thebruce44

This simply is not true though. The PCL season ended on Sept 5th in 2005. Fielder was up for 42 Brewer games while the PCL was still playing games. Out of those 42 games he started in 5 of them. Fielder spent 37 games in 2005 as a pinch hitter or pure bench warmer for the Brewers before Nashville's season was even over. Gamel was up for 58 Brewer games while the PCL was still playing games. Out of those 58 games Gamel started in 29 of them, he was used as a PH or pure bench guy for 29 games. Fielder burned up almost 1/3 of a season of service time to be a pinch hitter for a team that at best aspired to luck into a .500 record. Even if you completely ignore the september callup time Fielder 'wasted' more games on the bench in 2005 than Gamel did last year. I guess it was just long enough ago that people don't remember it now. No, I remember it quite clearly. When Prince was up the first time, he did play and was used appropriately. When he was called up half a month before Sept. callups, the Brewers said he had nothing left to learn at AAA so they thought it would be to his advantage to be in the MLB clubhouse. It didn't hurt his development in any way and didn't upset his service time. Completely different situation than Gamel. You obviously don't see it the way I do and I didn't mean to imply you were wrong because you were disagreeing. I just don't think the situations are even close and I don't think Melvin has a history of rushing prospects at all.

If you don't see a difference between 57 games and 29 games, then I think you are just sticking with your opinion no matter what other information is presented to you. We will just have to agree to disagree on the issue of Prince being rushed. Same with Weeks.

I would have made him a september call up and started his clock the next season. We weren't playing for anything that year and I like to give players a full year in AAA before they come up. The idea is to create a solid window to win in, not rush your young guys up as fast as possible to push for win #75. I think they were too aggressive with all of them. And half of Prince's time in the bigs that season was as a September call up. Are you contending that it would have been better for his development to sit at home on his couch than on the bench in MKE for 29 of those 58 games? And if you leave Weeks in AAA OPSing around 1.100, you are going to have an upset prospect on your hands. He hit his way onto the team just like Braun did. For all the press on Hardy being sent to AAA to gain back a year of service time, I think it would be even worse to leave a player who is destroying AAA pitching down there just to get an extra year of service for a bad team.

Hardy should have started the season in AAA given how little time he had spent there and the fact he was coming off of a major injury. Weeks should have been brought up later in the season to help with service time issues and he should have been shut down when he hurt his thumb. Even though it was supposedly safe to play through the injury I don't think you want to take the risk with one of your young stars. It very well may have changed his swing mechanics for the worse playing that way. I think the fact Overbay was our starting 1B should have kept Fielder in AAA where he could have played full time instead of just sitting on the bench and pinch hitting sometimes. If people think Gamel was ruined by not playing full time I'd imagine their heads would explode if they went back and looked at Fielders 2005 game log. Even at the time I thought that we were making moves to get fans in the seats and not to maximize what we got out of our talent. Like I said I can understand why they would do it, building a fan base is a big part of turning the team around. I still think they rushed things a little bit too much. Hardy I agree with, but I think Melvin knew the fans were just sick of "Hollywood" Royce Clayton at that point. Service issues with Weeks? He was brought up after that wasn't an issue and was OBPing stupid at AAA. I am not sure what the thumb issue has to do with him being brought up when he was. As far as I remember, Prince came up only for interleague games to pinch hit during his minor league season. Next season he was given the starting spot, but I don't remember him ever sitting on the bench in the majors. When else would Overbay have been moved?

Did you think this at the time or is this based on how they performed once they came up?

Yea, Mass. This is what I have been saying. I took offense to the notion that Melvin has a "habit of rushing prospects" and when I questioned it, it seemed as though it wasn't just X who felt this way. I think people are just upset with this trade right now and our taking shots at Melvin that are just way off base in my opinion.

Escobar sure looked ready to contribute to me at the end of last year. Weeks? Come on, he hit his way on when we had Spivey. Defense be damned (out motto at the time) he was OPSing 1.090 in Nashville when he came up. I will believe Lucroy when I see it, but I agree...that may be rushing him.

We didn't just lose Hardy in this deal, we also lost Cameron. We lost 2 players that were 14.8 Wins Above Replacement the last 2 years. Thats huge. This goes back to the WAR discussion we had a couple of days ago, but people really seem to cherry pick stats like WAR sometimes to make it look how they want. More than half of Cam's WAR came from fielding the last two years. Before that, he had 4 years that average to his fielding being below replacement level according to WAR. What does that mean? Hell if I know, but I wouldn't be using it to make an argument unless I could explain why his numbers fluctuate so much. Especially when his fielding should be in decline with his age. Now consider we lost 2 years of Hardy and 2 years of Cam going forward for 5 years of Escobar, 3 years of Gomez, and probably $28 mil over those 2 years (isn't that about 5 wins worth of money a year?). Can Melvin come out on top there? Again, I don't know. But I wouldn't definitively slam him, say we are going into rebuilding, or call for his job as others have.

The point on Hardy is that you don't completely waste his service time just because his glove was ready. It was a bad decision that helped create the problem that came up this season & offseason. His bat wasn't ready, and there was no reason to burn his service time. I competely understand that and wasn't disagreeing with it at all in my post. How rushing Hardy makes it a habit though is beyond me unless you just have beef with Melvin.

This is a bad idea. Lucroy is getting way too much hype for his AFL performance. If you curve his stats for league effect, he's been very average. He was only a little above average in AA. He needs AAA. However, Melvin had a bad habit of rushing prospects. You really seem to have it in for Melvin lately. Besides Hardy, who was ready defensively for an MLB team with no playoff chance, who exactly did he rush?

For those interested (I had a little more free time here at work) the Harang vs. Looper move would be about 2.75 more wins. I would expect whatever the next move to be (young pitcher with some upside) to be 1.5 wins above Soup at least (he was -.7 last year). That would more than even out any offensive loss for Cam and JJ, while giving up much more upside in the future. Again, just baseless speculation on my part to illustrate what could be done. I definitely would've taken Harang over Gomez. trwi7, you missed the point of my post. Harang for JJ wasn't ever discussed as far as I know. I was simply using Harang as an example of a move that could now be made with the 14 mil that has been freed up since people seem to be missing that point as well.

In a dream offseason, what could Melvin realistically get with this $14 mil that could turn us into a playoff team? What are you hoping for? I will bite with the caveat that DM is the GM is knows more about baseball than me or anyone else on this board and that I don't have time to look up exact salaries so I am just throwing some ideas out there. For step one, I would take on Harang's contract (11 mil?) and a live arm AAA bullpen guy for a medium level prospect. Step two could be a number of things. A Prince trade could bring in a young #2 with upside with enough financial flexibility to sign a stop gap 1b like Nick Johnson. Step two could also be one or two high risk, high reward SP types like a Mulder. The great thing right now is that Doug can go in a variety of directions depending on what is out there. He has moved from a position of trading weekness to strength because of the flexibility he just opened up. I am confident he will make wise moves with this flexibility, while most here seem to be on that ledge thinking the sky is falling and Doug is "destroying what Jack Z built."

And that is really what I am taking objection with as well. Declairing Gomez's 2010 to be bad and the Brewers rebuilding? We have seen Melvin put 2 cards down on the table out of 5. Give him some time here folks.

It has been their career years to this point. Expecting them to repeat that year in year out is foolish in my opinion. But we just said it wasn't Braun's career year. Its besides the point though. By and large the offense will be the same next year with these two new players assuming an upgrade at catcher, only with 14 mil in savings and lots more upside.

Gomez' UZR/150 10.0. Cameron's UZR/150 10.3. So no. You know thats not the best way to evaluate their defense at this point.

didn't read all the way through here, but people who think we are giving up a lot of offense (especially OPS) need to look at what JJ and Cam did last year vs. what Escobar and Gomez will do this year. Cam and JJ combinded for around a 330 OBP (mostly from Cam). Escobar and Gomez are capable of something similar and both players have a lot of upside. Factor in the cost savings, and while I don't like the trade, I don't hate it either. What we need to do is look at all the players would be expected to do in the future not what they did last year. JJ had a down year and should be expected to hit better than he did in 2009. Why would we look at only JJ's terrible last year to make a decision on him while ignoring the fact that he is more than likely a much better hitter than he was last year. That makes no sense at all. It makes perfect sense if you consider the fact that we had a top 5 offense with 3 black holes in the lineup last year (JJ, Kendall, Hart when he was off and Cam when he was off). If we can replace Kendall with anything, we have a similar offense as we have another top 5 offense, only an extra 14 mil and a lot of upside in those black holes offensivly and defensivly.

What about a move like taking on Harang and a prospect with the salary we saved. This move could potentially be much more detailed than just JJ+Cam vs Gomez+Escobar. Right now it is JJ+Cam vs Gomez+Escobar+14 mil. Wait to see what happens with that 14 mil before you tar and feather Melvin. He is a GM for a reason and you are just posting on the internet.

I think X has made it pretty apparent that he feels Gomez is huge downgrade from Cameron, and overpaying for SP in free agency hardly ever works. I have no idea why he's taking so much heat in this thread. The reason I am singling him out isn't so much his stance as the fact that he has already decided that Gomez will suck this year and that he knows more than Melvin. He is saying it as though its not his opinion and that he knows more than DM does. Melvin has simply mis-projected a player, and the results will severely hurt our team. A definitive statement like that about a 24 year old player's next season when it is November seems way harsh. If X feels that way now, I have the feeling he will never give Gomez a chance. It is easy to sit back on a message board and question a move like this, but we don't know the entire situation. Maybe this was the best DM could have done. Maybe he and his scouts see something in Gomez us fans and the Twins don't. DM has gone on record as saying speed guys develop slower. To write off Gomez's 2010 season and say you know more than DM right now is just not a smart position to take even if you are correct in the end. X, have you seen Gomez play a lot or are you basing your opinion entirely off of WAR?

Melvin has referenced it before, and the Red Sox use their own version. Baseball people clearly respect similar stats. This deal was made much like the Kevin Mench debacle. Melvin has simply mis-projected a player, and the results will severely hurt our team. Wow, so you can already say that Melvin has mis-projected Gomez for this year. Since you can see the future maybe you should be the GM.

I didn't read all the way through here, but people who think we are giving up a lot of offense (especially OPS) need to look at what JJ and Cam did last year vs. what Escobar and Gomez will do this year. Cam and JJ combinded for around a 330 OBP (mostly from Cam). Escobar and Gomez are capable of something similar and both players have a lot of upside. Factor in the cost savings, and while I don't like the trade, I don't hate it either.

I wonder how bad in baseball history that defensive outfield would rank. It would certainly be the worst next year, but worst of the decade? I would think so.

As the 2009 season wraps up, Nolasco's surface stats would lead one to believe that he has been a bust. After all, his ERA is over five (5.06), and he was demoted to the minors in late May. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, the skills over which Nolasco has the most direct control have gotten stronger. Ricky has whiffed 9.49 hitters per nine frames, sandwiching him between Zack Greinke and Clayton Kershaw for 7th among all starting pitchers. Nolasco remains precise, too, with 2.14 BB/9. That's in the top 20 for starters. His FIP is down to 3.35, ranking just behind Dan Haren and in front of Ubaldo Jimenez. http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/index.php/nothing-wrong-with-nolasco He is a very solild #2 with some upside still. Guys like that have a lot of value. I would guess a McGehee and a top 10 prospect would be needed?

Fontenot was a no. 1 pick by the Orioles, traded to the Cubs in the Sosa deal. He was always a pretty good hitting 2B prospect. In the Orioles organization he was behind Roberts, Hairston, and Willie Harris. Perhaps the only position in the last decade where the Orioles had some organizational depth. I would still consider anyone who had 3 mediocre AAA seasons and broke into the bigs at 27 to be coming out of nowhere later in their careers to be productive MLB players.

Good point, but he is also a guy who blossomed later in his career in a Cubs uniform (although he did have one good year with Texas before that).

Not to mention Theriot and Fontenot. Maybe there is just something about the Cubs minor league system that makes guys come out of nowhere later in their careers to be productive MLB players.