto, along with the guys mentioned in the lead post of this thread, & those mentioned by southpaw in post #28. I added Cesar Izturis, who may be expendable for the O's now that they have Hardy. I only looked at 2010 data, but also included at the link above is fan balloting for 2002-'09 Ovr. React./Inst. Accel. Spd. Hands Release/Ftwrk. Arm Str. Arm Acc. C. Izturis: 76 78 75 65 84 84 62 81 N. Punto: 70 78 77 69 79 75 48 66 E. Bonifacio: 62 54 81 84 47 51 62 57 M. Izturis: 60 64 67 60 67 61 44 55 J. Carroll: 56 62 56 56 56 59 35 65 J. Hairston: 53 54 58 58 46 56 51 49 J. Lowrie: 53 55 57 55 49 48 51 53 O. Cabrera: 50 55 36 37 63 63 43 56 M. Scutaro: 49 52 52 49 52 57 37 46 E. Renteria: 45 47 38 37 49 54 37 53 Betancourt: 34 19 15 30 27 32 68 46 Ryan: 78 87 85 75 83 76 73 66 Escobar: 72 70 82 83 57 72 78 62 Hardy: 68 75 64 47 70 75 75 66 Counsell: 60 67 52 49 68 74 43 68 Added Betancourt & some familiar faces (including Brendan Ryan) for comparison's sake. These ratings are on the 0-100 scale. Imo overall, it seems the fans' scouting leans toward the harsh side, with only the very elite players getting good scores. Take Ryan's overall score of 78 -- he's regarded as being as good as it gets with the glove at SS in MLB. And Escobar's arm, for another example... probably much, much closer to 90 in strength (Hardy nicknamed it "The Howitzer" in ST a while back), and easily over a 70 in accuracy imo. Hardy's arm should be graded much higher, as well. The fans are just tough critics, I guess. I'd be happy to add to this chart if anyone had other guys they'd like to see compared.

He said no more major moves. If you sign someone like Orlando Cabrera, is that classified as "major"?

No. I think it's just Melvin being his typical frank self. He said "might"; he's just answering a question imo.

From the Melvin presser transcript: For some reason, this just makes the offseason *that* much sweeter right now.

Nice catch on the lockers... I'd missed that. I also like that Zack's just dressed in jeans & a completely nondescript hoodie. I think he's going to fit in Milwaukee reeeeal nicely. EDIT: “We put the list together pretty fast, and the way I was kind of thinking about it at the time was Prince, who is a very good player, had just one year left, and I didn’t know if they were planning on trading him or what the plans of Milwaukee were this off-season. I kind of just wanted to see if they were going to try to re-stock a little bit, then it wouldn’t have been one of my first choices. But when they decided to keep Prince and then traded for Marcum, I would have put them in probably the top three teams I would have preferred to get traded to." Awesome. "It’s kind of cool – I see Rickie. He lives in Orlando and I live in Orlando we I see him probably once or twice every off-season. It’s usually the other way – I was always telling him I was trying to get the Royals to trade for him the past couple of years. I always thought we’d end up playing together because we live like, five minutes from each other, but never really ended up playing together. So it’s kind of cool it’s going to happen that way. Played with Prince a couple times, too. He lives in Orlando also.” Also awesome. He sounds really down-to-earth, and actually pretty funny. His comment about Aaron Rodgers & fantasy football cracked me up.

Counsell re-signed, but it was done before the Greinke deal was finished.

So is the storm basically going to ruin any potential viewing of the lunar eclipse tonight?

New Witrado blog post of a phone interview with Greinke. And according to this post, zurch, the press conference was already in progress this morning at 11:15.

I don't think the bolded part will necessarily play any role in potential contract talk, but how cool is that? From McCalvy's blog EDIT: Wow. UQU, that was amazing. That should be a new Flash intro to the BF site.

Yeah, that's probably about it. Maybe EdgarDiazRocks can confirm or deny this fully.