joepepsi

Isn't Manny Parra out of options?

I'm guessing this means the plan for Green is AAA at least to start the year.

So the Brewers have a CF platoon for $4.35 million. Combining the stats on bref.com that are listed as only when they played CF, you have a CF'er who hit .272/.314/.404, with 11hr, 87runs, 25 doubles, 8 triples, and 19/24 in SB. That's over 628 plate appearances and 561 ABs. Add in some mighty fine defense and I'm OK with that.

This thread is a Hat Trick. 3 topics at once. I am proud to have contributed!

Nice analogy with Norman Greenbaum! My point is the Rolling Stones still may be tremendously popular but they mostly ride the wave of past successes and have been for a very long time. Parra is doing the same in a way, riding on the success of one OK season. fwiw, Exile was released in 1972. I was around when Some Girls was released. I was turned off by the disco pandering, the incredible hype at the time of release, the mocking C&W, and the overall commercialism of the Jagger dominating era of the group. That's just my opinion; lots of people and critics loved that album and Tattoo You.

Have you heard a Rolling Stones ablum in the last 40 years? They've beeen terrible for that long but you can bet Jagger makes hundreds of millions a year. Seen a good Julia Roberts movie lately? Last I heard she makes $20 million a picture, which involves about 6 weeks of filming. Athletes are entertainers. Watch the documentary Inside Job and you'll see lots of Wall Street types who gleefully ran this country into the ground while making millions upon millions, then begged for government bailouts and finally get tax breaks for being "Job Creators". Bud Selig is going to get paid $22 million a year for the next two years. Really? Let's be honest; Bud's probably a nice guy, but lots of people could do that job just as well for a fraction of the salary. There are lots of professions where people are paid an absurd amount of money whether they perform competently or not. Manny Parra, like any business man or entertainer is being paid what the market will bear. If he performs well out of the pen, he's a bargain at this price.

One is done to get a person back to their full natural health. It is also done with the approval of authorities. The other is done to take a person beyond their natural abilities. It is often done in secret, without authority approval, and without knowledge of or regard to long-term impact. I may wear eyeglasses, but I may not inject fertility drugs. Isn't that it? Are you just against there being an authority figure being able to tell people what they can and cannot do in the world of athletics? Oxy wrote: Well, the easy answer is that surgery fixes something that is broken while steroids artificially enhances something for the short term with possibly life-threatening results in the long term. The risk/benefit scales are far different for each case when it comes to a person's long term health. When baseball players started using steroids they weren't against the rules. Regular people in the real world are given prednisone and other steroids all the time for back injuries. Ken Caminiti and David Segui both admitted using steroids or HGH to recover from specific injuries. How is that different from TJ surgery. Or from the surgery Bartolo Colon had in 2010 that basically rebuilt his arm? I'm playing devil's advocate here, and certainly don't favor cheating or doping or steroid use if it's against specific rules. But as science and medicine advance, it is legitimate to question why something as inherently barbaric as surgery is OK, but taking a pill, having stem cell therapy, or Dr. Bones McCoy running a scanner over your body to fix what ails, is somehow cheating. I'm not in favor of electing players to the HOF who flagrantly violated league rules, but I suspect fans 30 years from now will view our uproar around PEDs as quaint and misguided.

I'm still waiting to hear a good argument why it's OK to have surgery to repair and strengthen a body, but taking certain medications is cheating.

The payroll must be stretched to its limit. They're already a couple million bucks invested in Aoki, and presumably will have to fork over another few million. Could it be his skill set just isn't impressive enough to justify the investment? Maybe they're thinking it's more prudent to bring up one of the young OF'ers to ride the bench or offer an NRI to a grizzled vet, and just save the couple of million. It sounds like Aoki isn't enough of a difference maker to be worth the risk.

In each those 4 losses where the team scored 6 runs and Marcum started, he didn't get a decision. That means the bullpen lost each of those games. You might as well blame Craig Counsell for those losses. It's looking like you are just grasping at straws to justify your dislike of the player. Marcum had 3 bad starts in September and two bad starts in the playoffs when they really needed him. For the season he had 20 quality starts out of 33, including 6 in a row from Aug 9 through the first week of September. Yo, 21 of 33, Greinke 19 of 28 in QS, Wolf 21 of 33, Narveson 12 of 30. Marcum had the lowest run support of any 5 starters at 3.86, although Wolf's 3.96 was close. Narveson had a shade under 5 runs support per game. Greinke and Yo both had over 5 per game of support.

I expect the infield defense will be noticeably better. The top 3 starters are above average strikeout pitchers. While Gomez is indeed a tremendous center fielder, Morgan is no slouch out there. The difference between an average-above average outfielder and a great one doesn't make much difference over the course of a season.

Busch Light Field at Miller Park?

Bad choice picking Jeff Francis as your example. With KC he had exactly the same run support last Marcum: 3.86 per game. Francis' ERA was 4.82 and KC lost 21 of his 31 starts. Capuano enjoyed 5.07 runs per game support, yet the team still lost 17 of his 33 starts. To assume either of these guys would have been as successful as Marcum for the Brewers is simply not true. I call it the Braden Looper Fallacy. Melvin spent a couple years staffing the rotation with the likes of Bush, Looper, Suppan, Narveson, using the same philosophy you propose: Average pitching with good run support is as good and cheaper than good pitching. Looper went 14-7 in 2009, but the team won 16 fewer games than in 2011. So how did that strategy work out? It's always better to go with the best starting pitching you can afford. If Marcum had the same run support as Looper's 2009 season he would have won 20 games. So would that have made him a better pitcher or meant he had a better season than he actually did in 2011?

Good point. In that scenario the Brewers may have kept Cain and/or Esobar + one of the pitchers. We don't really know what kind of player Lawrie becomes, though it's looking like he will be All Star quality in his best years. He put up nearly Braun type numbers in his brief stint with Toronto. So, my question, who is more valuable, a 190+, 30+GS, 3.60'sh starting pitcher, or a Braun type hitter? Forgetting for a minute ARam's signing, it's worth noting the emergence of Green will soften the loss of Lawrie. If Green comes close in the majors to last year's AAA numbers, they won't miss Lawrie.

Without Marcum the Brewers don't win the division; they don't win 96 games. Lawrie looks like a great hitter, but the trade was worth it. Marcum's poor finish to 2011 seems to have convinced most on this board that he's nothing more than another Jeff Suppan.

Nothing about Shaun Marcum is comparable to Jeff Suppan. The last two seasons Marcum is 26-15, 64GS, 3.59ERA, 396ip, 3.23K:BB ratio. Those are All Star numbers. Suppan has never had one season as good as Marcum's, let alone two in a row. If anything, Marcum is more comparable to CJ Wilson.

YuniB has always reminded me of Deivi Cruz. Indeed, Yuni's OPS is .683, Cruz', .682. Deivi's last season as a regular was in Baltimore at age 30. After that he had a couple OK years as a backup and was done. YuniB is nearly at the end of the line. It's time we let him go.

Younger Punto for less money.

At one time was maybe the best ss in baseball. Don't know how his numbers bear out the last few years. Good at 2B and ss. Missed almost all of last year to injury, so maybe that explains the minor league deal. If he's healthy he'll make the team.

I bet most fans feel their team's defense is bad compared to the rest of the league. We watch more games of our favorite team than any other team, so we see every mistake, miscue, dropped ball. Fans always remember the mistakes. I watched yesterday's Packer game at a neighborhood bar. Judging by the comments of the patrons, you'd have been convinced they were the worst team in the NFL.

His offense has been overshadowed by Braun and Fielder for most of his career. On a lot of teams he'd be hitting in the middle of the order. His OPS the last two years is .866 and his home run pace is 30+ a season with 90+ rbis if he were playing 150 games both years. That ranks him a better hitter than Ryan Howard, Mark Teixeira, Arod, over the same period.

As I understand it, that defense is not going to work. It's the same thing Palmeiro tried to no avail. Claiming you didn't know drug-supplement-vitamin X would elevate your T levels is not a justifiable defense. Otherwise every one would claim this.

Looks like the Twins win signing Josh Willingham.

Looks like a good deal to me. Maybe a little better bat than Cuddyer at an affordable price. He's getting a bit old, so I guess there's a risk involved, but corner outfielders can stand out there into their mid 30's without hurting the team too much, as long as the bat stays useful.

This works for me. If Green has the arm for 3B, then he should be able to handle LF for some of those 50 games. You can always put gomez in CF late in games when they are ahead and shift Morgan to left.