RockCoCougars

Get the ball down Axford.

Good post, Crew. In particular, I think that there is a ton of truth to this. Typically though the players with the most talent performing at the higher levels are going to be ranked rather highly so if you want players who can contribute next year or the year after you're looking at guys in AA for the most part. I am not convinced that this team will be able to compete losing Greinke and filling his and the other holes with rookies and/or free agents. IF the Brewers choose to rebuild, I would rather them do a full bore tear down than a Bando/Taylor patch job. Even if you develop talent, what happens 3-4 years down the road with a guy like Gallardo? Either he underperforms who pitches well and prices himself out of the market. Bottom line, if this team is not able to keep their own free agents on the market may as well conduct a Marlin type rebuild and trade everything that you can to get assets in the low minors. Throw a few top 5 picks into the mix and you have a young core to build around in four years or so. At any rate, though it seems hyperbolic to say that a franchise's near term future rests on one player, I really think that is kind of the case with Greinke, at least as close as it possibly can be. Not just in the sense of losing his arm from your starting staff, but also from the cause/effect decisions that will come as an attempt to compensate for the loss.

Now that is classic Weeks.

I have to give credit where credit is due. Ramirez is a MUCH better defensive 3B than I expected him to be. He has to be above average.

K Rod is not fooling anyone.

Thataboy, ZG. Nice to see someone on this staff protecting the hitters for a change.

I just want to respond to the rebuttals to my post from this morning, but I'm not going to quote much..... First of all, I have no problems trading guys like K-Rod, Marcum, etc., etc. IF the decision to 'sell' is made. I just don't think that you will get much for them. I'm sure that I made it clear that I want Greinke kept, and I think that it's foolish to trade him unless you are blown away with something. I wouldn't hold back on moving them but I certainly wouldn't expect to replenish Nashville with the guys that you get back. It follows that if guys like this are moved, yes, part of the motivation will be to perhaps add a few fringe prospects, but also to trim salary, so I'd say that it is a firesale. Bottom line, if we are talking about trading a guy like for talent that will be 'ready soon' and you allow teams to hold back their best players, you are basically trading quality for quantity. Sounds like a Dean Taylor special to me. You may be happy taking an organization's scraps because BA rated them #6 in the organization or something, but that doesn't do it for me (guys like Pastornicky, etc.). I want the elite prospects or I'm not trading a Greinke. I'll trade the other guys to take a flyer on someone, but mostly to try young talent out and as salary relief if you have no plans on keeping them or offering arby. For example, I see people salivating after these guys that the Dodgers have, and they do nothing for me. The Gould kid has been knocked around in A ball and Lee averages around 5 innings a start. What am I missing here? These guys are long shots to be difference makers, and even if one/both pan out, it will be years. I don't see why you would trade Hart for that. Where are you going to get Hart's production for $10 million next year. Why would the Brewers even offer someone like K-Rod a qualifying arbitration contract to hopefully get draft picks when no one is going to pay him that much money and he'd just accept again? Instead why not flip him and see if you can some kind of return on your investment? I don't want anyone offered arby except Greinke. As for K-Rod he has little value outside of as a salary dump. What did he bring last season when he was pitching well? Danny Herrera. Unless I'm missing something and his value has increased, I see little return for him. Same with most of the other guys always tossed around here. How did riding out Sheets into FA work out? What kind of draft picks did we get for Sabathia? They made the playoffs for the first time in 25 years. That works for me. I'd say best case is that you get a bunch of future All-Stars for some rentals. Expected case is that you would get some guys who can fill in vital roles for league minimum, some of whom will not play to their potential, but some of whom will. Best case would be something that I'd explore, but we keep hearing more about guys who won't be available. It's more likely that we are looking at expected case and if so, I don't see how the future is bright in the near/medium term. Once again I'm personally not content just getting to the playoffs, the only thing I care about is being able to compete for a World Series. Then the best way to rebuild would be to trade for young prospects from the low minors, and put everybody on the market, including Braun and Gallardo. After all they are the most valuable commodities. Then you will need to be bad for a while to get some high picks, then you need to nail the picks. I'd rather take this Florida/Tampa Bay rebuild, than do a Dean Taylor rebuild...... trade everyone before they get expensive for scraps or low ceiling AAA/AAAA talent and waste a decent chunk of payroll signing and overpaying 'guys' on the free agent market to fill holes. I'd rather to be awful for a while then to be stuck in 1990's era 70-some win purgatory. That said, I'd prefer to give it a run at least for part of July before I start moving anybody, I also prefer the team pull out all the stops to retain Greinke over the next few weeks... hence the 'just in case', 7 games back is not insurmountable by any means, and even if this season is lost, any team built around Greinke/Gallardo and Braun at least has a chance.

The Dodgers want someone now, and Attanasio and Melvin aren't going to wave the white flag until the last week of July if at all. You may be right, but I really hope you're wrong. What Melvin/Attanasio do over the next few weeks can set ourselves up for a good future or can cause us to suffer for the next decade. How so? Trading proven guys for prospects is a crap shoot at best, not to mention that reportedly teams aren't exactly dangling their best pieces out there- even for Greinke. So best case, you are adding borderline prospects to a barren farm system. Then you trade guys who are under a reasonable contract for next season like Hart? How exactly do you replace that production in the near term, by signing guys in free agency and likely overpaying to get them to come here? This whole fire sale idea doesn't make much sense to me. Most of the names thrown around (including Marcum due to injury) have little to no value right now. It's not like the farm is going to be replenished by moving these guys. As for Greinke, if they lose him, put me on record as saying that the near future will be anything but bright. I'd rather play out most of July, just in case.

Greinke > Cain by a little in my view. Take Cain from the S.F. ballpark, and let him pitch home games in a tougher offensive division. His stats would regress a bit. Don't get me wrong, Cain is a horse, but he's benefited from pitching in that ballpark/division, while Greinke has spent the bulk of his career in the A.L.

Big time choke by Jay Bruce just cost the Reds the game. Anyone that has criticized Hart's RF defense in the past need to check this one out on the highlight reels.

I'm stunned these are actually available to the public.

Oh, great. Here comes Veras. Mr. 'I Like to Walk the First Hitter'.

What in the name of Steve Sax was that? And I was just thinking earlier today how if nothing else, Rickey has turned into a pretty good second baseman.

Awesome job by Maldonado running up Collmenter's pitch count. He's unhittable, so you want to get into the bullpen ASAP.

Cy Collmenter

I thought maybe they finally broke the seal when they got a run or two on him last time, but the Brewers simply cannot hit this guy. I think that they are the only team in the N.L. with this issue.

I can't stand any of the gimmick jerseys, but I'll bet that I see a few of these 'Binnai' jerseys at the next game that I go to and at the state fair. Some people dig them, so they'll keep them coming.

I also think that a lot of folks on this board completely underestimate how hard it is to built a competitive roster from within. For every Tampa Bay, there are several Royals, Indians, Padres, A's, who are in perpetual rebuilding mode. I really don't want to go back to the days where we win 60 games with the expectation that we'll be World Series contenders in a few years. We did that in the early 2000's. It essentially got us two playoff teams in 5 years. I also don't want to waste three years in the middle of Ryan Braun's prime with a complete rebuild. We might as well just trade Braun then. Post of the month. I think that a lot of people here either missed or miss the 90's. It's a nice theory to be able to sell everyone for prospects and 'retool', but this isn't a video game. Prospects flop, and when you trade quality for quantity, your talent base starts getting watered down. If you trade all your major league assets for prospects, you are taking what other teams deem expendable, bottom line. I keep seeing 'so and so isn't available', etc., etc.. And I ask, why then would you want to take 'best offer' or the scraps that other teams don't want? That was Dean Taylor's m.o. and look where it got them. At this point, let's face it, the farm system is in shambles. Even if you are able to move a few guys for a couple of 'Top 100' players, it's still going to be a mess. In my view, this isn't an old team, it's not 1985 or something. Most of the key players on this team are (or should be) in their primes. Obviously a bad bullpen and injuries have sabotaged this season so far, but the only reason that this team will be broken up is basically money. If the Brewers lose all the guys that are rumored to be on the trade market, lets face it, they are likely to be bad for the foreseeable future. In the end, Attanasio needs to decide whether he wants to lay the money out there to keep this team competitive, or they may as well go '97 Florida Marlins and blow the whole thing apart (which has actually proven to be pretty effective).

That's fine, but Miller Park isn't designed for summer weather. The high roof and cylinder shape doesn't allow for summer breezes to blow across the seating. I have been at a few games where it's 90+ and breezy in the parking lot, but still and stuffy in the stands. The architecture makes the most pleasant hot summer days infsufferable, imho. The problem is really that MP is more of a dome in my book than an actual outdoor stadium. They should have figured out a way to open up some of the concourses without glassing everything in. On games that I go to where the dome is actually open, I prefer to sit out in the Loge Bleachers to actually feel like I'm outside. I'm sure that this is an unpopular opinion here.... but at this point, I wish that they would have just built the stadium without a roof. Obviously it was a great business move, but you are talking about saving maybe 3-4 rain outs a year plus a dozen or so games with cold/inclement weather. Another part of the reason that the retractable roof was sold is that the stadium would be used year round, and that hasn't happened.

Call me a purist, but I say no air conditioning. Baseball is played in the summer. It often gets hot in the summer, that's the way it is. Maybe I could see this in Texas or Arizona, but not in Wisconsin. Generally the unbearable heat subsides a bit at sundown. Bottom line, I don't want to see them start closing the roof for heat. They do this enough in the spring on nice days when it is in the upper 50's/low 60's. I'm not a big fan of watching a game in MP with the roof closed, and in my view it should be closed for rain/extreme cold (basically when they are talking about a windchill) only.

I'd have no interest in Minor and Jurrjens is probably going to be non-tendered this off season. From watching him, I'm not much of a fan of Delgado either. No thanks unless Teheran is involved, and even he's been fairly unimpressive this season.

It's easy to forget since they finished like 20 games out, but from what I remember, the Pirates had at least a share of first in mid to late July last year. I don't think that they have the horses to compete down the stretch.

I'm calling BS on this one.

Before I did anything with Hart, I'd wait until I saw how the off-season was shaping up. With lots of defections, I'd do 3 years in the $30-35 million range without hesitation, with perhaps a vesting option for a 4th year... not sure if Hart would though. I certainly wouldn't go crazy with money/years.