TooLiveBrew

Carrying a decent to good OBP in the minors with no power is not a good indication that a player will get on base in the bigs. He BB'd & K'd a lot with no power... there are plenty of those guys in the minors. Herrera was 'old' for pretty much every level he played in MiLB & doesn't realistically project to do much with the bat in MLB. I have no issue with him being one of the first depth guys at AAA, but I want no part of him on the everyday roster. He definitely isn't a viable OF option imo. He looked bad out there, and was only used in a time of dire need... not to mention how awful his bat is at a corner OF position. Your backup IF's are probably not going to have the pop of your starters. It just is what it is. Him batting around .280 and if he improved his OBP (which my looking at his minor league stats, he could) to around .320 would be just fine with me as a backup, switch hitting M-IF. He plays well enough in the field too. You're not going to have all stars on the bench but he is capable of being productive in a bench role. Much like he was last year for us. I'm aware that he's not going to be a star. He was only productive with the glove last season, & my point in talking about his MiLB stats is that I don't think he should be expected to really do any better than he did last season. I guess if he's limited to only facing RHPs, he might be worth keeping around for the UTIL IF role, but even then I think he'd be best utilized as a guy you start off in AAA & call up when injuries hit.

Carrying a decent to good OBP in the minors with no power is not a good indication that a player will get on base in the bigs. He BB'd & K'd a lot with no power... there are plenty of those guys in the minors. Herrera was 'old' for pretty much every level he played in MiLB & doesn't realistically project to do much with the bat in MLB. I have no issue with him being one of the first depth guys at AAA, but I want no part of him on the everyday roster. He definitely isn't a viable OF option imo. He looked bad out there, and was only used in a time of dire need... not to mention how awful his bat is at a corner OF position.

This was exactly my take on it. Probably a win-win scenario for HOU -- if they're in it, they made solid upgrades to their 'pen... if they're out of it, they can probably get more building blocks for the future.

This is interesting. If Cot's has the signing bonus details correct, it's $20MM up front & $10MM spread over the life of the deal. That would mean that after the 2015 season, the remaining AAV is just under $21MM (instead of $26MM). The Cubs front-loading the deal means significantly lower AAV in the future & makes the contract potentially more easy to trade (should it come to that). $21MM per year even just in 2016 is going to be below market value for a #1 SP.

Well, crap. This is definitely not good news.

What was Mo Rivera's last extension? ...

I'd be all for acquiring Profar, though I doubt TEX would let him go at a buy-low price. I certainly wouldn't want to pay a king's ransom for him. For the 2B/SS/IF utility role, does anyone know much about Brandon Hicks? Over his past four seasons in MiLB, he's shown very favorable splits against LHPs. I admittedly know nothing about his defensive abilities. And he hasn't been a high-AVG type of hitter in the minors, though he does have some pop, so he might be a Kottaras-esque type of option, albeit to face LHPs.

Do we really know that for a fact, or just because he didn't fail a test? Any number of documentaries (Lance Armstrong) and stories in print are out there about how relatively easy it is to avoid detection if you're getting advice from the "correct" doctors. The cheaters are always ahead of the testing. True. I just think it would be colossally stupid to be flirting with disaster in the '12 season especially, when he was tested a ton. I realize others may have differing opinions on just how stupid and/or arrogant Braun is. But I don't believe he was PEDing it up in '12 & '13... risk/reward doesn't add up for me there.

OK sure, but Khris Davis isn't anything special yet, either. If one feels like he can develop into a very good player (I don't really), then you give him that chance. But this is a guy who had a 107 OPS+ in 2014 and had a .298 OBP vs RHP Maybe Davis has potential. He's going into his age 27 season and is a low cost player. But I sincerely see him as one of the problem spots for the Brewers and not a bright light of potential. I see, if the Brewers really are "going for it", that to me LF is an area that needs to be upgraded. Parra as a platoon mate (even just a soft-platoon) is an upgrade to a degree. Trading away Parra for a relief pitcher and counting on Davis full-time "because he hit 22 HR's" is potentially a real blunder. If you start trotting out players like Davis, Gennett & Lind without platoon mates you could potentially see some extremely mediocre Baseball from the Brewers in 2015. (On the plus side of that at least we could be sellers at the deadline and build for the future) Parra's line against righties in 2014 was .261/.308/.369/.677 (career .286/.334/.424/.758). Even as a LH batter, his average career value against RHP is comparable to what Davis did last season. Obviously the defense Parra provides is waaaay better than Davis's, but I think Davis is going to improve as a hitter. After a similar trajectory through the minors (good stats, but the general scout opinion that he had limited upside), another Brewers player posted an underwhelming line of .265/.313/.391/.703 in his age-25 season, only to improve dramatically -- Lucroy. I'm not expecting Khris to improve to the degree that Luc has, but I'm definitely expecting him to improve on his 2014 numbers. I actually would like to see Parra retained if the goal is to compete for the WS next season, but the only way in which he's a significantly better option than Davis imo is his defense. I do think that Parra is an ideal 4th OF, though.

He was without PEDs in 2012 & '13, when he posted a cumulative slash line of .313/.386/.569/.955 (153 OPS+)

For as much as the leg-kick timing mechanism makes his swing look 'big', he seems to stay balanced & wait back really well... of course he can do that because it looks like he generates a ton of bat speed. The way he holds his hands, cocks, & swings, kind of reminds me of Gary Sheffield. I realize we're watching highlights here & not any bad swings, but it looked like he repeats his mechanics pretty well. Thanks for posting this, jerichoholic. I hadn't heard of Kang & am now really interested to see where he lands, too.

In 2013 (as a full-time player), he posted 4.6 WAR. In the previous two seasons (as a part-time player), he posted WAR of 1.8 & 2.6. So he's a pretty good bet to be worth his $6MM salary. Anyway, back on topic about Sanchez...

And organized! Dewey really have to get into details here? http://i.imgur.com/hS1ifzz.gif

Craig is signed through 2018 (age-33) for a guaranteed amount of $26.5MM ($13MM club option in '18 w/$1MM buyout). I'd have to be really confident that he'll revert to his prime-aged production to pursue him... and even his prime was three incomplete seasons. It would be a pretty expensive way to cover 200-300 PAs in a given season.

So, essentially then, Mark A is the biggest problem the Brewers have. He cares more about his own money than he cares about the Brewers winning a World Series Again I say his lifestyle and the lifestyle of his family wouldn't change one iota if he has $50 million or $200 million. I hope he sells the team to someone who cares mostly about Championships Mark Attanasio isn't the club's only owner, he's simply the principal shareholder (see this article, which is from '07 & may be out of date). This front office listing at Brewers.com (section: Advisory Board) shows some overlap in names from the JS article I linked. I'm not sure if all the Advisory Board members are also part-owners or not. It's not "Mark A's money", it's the operating revenues of the Milwaukee Brewers. If the club decide to go into the red on player salaries (as they've done to a slight degree in prior seasons), it'd have to be approved by more than just Mark.

Welcome to the board, alexdavis87! It'll be nice to hear from a local p.o.v. regarding the Shuckers.

I feel like the fraternity parties would be really quiet. And organized!

Good luck, GAME. Sending positive juju your way.

Revenues have skyrocketed across the league, though -- for the gains the Brewers have made, big-money clubs like BOS have seen revenues driven even higher. Just look at the TV contracts signed in recent years by the likes of LAA, TEX, & more. The Brewers' deal went up to something like $25-30MM/yr, while the bigger markets were signing deals north of $100MM/yr. Even though the Brewers have seen their revenues go up, it's not enough to keep pace. The reality is & probably always will be that Milwaukee is one of smallest markets (if not the smallest) in MLB.

My dad bought Sonos last year, & loves it. I get the impression it was pretty easy to install/set up, too. Fwiw he runs music from his desktop Mac.

I want this to be true. Badly.

Baseball-Reference has positional splits. Here is the link to the Dodgers' 2014 positional splits. They got a line of .181/.283/.261/.544 from the catcher position... I had no idea it was that dire. To access these for any team, go to the team's main page, & from the gray menu bar (first item on the left is titled Franchise Encyclopedia), select "Batting" --> "Splits"

A few million in jersey sales seems like an overestimation. That'd be a lot of jerseys.

Vizcaino? I'm confused

I'd guess that big-money teams like CHC, BOS, etc. would be almost literally willing to trade away their entire farm systems for Stanton, if the Marlins actually decide to make him available at some point in the next few years. While it's a ton of money, I actually think Miami are in a great position since Giancarlo is only entering his age-25 season. I don't think MIA would trade him until he was closer to or past age 30, though. Pretty clear imo that they're going to try to build for serious contention around his age-25 through age-28/29 seasons or so.