TooLiveBrew

Hey, use the "he was great last year" all you want, but that's all it is - an argument. Just like the "He's clearly suddenly lost the ability he's had his entire career, including last season, to locate his pitches" argument Debate this all you want, Trevor Hoffman's gas tank is empty At this point, imo the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate beyond your opinion that having anything in the gas tank has anything to do with locating. His velocity is the same as it has been for a long, long time. I don't know why you point out that he doesn't have much/any movement on his fastball... he didn't last year, either. This situation is all about location & likely mechanics. I believe you need to show how it's anything but.

I think tyguy brings up an interesting point on the whispers of attitude problems. Ash went out of his way to praise McGehee -- his work ethic, rapport with teammates, personality, etc. Gamel, on the other hand, definitely comes across as being quite aloof. I certainly will continue to hope the organization isn't making personnel decisions on the basis of whether or not players are "good guys". However, perhaps in this case, they just didn't appreciate a (possibly) poor work ethic from Gamel & wanted to reward the guy in McGehee who works his butt off. Hard to say.

While that's true, the reason I feel differently about Manny is he has the stuff. Ben Hendrickson really didn't have the kind of stuff Manny does.

Realistically, what you see now is likely what you will get for the rest of the year. Yes, because pitchers never scuffle in the beginning of the season. And fans never overreact.

I think Parra needs to go. He is a guy that has the stuff, but not the mental makeup to pitch in the majors. He had the "mental makeup" to throw a perfect game in AAA. Locating pitches effectively really doesn't have much to do with mental makeup imho. The most important thing to me is that Manny has the stuff to be effective at the MLB level. He's been solid in relief so far, and I think that once we see our first SP injury, he'll get the chance to show himself again as a starter.

I would agree if he was 35 or even 37-8 years old. But he's over 40. IMO, what he's done in the past can be thrown out the window with the fact that he probably shouldn't be pitching in MLB anymore. Maybe if he hadn't been lights-out as recently as age 41, I might agree with you. It's early in the season, he didn't pitch basically at all in ST, and it usually takes pitchers a while to find their location. I could well be proven wrong, maybe Hoffman has lost the ability to locate. But this reeks of just another early season small-sample overreaction.

Lawrie & Gamel (imo) are absolutely impact bats. I think Gamel will stick at 3B as long as the Brewers aren't fooled into thinking McGehee is a good defender there. Lawrie will probably be the one to step into RF. For arms, imo Braddock, Rogers, & Peralta will be strong in what I believe their roles will be -- the former two in the bullpen, the latter as a starter. Jeffress has a shot at being absolutely electric, whether a starter or reliever. It's easy to be really down on him at the moment, but his stuff is incredible. Odorizzi really seems to be taking a step forward this season, and I think he's a guy that projects pretty well in terms of MLB. I don't know much about Scarpetta, but I know he's pretty well-regarded. Seems like he's another guy with big-time stuff that needs to harness his control. I'm not as optimistic as Strawboss is either, FV, but I think I'm easily more optimistic than you are. Do the Brewers have the best system in the league? No, but there's definitely quality in there right now (I didn't even mention Salome & Lucroy) to go along with quantity.

Thank you for saying this. I'm extremely tired of "The Twins Model™" as a talking point. It's just developed into something people say, without much real analysis put into it. I think the argument can be made that Melvin *has* adapted his core philosophy, through the hiring/promotion of Bruce Seid to Director of Scouting. Seid has clearly made projectable pitching a priority in his drafting philosophy, but since he's only had one draft at the helm, none of the pitching is close to MLB yet. There are a small handful of GMs that seem to be competent in every aspect of the job, so I don't think it's realistic to expect that, in replacing Melvin, the Brewers would uncover the next one. That's not to say I don't want the organization to seek that person, I just think it's unlikely they'll find him/her. With that in mind, and since developing or identifying pitching seems to be a weak suit of Melvin's, I think the appointment of Seid should not be overlooked. I know this is a somewhat tired point, but Jack Zduriencik seemed to receive nothing but praise during his tenure here. All the stud prospects were his saintly doing, and all the deficiencies on the MLB roster were Melvin's fault. Z has/had a similar weakness to Melvin, in that they seem to share the belief that you can flip hitting prospects to acquire frontline starting pitching. Maybe that was once the case, but the market in MLB has changed. While Melvin certainly hasn't proven himself as savvy at developing pitching as a GM, he has many other strengths. His ability to pluck players off waivers is nothing short of amazing, for example. So does he get credit in your eyes, TheCrew07 (or anyone else's), for attempting to augment a weakness of his through his selection of Scouting Director? In mine he certainly does... and while I don't want to continue to see guys like Davis signed, I think we need to give the young arms in the system a chance to develop before we cut ties with Melvin.

"He's had a couple of shots, and not taken the job" This quote on Gamel really burns me up. It indicates the organization doesn't see anything wrong with how he was handled, and that they essentially didn't put much (if any) planning into the use of his service time.

It would be a really nice modernization & utilization of that logo. I'd love to see it as well... probably, like you suggest, as an alternate cap.

Ok, but what "statheads" are you referring to? The "stathead" crowd here was talking relatively extensively about how the M's were overrated.

I said 2 months ago SEA's offense was awful. What's funny is, the stathead crowd failed to see this, and expected the M's to outperform their runs scored/runs allowed by 8-10 games again. I need to see some facts to back this self-congratulatory statement up. Every discussion about the M's on this forum over the offseason had a very healthy population of comments pointing out how far they'd exceeded their runs scored & allowed last season.

I think you hit the nail on the head. He can hit, but not well enough to have a lot of value at 1B. And his lack of mobility severely hurts his value on defense at 3B (even moreso at 2B). I agree with zzzman's last post -- his best value at the moment is on the field for the Crew.

McGehee can't handle 2B. He's not mobile enough. Because he played there in the minors means little to nothing about his ability to handle it in MLB. No, fan is no longer an abbreviation for fanatic. That's its etymology, not its definition. What's with you & harping on people's signatures?

Ugh

I'm very much in favor of not giving opposing teams free baserunners in retaliation for them being stupid enough (if you're assuming a beanball) to give us free baserunners. Macha definitely sticks up for his players, and is not shy to come out & argue calls. But if anyone wants "sticking up for players" to mean issuing free passes for opposing hitters, I'll be arguing that he/she is wrong.

I thought the exact same thing, sveumrules. That's just inconceivably frustrating. I mean, does Doug Melvin just not have memory of last season?

I guess my question was more to whether or not the Braves' lineup is all that bad. They've had some rough starts in Glaus, Escobar, McLouth, Cabrera, Diaz, & by their own standards Chipper Jones & Brian McCann. It's pretty obvious that Heyward should be hitting 2, 3, 4, or 5, but I just don't think the Braves have a bad lineup.

Macha is only one that gives green light here. Very poor decision that could have cost Brewers the game. That was mind-boggling, and I'm glad the Brewers were able to go on to win. However, you have to keep in mind that Macha could put the red light on & Zaun could still decide to swing. It's not as simple as being 100% on Macha.

I hope not. I really don't miss that guy. From what I've heard second hand, he's gotten worse since taking a job with the D-Backs.Yeah, the Arizona broadcast is one of the worst in the entire league. It's painfully bad. Thank you to dadofandrew & everyone else that filled me in on why we're missing BA so often this season. I was unaware.

I have to agree with OSS on this one. It really deserves a thread in the MLB forum.

Thread title says (or asks) it all. While I certainly don't really care for Craig Coshun, my question has more to do just with BA. Did he get a new contract & more perks like time off?

Based on that every post you make baits anyone who isn't willing to make the leaps you do with an inflammatory sig file. It's his sig -- you're free to just find it annoying. I really can't see how it can be considered baiting.

if the lineup is so pathetic, why has he only been hitting 6th or 7th?

That was pretty awesome last night. I've never seen a Brewers player hit for the cycle, and as soon as that double left the bat my only 'concern' was whether or not it'd be a HR. The funny thing is that that was a HR in just about any other park in MLB aside from Minute Maid & Comerica.