thebruce44

Not to mention Gamel has actually held his own in a short stint of getting jerked around in the bigs. He is about as "tested" as a prospect can possibly be and still be a prospect. And another plus about him is that he has shown the ability to hit lefties and righties. He is a fairly ideal LH to have in the everyday lineup.

If AJ wants to come cheap, sure. Its always nice to have a vet around at catcher. However, I'm not worried about Lucroy hitting the wall in September. I think he was more the recipient of bad luck with a BABIP of .246 than him being used too much.

Yea but at this point why read when I can have TV do it for me...

2 more creative ones I thought of that could be easy to pull off but will require some explanation: Throw on a bunch of crap that doesn't make sense and go as Inception. At the very least it should start up some conversations. Go as a Chilean minor. i.e. dress as a little kid from Chile. How to pull that off? Not sure. Pin mittens to your sleeves or something. Again, people will probably have to ask about it and you will have to explain, but I expect Chilean miners to be the #1 most common costume this year, so you are kinda playing off that by being more creative.

What your suggesting involves creativity. Melvin is a lot of things, but creative is not one of them. Melvin must have gotten someone to explain it to him when he made a 3 way trade back in 2000 with the Rangers then. Must every thread turn into a chance to bash DM? As for Giants, didn't we learn there's nothing wrong with the Giant offense in that July series when the outscored the Brewers 36-7? Any thought that they'd pony up for Fielder had to end way back then. Are you really suggesting we should have drawn conclusions on the Giants offense from watching 3 games against the Brewers 1st half pitching staff?

Read the first 10 or so. Stopped when they got to the Prison (don't think thats a spoiler really). It will be interesting to see how close the show sticks to the comics. Either way, it amazes me that nobody has made a weekly zombie apocalypse show yet. There are tons of 2 hour movies, but I don't think I am the only one who has thought more about long term survival in this scenario.

I'm going as Favre too. Kinda worried half the party came up with the same idea though.

How do you think the typical thought process of trying to decide what a manager's resume and market position suggests works? Personally, I would approach it with a quantifiable method as opposed to just guesstimating. I assume most MLB front offices are at least as capable as run of the mill companies that can pull that off when hiring employees.

Like Prince, Casey is really also a 1 year commitment worse case scenario with 4 more years of team control if wanted.

When looking at a manager's resume aren't you mentally trying to quantify his potential value to your team. Just because there isn't a manager WAR statistic does mean teams are not trying to figure out the value of a potential manager when negotiating terms.

Comments likethis by fans have always driven me absolutely crazy. Why do the fans care how much a player or a manager or coach might get paid?? Or make comments like "he's not worth that much". IT'S NOT YOUR MONEY!! So who cares?? I have always been one to believe you do whatever it takes financially to help your team succeed. If it means paying a manager 3-4 million a year, so be it. It's Mark A's money, not mine. Right, Mark and the other owners just covered the $90 mil payroll out of pocket this year. It was sure nice of them to build that stadium to play in too. Sorry if that drives you absolutely crazy.

How would you feel if at your workplace if both the following happened? You got a interim promotion, achieved what you were supposed to, allowed to interview for the job and passed over for an external candidate. -and- Two years later after the failure of the candidate hired in your stead, the position opens again, and you are not even given an interview. Again you are bypassed for an external candidate. I'd be looking for a job elsewhere unless I was happy with my current position and not interested in the least in career advancement. Since Sveum interviewed for managerial positions, I assume that is not the case. Unless this job is within an MLB organization or some other position only 30 people in the world hold at one time it really doesn't apply.

As others have pointed out he was with one of the highest profile organizations in the league in Boston. From knowing a few Red Sox fans, he isn't well liked around Boston. I think he has done a fantastic job as our hitting coach but in the other opportunities he has had, I haven't been too impressed. I think other organizations around baseball feel this way as well.

I think the story behind it is that MLB organizations just don't view Dale as having the ability to be an MLB manager. Personally, I agree. Glad to have him back as a hitting coach though and I look forward to him continuing to work with guys like Cain.

I think its much more likely that the 4 finalists talked about what a great job Dale did during their interviews and said they would be fine with him as their hitting coach.

You make it sound so simple and remove all the qualifiers in order to find something to disagree with. He didn't just say that McGehee needs to move to an easier position. He said he thinks Gamel could be the better defender so if chosing between the two, Casey should be moved to an easier position. Thats a pretty large difference.

I agree that the discussion has pretty much run it's course, but I also feel the need to point out a few issues with your stance. I respect you opinion, don't get me wrong, but some of the evidence you present in how you arrived at it is fairly slanted. I won't pretend to know how your mind works, but it makes me think you dug yourself in on a stance and aren't looking at the data completely objectivly. I see a guy [Gamel] who might have a career year someday of .290/.360/.490 and 25 home runs. Meanwhile, we already have a guy who has pretty much done that twice., who is cheap, and reliable. I know MLB equivalencies are to be taken with a grain of salt, but Gamel's MLE line was .270/.330/.516 this year for an OPS of .846 (vs your predicted career year of .850). His OBP's in the minors have been '05-.369, '06-.359, '07-.378, '08-.392, '09-.367, '10-.388. I think you are selling Mat very short if you think his career year would involve an OBP of .360. He simply has too good of an eye at the plate for that to happen. Meanwhile, McGehee has not done that twice. His line for the last 2 years is .291/.346/.477 for an OPS of .823. 27 OPS points is too much for me to say he pretty much did that already. I can very easily see Gamel putting up a line of .240/.310/.420 with 10 homers overall, a .600 OPS against lefties, and very poor defense. That just won't cut it. Again, I respect your opinion, but find it hard to imagine someone objectivly coming to your conclusion. First of all, Gamel does very well against lefties. The site minorleaguesplits is down for some reason, but through each stop in the minors Gamel has handled lefties as well as or better than righties. Second, in 148 sporatic plate appearances last year Gamel put up a .760 OPS. You are suggesting a .730? That seems very pessimistic in my mind. There are typically growing pains with any prospect breaking into the majors, so I can understand some of your concerns. The numbers you are throwing out there in regards to Mat and Casey seem very skewed though to bolster your position.

So once again, I find myself feeling like I am in an argument with you while we seem to agree on the main topic. In regards to the bolded part though, I think you missed the main point of logan's post. It was peppered with disclaimers and tons of other evidence besides URZ to make his point. You end up agreeing with his main conclusion so I don't really see where you are going with this.

About a week ago, in several posts that moderators deleted, you chastized me for posting Braun and Hart's UZR from this year and drawing conclusions from it (even though I felt I didn't). Here it seems to me you are drawing conclusions from 1 year of UZR for McGehee in order to dispute someone's opinion from stats and the eye test. This is especially troubling when McGehee was -22.0 UZR/150 last year, yet you didn't include that in your post. I know he had surgery, but he didn't look improved on defense to me this year. I personally find it hard to come to the conclusion that McGehee is slightly below average at 3B because of a -4 UZR this year and find it odd that you came to that conclusion. Edit: For completness, Google allowed me to find your deleted posts, though I don't know if a link will work. Here is a copy/paste of the relevant parts:

I thought you hated UZR.

With the exception of Peterson, I would prefer to let the next coach choose his staff. I don't know that Macha was allowed to. If he was, it seems as though some staff positions were "very strongly suggested" considering 3 of the staff members interviewed for his job.

What tires came on your WRX? Nowadays they are shipped with summer performance tires. I keep hearing that these stock tires are HORRIBLE in the snow, but I'm assuming people that say that want "high performance" in the winter.. I just want the tires to be serviceable.. I LOVE the wrx since it is so unique! The hood scoop and intercooler in that position is less efficient, but hell if I care, it rocks my socks. It may be less efficient, but the engine as a whole is awesome with the horizontally oposed 4 cyl. I really love it too, but the transmission does leave a little to be desired. I have an 06, so I am not sure what tires came with it. They aren't summer performance tires though. The only people I know who have WRXs from around the same time with me and got another set of tires right away are people who autocross and ripped up their factory ones too quickly. I suppose that if I had summer tires on there I would definitely get winter tires though.

I don't agree with it, but in the end I think the right move is to get Mat's LH bat into the lineup regardless of where he is playing.

Do you have a link to this chat or can you post what Witrado said in this thread? Sorry, I am really having trouble following your line of thought and I guess I am not sure whats your opinion and whats Witrado's.Simply responding... LINK as requested Q: rich, green lake, wi - Hey Anthony, I've heard talk of moving either Hart or McGee to first if the Brewers indeed trade Fielder and giving RF or 3B to Gamel. Is Brewers brass seriously comfortable with that? As a fan I Know I'm not. Success in the minors is one thing, but Gamel has showed next to nothing with the big club. A: Anthony Witrado - McGehee won't move off third and Hart could possibly move to first if Gamel isn't the answer there. Also, if they move parts this winter, it's possible another first baseman or RF comes back to them in a trade aside from the pitching they seek. One thing is certain: Gamel won't play 3B at this level. You can see Witrado's opinion underlined above. I'm putting stock in the eye-witness observations of a beat writer whose perspectives some around here say can't possibly have an ounce of credibility (presumably in the sabermetric sense). My opinion is that errors aren't meaningless and defensively I'd prefer McGehee at 3B over Gamel because of Gamel's large error totals and because McGehee more consistently makes the plays. Thanks for the link. To that, I respond that I don't think Witrado has much credibility here not because of any saber sense at all, but because he has seen Gamel play at 3B as much as I have (62 chances total over the last 2 years). Hardly enough to say one way or another. The fact that Witrado uses the word "certain" furthers my opinion that he just doesn't like the kid. I don't think there are any sabermetric issues to discuss here at all, so I guess I still don't understand what you are getting at there.

I am still using the stock tires on my 06' WRX. Never had a single problem through 4 winters now, and the last one had some pretty intense snow. The WRX might have a bit of that street racer stereotype, but as logan said, it was made for off roading. And it does that very well. The aggressive look and hood scoop (which really just functions to help the off roading ability by moving the intercooler away from potential debris) throw some people off.