thebruce44

Perhaps it's just because I'm exceedingly high on this young group of pitchers, and Mr. Rivas is toward the top of the list based on his arm. Again, best Change in the FSL and mid 90's fastball to go with a good off-speed pitch. I believe at this time next year he'll distinguish himself and rank among the top 100 prospects in baseball. In fact, I believe we could legitimately have 5-6 who could rank in the bottom half of the top 100 if they have good years next year. But you are correct, we agree on the fundemental aspect of the conversation. I guess at the end of the day I really don't want Josh Johnson that badly. He's had a TJ surgery, he's going to cost 40 million over 4(at least). So while he's a fantastic young pitcher and would give us a dynamic 1-2 with he and Gallardo(in either order), I don't like what the price would be. Of course I was also rooting against picking up Roy Halladay last year for Lawrie and Gamel(plus). So until I feel we're at a place where one pitcher can make us a legit world series contender, I'm simply not in favor of giving up a number of good prospects to win 86 games. I would like to figure out a way to get Jason Knapp from the Indians however. That's a kid I absolutely love for a completely random and meaningless aside. I tend to be a glass half empty kind of guy with prospects, but I don't condiser any A ball pitchers to be prospects at all. Just throw as many talented young arms at the wall as you can and see what sticks. As Brewer fans I would have thought most people agreed with that stance.

Are there actually people that don't know the drill by the time they turn 21 these days?

We have come a long way, but I don't think anyone is talking about how far over 90 mil we're going. More like how far over 80 mil at this point. From eerything Melvin and Tom H. have said recently it doesn't sound like that will be changing.

Agreed. I suspect him to be more around .315 but he has yet to have a BABIP lower than .330 so its hard to predict anything lower than that for me at this time. Lets see how well he works with Peterson.

In a word, yes. I saw it in 3-d on Monday and it was absolutely unlike anything I have ever seen before. I am trying to think of an analogy to compare the difference between this in 3d and regular movies in a theater but I can't. There is just so much to see in every frame besides the actors. I have never seen a movie more than once in the theater but I am sure I will see this again, just to pick up all the detail.

No worries Nate, I was just trying to compare our lists and see where the discrepancy was, not tell you what was wrong with yours. Hopefully all of our players sign before they go to Arby, but your guess on the figures is as good as mine. From the way Tom was talking on his blog though it made me think the payroll was around the low $80s. Its hard to estimate still at this point, but I have to go with $82-$85 right now as my best guess. I am a little disappointed since I thought they would go into the high $80s to make up for all the dead weight, but can understand if this is the best they can do. It means that they are paying the guys on the field in the mid $70s which is definitely lower than the past couple of years (unless they add one more arm).

As Ennder said, in a situation like this, that pitcher is likely to always carry a slightly inflated BABIP over the regular norm. If there is a season where it is higher than even the individual player's norm, that is bad luck and likely to regress back to their norm. I expect Parra to carry a higher than normal BABIP around .315-.330 for his career, but .365?! Thats some seriously bad luck. Statistical analysis isn't always as cut and dry as some people want it to be.

Not sure of a better way to post this, but here is what I came up with to get $83ish mil. Its a mess, but look at the ### column that was supposed to be 2010. http://www.theshirtalert.com/storage/Brewers2010.png

I had much lower Arby numbers for the relievers like Villy and Coffey. Also, Vargas was listed as $0.90 mil when I checked, not $2.5, then $4 mil less for Wolf. Your misc $2 mil is for player additions? All those togeather are roughly $7.6 mil not couting the differences we had in relievers, so I think our gap is accounted for. What does a slightly above replacement level releaver typically get in his first year of Arby? I have a hard time paying $2 mil to Villy when he may even start the year in AAA. Coffey had his first good year of the last 3 (which is what I hear they look at for Arby) so $3.00 mil seems like a huge jump from $0.8 in his second Arby season. Anyway, I think we are in the low to mid 80s at this point couting Hall and the rest depending on Arby pay. Probably not going to be adding too much more salary before the season or during the year, but also fairly in line with the last couple of opening day payrolls.

After reading Tom's blog today where he made it sound like our total payroll including Hall would be around $80 mil, I quickly added up all the current salaries (along with my best guess at projections for Arby players) and came up to $82ish (including Hall, Looper, and Weathers). This is of course after finding out Wolf deferred some of his salary and is only getting $5.25 this year. Can anyone else confirm this total figure? It sounded like Al also had a spreadsheet, or I would be happy to email mine to anyone who PMs me their email. This is surprising since I think most of us assumed their 25 man roster payroll would be at $80 mil not including the dead weight.

Didn't Macha rationalize it last year by saying he didn't want to put too much pressure on Yo. I doubt that will be the case again as its time for him to become the team's stopper and I think he can completely handle that pressure.

I don't think the reason it wont be done is because its unconventional, but just because it hurts your roster so much. You are designating someone to always come in every 5th game. When Soup can pitch deeper into games (which believe it or not does happen sometimes) would you still pull him to bring his piggyback in?

Dumping him is a little harsh. He isn't very good, so thats why I think Ennder and others are saying he should be in the pen where you can pick his spots or pull him quicker if he comes in and can't locate. As Ennder alluded to, the success he had as a starter was mostly luck in my opinion but caused a lot of people to think the Brewers have misused him since he hasn't been as successful since then. Really I think he just came back down to earth with a few stretches of success again here and there.

Sometimes I wonder if being around CC actually hurt his growth as a pitcher. He has all the talent in the world to succeed, he just needs to put it together. Maybe Peterson will be able to help him too.

The only problem I see with piggybacking at the MLB level is that you essentially have a releaver who is only available every 5th day. If another starter struggles or gets hurt during the rest of the time through the order you are already a man down and that could really pile up on the rest of the pen.

I think the team has shown they will do what it takes to give them the best chance to win as opposed to sticking with the higher paid player. Remember Bill Hall? If they feel Narveson will give them a better chance to win (and I think they will) then its the pen for Soup. I assume that was their plan if adding two starters anyway.

Ennder is right on. I wouldn't count of Villy to provide much over Soup at this point either.

You would hope that is the case this year, but certainly wasn't last year thanks to the likes of Mike Burns, McClung, and Dillard. Right now, I don't know that we are any deeper at SP, and trading what we have could be disastrous in my opinion. It is also way easier to find replacement level OF help during the season than replacement level SP help.

He is one pitch away from not being a prospect, just like every other pitcher his age in the Brewers organization and throughout baseball. If he can be brought along slowly as a starter, I don't know that is any worse on his arm then being brought along as a reliever (where I think he would be rushed up to the majors).

The idea of trading what little SP depth we have for more OF depth doesn't make any sense to me with the present construction of our team.

I think Soup will start the year in the pen as the long reliever. He has the most value to this team as a less-important innings eater. My locks would be Hoffman, Hawkins, Coffey, Stetter, Vargas, Soup/Narveson. Beyond that, I don't think anyone is guaranteed anything, with an eye on who has options left. As brewers4eric pointed out, the arms that don't make the cut will probably be needed at some point.

If we learned anything last year it is that 6 pitchers isn't even enough (especially when we would be lucky to have 2 of our SP go over 200 IP next year).

An ace needs to pitch well, ideally in the top 30. A true ace for a legit WS team would need to pitch well for 200+ innings (220+ would be ideal). I don't think that Yo is there yet, which is why I said he isn't an ace yet. Also, where are you getting your CHONE projections from? Chone here has him pitching 3.6 ERA with only 145 IP. Not sure why it is so low. Bill James has him going 186 IP with a 3.53 ERA. I expect him to pitch a little more than that, but it still doesn't sound like he is going to carry us through the stretch run and deep into the playoffs to me.

I am really excited to see what Peterson does with him. I don't want to speculate on the results just yet, but the talent is there with Parra. He just needs someone to help him put it all togeather at this point.

I think Yo has the potential to be a #1 very soon, but it would be asking a lot of him to anchor a staff that would make a deep run in the playoffs. I just don't know that he could throw the necessary innings at this point. Hopefully he can get his walks back down and pitch more efficiently (hopefully the whole staff can do that) throughout the season so that he is in inning 7 or 8 when he hits the 100 pitch mark. Anyway, getting a bit off topic, but the whole innings thing and depth is the biggest concern for me at this point about this staff. If they stay healthy and efficient (way to big of an if) they could have some success.