RockCoCougars

Once again, Robin Yount= class act.

OK, two other brutal former Brewers popped into my head. Jeff Huson qualifies with 2126PA 8HR/.234 BA/OPS+ 64 Pedro Garcia just missed qualifying with 1967 PA .220BA/ OPS+ 75 - since he was also a clubhouse cancer, I'm going to bump him the 33 PA he needs Another one that popped to mind that sadly doesn't qualify was former Pilot (thus kinda Brewer) Ray Oyler. He had a .175 CAREER batting average in 1445 plate appearances with an OPS+ of 48. In 1968, he hit .135.

Since I've followed the Brewers more closely than all of the other teams combined, I can think of a lot of worst Brewers ever, but I think you have to set a threshold of a thousand at bats or so. I've seen several brutal players through the years, but they generally have a very brief stay and disappear, never to be heard from again. For example, Peter Zoccolillo sticks out in my mind as the worst Brewer player ever to see the field, but his time was brief (didn't he have a unibrow too?). Guys like David Hulse and Bobby Clark were right up there as well, but they were only around a few seasons. As for guys who've had 1,000 at bats as a Brewer, right now I'm torn between Tim Johnson or Rick Manning, though I may think of someone else later. Even though I'll never forgive Manning (though it's not his fault) for being the return for Gorman Thomas, I'm going with Tim Johnson. Even as a young child, I knew he was brutal. The guy never hit a single home run in his career, and the fact that he lied about his Vietnam service much later in life seals it for me. EDIT: I didn't see the 2,000 PA threshold above.

This Cain/Gomez situation kind of reminds me of a scenario that happened in I believe, 1991. Simply put, Carlos Gomez=Tiny Felder and Lorenzo Cain= Darryl Hamilton. Felder ended up getting cut in spring training. Gomez is a little younger than Felder was then, has more upside than Felder did, and has shown a little bit more in his career, but not much. I just don't see the value in keeping Gomez around on the bench, and 'small sample' notwithstanding, Cain looks like the real deal. My guess is that Gomez gets flipped before opening day next year, or starts the season in Nashville.

I disagree a bit. I've taught a few kids to throw an "amatuer" two-seamer. (I say amatuer because I can't correlate it to a minor/major league level). The main imperative was pressure on the ball and length of the kids fingers to produce some movement rather than a straight even four seam.You're right. I think that grip pressure definitely has something do to with movement because it affects the spin of the ball out of the hand. The thing about that though is that different guys grip the ball differently, and it's pretty tough to unlearn how you've always done it- plus hand/finger size affects that as well. Simply changing finger position on the seams isn't going to do much in my view. I would still say that the arm slot/motion is the most important factor in movement, and it's tough (but not impossible, I suppose) to get a pitcher to deviate from their 'normal' motion- especially, if they've been using it for many years. To me, it's always seemed that the guys with the straight 'over the top' delivery often throw harder and have a better curveball than those with, say, a three quarters type delivery. At the same time, they seem to have less movement on their fastball- although the good sinkerballers/heavy fastballers generally have an over the top type delivery.

Exactly. I really don't feel that simply changing a grip will affect a fastball's movement per se. I've always considered 'movement' as more as 'tail' not sink. Some guys just have movement on their fastballs naturally due likely to physical things such as arm slot, release, etc., and for whatever reason lefties seem to have more than righties.I disagree a bit. I've taught a few kids to throw an "amatuer" two-seamer. (I say amatuer because I can't correlate it to a minor/major league level). The main imperative was pressure on the ball and length of the kids fingers to produce some movement rather than a straight even four seam.You're right. I think that grip pressure definitely has something do to with movement because it affects the spin of the ball out of the hand. The thing about that though is that different guys grip the ball differently, and it's pretty tough to unlearn how you've always done it- plus hand/finger size affects that as well. Simply changing finger position on the seams isn't going to do much in my view. I would still say that the arm slot/motion is the most important factor in movement, and it's tough (but not impossible, I suppose) to get a pitcher to deviate from their 'normal' motion- especially, if they've been using it for many years. To me, it's always seemed that the guys with the straight 'over the top' delivery often throw harder and have a better curveball than those with, say, a three quarters type delivery. At the same time, they seem to have less movement on their fastball.

Billy Hall is putting up a very 'Cameron like' season at this point. Striking out a ton with a low batting average, but hitting some homers with a pretty good OPS. Sure he doesn't have the on-field charisma that Cammy had and likes to carouse a little bit, but I think it's pretty safe to say that he's going to be the better player from this point forward. From the Red Sox point of view, I'm sure that it doesn't hurt that the Brewers are paying his salary either.

He burned his own bridges by throwing the ball into the Brewer dugout on purpose.Sheffield hated Harry Dalton. Sheffield basically cinched his way out of town his last spring when he started publicly ripping Sal Bando, then the new GM, who since he'd gotten the job had been doing all he could to handle Sheffield carefully & positively. Bando had done NOTHING (that was ever reported, anyway) that deserved such a blasting -- a poor & terribly immature handling of the situation on Sheffield's part. When Sheffield starting blasting the one guy who'd done nothing wrong toward him, it became purely obvious that, while incredibly talented, Sheffield was a cancerous malcontent who had to go for the best return Bando could get. The burnt bridge was entirely from Sheffield's end and, at that point, clearly of his own doing. His temperamental nature and un-graceful departures from several other teams have been well documented over the past 15 years. I still wish the Brewers would have just kept Sheffield down in the minors once he started crying in 1989. They could have buried him until he became a seven year free agent. I bet he would have quit the game after a year or so. Back on topic, I think it'd be a cold day in hell before Hardy ever considered coming back after the way things were handled last year.

Exactly. I really don't feel that simply changing a grip will affect a fastball's movement per se. I've always considered 'movement' as more as 'tail' not sink. Some guys just have movement on their fastballs naturally due likely to physical things such as arm slot, release, etc., and for whatever reason lefties seem to have more than righties.

From my experience, your fastball either has movement or it doesn't. For whatever reason, most lefties have good movement on their fastball, but Parra's is straight as a string- yet another reason that he's so perplexing.

I'm just glad that Tiger didn't sniff contention again. Even despite that, the talking heads have a controversy to beat into the ground for the next week, so I guess everyone's happy.

Felix Hernandez should be the target.

Ruth and it's not close. The guy would have been a Hall of Famer as a pitcher, and was outhomering whole teams for a while. In my view, the best hitter was Ted Williams and the best pitcher was Walter Johnson, keeping in mind I'm no where near old enough to have seen any of these guys play.

This may have worked last year at this time, but I'm not sure he has even that much value at this point. That said, he's cheap, and I see him as having his best value as a piece of a larger deal to sweeten the deal by getting a team to take a chance on his potential. I'm talking Fielder for good pitching like Garza, Cain, etc.

Sorry, but that doesn't trump Macha. He worked for the immortal Billy Beane. Just sitting in a room with Beane increases anyone's baseball IQ by 25%.

Sandberg has paid his dues, you have to give him that. He's probably just as qualified as Steve Decker, who I'm sure we will be hearing about again in another few months, due to this 'link' that he has with Attanasio.

But they would have started talking extension during Suppan's first season. They would have had an extra 40 million to play with. In hindsight, they would have both been disastrous, but in my view an injured Benny is still > a healthy Soup, because a healthy Soup is hurting the team.

Gerut got the $2 million because he played pretty well last year, when Macha was forced to play him. That said, yet again Macha and Melvin didn't have their heads together, because for whatever reason, he was not a Macha guy, and wasn't going to be used. He could have been a decent option off the bench and gotten a few starts a week, but instead, this turned out as a complete waste of $2 million.

Obviously, it wouldn't have looked good, but I still would have rather done an extension for Sheets than give Suppan $40-some million.

Hindsight hasn't been kind to Melvin overall, has it? I love the team, but I hate how they handle their employees. Another example, Yost is canned after getting 99% of the way to the playoffs, Macha is still twisting around even though his teams have done absolutely nothing whatsoever. Please explain.

I have to correct part of my previous post, I was just checking out another site and noticed that Mench is indeed back in baseball. Are things actually that bad in Washington? Wow.

I agree about taking the Baltimore route. Many don't seem to want to go this way because they don't want the team to play well under Sveum or Randolph and have them retained on a permanent basis. That doesn't make any sense to me- what is there to lose? If they do well, that tells me that they click somewhat with the team. In 1986, Trebelhorn managed the last 10 games or so of the season, and did so well he was retained. Kuenn started as an interim manager as well. Those turned out pretty well, why not give Sveum a shot for the rest of the year? Otherwise, I'd be on board for just about any of the names above, Sveum, Money and Valentine make sense to me. I don't want Steve Decker or anyone like that, nor do I want the run of the mill retread manager like Macha was.

With Sheets, team management did something to ice the relationship to the point where he didn't even consider returning to the Brewers. The guy started the all-star game in 2008, and the team doesn't even try to work on an extension. Meanwhile they were paying Soup 8 figures. I remember pithy little quotes here and there about Sheets durability and work ethic as well coming from the team. As for Hardy, it was completely bush league for them to send him down to the minors last season. Melvin defenders can crow all day long that is was about his performance on the field, but simply put, it was dirty pool to delay his free agency. In theory, this was done to boost his trade value, but as we've seen, it most assuredly hurt it. Cutting Hall with 1.5 years left on his contract was stupid. Lets pay him to play somewhere else. The guy can play at least 5 or 6 positions, 3rd and short with above average defense. It just seems stupid to me that the Brewers are carrying a guy like Counsell on the roster to play once or twice a week, while they are paying Hall about 7 million to be the supersub for one of the largest markets in baseball (with 15 homers to boot). Jenkins was the only one where the circumstances of his parting made sense, that said, they could have at least given lip service that they would consider keeping him as he was a valued member of the team, and one of the few legit left handed sticks on the roster at this time. Instead, they made it well known that he was done as a Brewer before the season even ended. As for mediocrity given a longer leash than these guys, where do I start? Suppan, Mench, Kendall, Riske, etc. all performed horribly here yet have or were given chance after chance to succeed. The only garbage that Melvin moved quickly to the curb was Estrada, and how could you not do that?

Ken Macha stole it from him. I'm not saying that he was a great player, but he was definitely a serviceable outfielder. Anyone would have a hard time putting up stats getting 5 at bats a week, like Gerut did most of last summer. Once all the injuries forced his hand, Macha played Gerut toward the end of last year, and he put up some pretty decent numbers.