Bernman23

Are you kidding about the records against the Pirates? 5-0 this year and have owned them for a long time. The fact that they show up 10 times more on our schedule has me drooling, not concerned. They are the Brewers of 2004. Their run was a fluke. They are in no way a legitimately good team this year. They can't hit, their pitching has massively overachieved, and they are starting to plummet as a result.

The Brewers are now 2nd in the Wild Card standings, 3 games out of 1st after the Braves lost today. The Wild Card became an afterthought for a while, but it's becoming more and more of a realistic fallback option to make the playoffs. Both the Brewers and Cardinals should pick up games on the Braves if there is a fair amount of parity in their head to head match-ups. Most of the games the rest of the way are inter-divisional match-ups, and of course the East is a lot better than the Central.

My only disappointments were not only did we miss out on Furcal but also allowed him to join our #1 competitor. However, I am content with the moves because they did constitute upgrades, and we didn't significantly hinder our chances next year and going forward, pending the PTBNL's in the K-Rod trade. You can't have tunnel vision just because you are in a playoff race in that current year. We are equipped to make a playoff run next year if the team outside of Fielder is kept largely intact and use the money wisely that his departure frees.

1. Mat Gamel - Generates a lot of power without much of a swing ala Rickie Weeks 2. Taylor Green - Always has hit when healthy, patient at the plate, smart hitter, smooth stroke 3. Wily Peralta - good stuff, consistently under 4.00 ERA since rookie ball, reported age standard for leagues, although I question his age 4. Cody Scarpetta - powerful frame, successful from the beginning, somewhat of an adjustment period to AA but has been decent 5. Tyler Thornburg - excellent since becoming a pro, decent stuff, but the college #'s are alarming 6. Kentrail Davis - ate entrails in low A, bad for a prospect in high A, but they've kept him in a league too long where many struggle 7. Kyle Heckathorn - Good frame and fastball, has been productive since A-ball, the peripherals could be better though 8. Mark Rogers - great last year, and already proved a little at the major league level, it's just a matter of whether he can withstand another arm injury 9. Yadiel Rivera - the fact he was in A ball at 18 says a lot about how they view him, producing defensively and offensively at rookie ball, but the plate discipline is a concern 10. (tie) Khris Davis - productive since going pro and good tools, but old for leagues, and in college wasn't that great Caleb Gindl - adjusted to every promotion pretty well, young for leagues, but limited potential it seems

I'm not sure that's true, prior to the superbowl run I think the vast majority of fans in WI thought Melvin was the better GM and still do. It's the main reason I quit posting over at Lambeauleap, I wasn't going to fight the same fight about organization building on 2 fronts with the same people. Thompson clearly understands how to build an organization as well as how little value there actually is to be found in FA. Generally speaking when signing a name player you're paying for what they've done and not what they are going to do. You must spend your time around a high percentage of radical Favreophiles. Among who I talked to and where I posted, the general perception before winning the Super Bowl was that he already one of the league's best GM's because of his team building ability, but just a little stubborn about making the cinching move. Now that he won the Super Bowl, he walks on water. Frustrations with Doug have been building because of the amount of holes on the team which could have filled if he hadn't relinquished players like Hardy, Cruz, Villanueva, JDLR, Cappy, etc.

I really don't think he's likely acting in the best interest of the club because a. he has a poor track record in recent years regarding his decisions, and b. he knows his job is on the line this year so doesn't care about mortgaging a future he won't be a part of unless he wins this season. I don't see why the team can't make the playoffs next year with the additions of Gamel, Green, the allocation of Prince's salary toward bullpen and depth, and all of the remaining talent on the team. Plus, keeping the farm respectable will help us recover quicker after that. So we shouldn't have an "all-in" mentality. We should be buyers, but in terms of spending money, not young talent on the cheap. How does a small market franchise win without young talent on the cheap? The young talent, accumulated by Jack Z., is the primary reason we are in contention in the first place.

You're missing the main point. If their decisions made sense, people wouldn't persistently ask for an explanation. People will stop pestering them and reporters when they start acting in the best interest of the club. It's not like Melvin has earned blind faith from fans. Quite the opposite is true. If this was Ted Thompson the shouts would be more muffled.

Does Haudricourt not realize how much of an oxymoron that statement is? He is really reaching lately to protect from criticism the franchise who indirectly pays his salary. There are a ton of people associated with the organization who right now are resorting to damage control, i.e.: Roenicke publicly criticizing Gamel for his whole 26 AB performance in the big leagues to prove that minor league numbers don't translate (and then Haudricourt reiterating it as the puppet he is). This only makes the concern greater that Green is indeed the PTBNL. They are desperately trying to sell that he couldn't have helped us now but K-Rod could. And that wouldn't be justification by itself anyways.

Does he not realize how much of an oxymoron that statement is? Haudricourt is really reaching lately to protect the franchise who indirectly pays his salary from criticism.

Taylor Green stays perfect at the plate, with his 4th hit of the night, a single, which also drove in his 6th run. He has a chance to set the club record of 6 runs scored with one out now. Edit: Didn't set the record as Almonte hit into a DP. Green is 4-4 with 2 HR's, 1 Double, 2 BB's, 6 RBI's, and 5 R's on the night.

Green with good situational hitting, takes another walk to start out an inning. 3 for 3, 2 HR's, 1 Double, 2 Walks, 5 RBI's, and in good shape to score his 5th run of the night. Edit: Gamel with a single to load the bases with nobody out. If Green scores, he ties the club record of 5 runs. Gindl drives Green in to allow him to match the club record. Still probably has an AB left.

Now he has 2 home runs. 3 for 3 with 2 homers, 1 double, a walk, 4 runs, and 5 rbi's. Worthy of note he achieved it all against Brewer killer, and a big leaguer this year in Nelson Figueroa. If Doug put him on the PTBNL list I'm going to be sick. And if not, how well does a brother have to hit in AAA to get a promotion. His .OPS is nearing 1.000 now. It's got to translate to some extent if RR doesn't give him less than 1/10 of the leash as McGehee has gotten, like he did with Gamel. (not that he should have been the replacement at 3rd base, but RR publicly declared he wasn't ready because to perform in the bigs because of 26 AB's).

What about trading for Franklin Gutierrez, if the Mariners would agree to pick up some of his salary? I'm thinking like 1 million this year and 2.5 each of the next 2. He has to be viewed as a disaster right now in Seattle where in the 2nd year of a 4-year/20 million dollar contract he's sporting a .461 OPS through 182 AB's. But for our purposes he'd be part of a platoon only facing lefties who he has hit a much more respectable .630. That's coming off a 3-year split where he hit .818 against them. And Seattle can be hell for hitters. For example, Cirillo went in the tank there before reviving his career with the Crew. Chone Figgins has been brutal there as well. If a change of ballparks doesn't get Gutierrez out of his slump, at least he'd still bring an outstanding glove and plus baserunner, ala Gomez. In addition to being part of a CF platoon he could provide some relief/insurance for Braun and Hart, for this and the next couple of years.

Gamel deserves a lot of credit for getting jerked up and down between the bigs and minors through his mid 20's and continuing to produce. He was 3-5 tonight with a double and walk. I have little doubt he'll be able to hit at the major league level with his quick bat. He just needs to play every day and not have to look over shoulder in turn making him over-eager. That will happen when Prince departs. Kentrail Davis needs to get promoted to AA regardless of performance at some point. Braun and Cain were completely different players away from Brevard County. I don't think we should give up on him becoming a starter or dangle his name flippantly in trade proposals, yet. And good to see some consistency from a couple Brewer pitching prospects.

No, you absolutely are guilty of confirmation bias. You brought up the Royals' defensive statistics and then ignored the comparative unearned run totals of pitchers on that staff, which is inherently more relevant. I can't verify the accuracy of all your league-wide statistics, but Greinke being poor relative to his staffs at keeping unearned runs from crossing the plate has happened for 4 straight years now (even though he's been theoretically the best pitcher on his staff), which now constitutes a pattern. Just like it was a pattern that Parra became consistently poor at it, naturally because of how he visually got frustrated on the mound, and would start to be wild and then guide one over the plate to compensate. It's silly to act like success in certain situations is random because a tendency isn't abundantly clear when you throw all the numbers into an average and there isn't a major deviation. Rickie Weeks used to suck in clutch situations early on his Brewers' career because he was such a nervous guy as you see during his interviews. He eventually built some confidence and now doesn't suck as much, so if you looked at his career as a whole, he wouldn't look so bad in the clutch. But that didn't change the fact that he did suck at one point and it wasn't a random event. We saw his tendency to get nervous reappear in a bigger stage during the all-star festivities. For Greinke he's developed a lack of confidence most times he faces adversity, like after an error, which he deserves discredit for, because it hurts his teams.

That's a classic case of confirmation bias. I showed you they weren't random events through correlations in multiple situations and it had zero effect on your preconceived notion. Now that's foolish.

Greinke has the same defense as Marcum and co. this year, and it's disproportionately a much bigger problem for him than the rest of the staff. Kyle Davies pitched with the same defense as Greinke the last 2 years. He allowed about 6 less in the same amount of innings last year and 2 the year before. Bruce Chen allowed 7 less unearned runs last year extrapolated over the same innings. He averaged about 2 less the previous year. Sean O'Sullivan allowed 7 less unearned over the same innings with the Royals last year (didn't play with them the previous season). Those were the Royals' starters that I randomly chose to research. I could go on and on. You ignored that I weeded out the defensive variable to some extent in my first post on the subject, and now have basically proven that allowing unearned runs to the extent that he does is a unique issue with Greinke. Greinke has a problem staying poised after his defense makes a mistake, which is his own fault, and hurts his respective teams. Your run support analogy is a poor one because that's a factor which was completely out of his control at the time, unlike allowing baserunners before or after unearned runs cross the plate.

Greinke's been much worse than even his sub-par ERA indicates because he was lucky to get those 2 earned runs off his total, and he has 9 unearned in 80.1 innings this season. By comparison, Marcum has 2 unearned in 116.2 innings. Narveson has 1 in 108.1. Wolf has 6 in 118.1. Gallardo has 6 in 121.1. The runs allowed per 9 averages of our respective starters are: Greinke: 6.05 (+1.01 unearned) Narveson: 4.80 (+0.06 unearned) Gallardo: 4.53 (+0.45 unearned) Wolf: 4.11 (+0.46 unearned) Marcum: 3.54 (+0.15 unearned) You can't absolve a pitcher from blame because a runner originally reached base undeservedly. Obviously it's partially his fault if he allowed the runner to score eventually and some pitchers limit the damage better than others. Marcum has never allowed more than 5 unearned runs in a season, and only 13 in his entire 700+ inning career, which you can credit to his obvious mental toughness. Narveson is on a similar pace for his career, so he's a little better pitcher than his ERA's indicate. As for Greinke, it was well documented before he arrived in Milwaukee that mental toughness was an issue, and it's shown in many ways here, especially after his teammates have made a mistake. This is not a new problem for him giving up a lot of unearned runs. He allowed 12 last year, and 9 each year previously. So it's more of a Greinke problem which he needs to correct, than an issue with the defense in his starts.

Then it shouldn't have gone up much to begin with from this season when he hit .714 and .659 the previous years.

Just to get it straight, obviously I'm the opposite of one of those fans, as my comments indicated. And at the times I wanted to keep Villanueva, JDLR, and Hardy instead of selling them low. To wit those GM's exist, in fact one is our very own. Doug put us in this predicament because he gave up 3 years of Hardy for nothing, just because he had a few poor months. So acquiring a few months of a cooled-down Hardy for a pretty good and decent prospect should hardly be out of the question.

The asking price for Hardy has to be declining after his recent cool stretch. I'd have few qualms about unloading Heckathorn and Gindl for him. Might even raise it to Scarpetta and Gindl, but that would really be hard to bear since we'd be giving up something potentially significant for a player who we should have possessed in the first place. If it came down to having to relinquish a Scarpetta-level prospect, I'd go down the Furcal avenue first. That's a very intriguing possibility for a couple reasons. 1. he has a team option to carry him into next season when the Crew will still be contending with in house improvements, 2. he was still a very good hitting and fielding shortstop just last year. If the Dodgers were willing to pay a little of his salary, it'd be worth it. Everybody knows the Dodgers need the money.

Odorizzi's the bomb. Cain is hitting .300/.865 in a non hitter's park. If we can't get Greinke re-signed, and this level persists throughout one of his two seasons here, I think I'd take the assets we traded.

What a disappointment Greinke has been to this stage in his Brewers' career. They should make an attempt to re-sign him, now.

Gamel is 2 for 3 w/ a double and walk. He needs to be up at the major league level right now. Learning 1st base doesn't require a full year in the minors. He should be adequate between the experience he's gotten thus far, occasionally playing in a major league game, practices, ST before next season, etc. Besides, he's almost 26, and the team went all in this year. If he could help the club win one more game via being a utility guy and pinch hitter, which could improve our chances at making it into the playoffs, it'd be worth a minor loss in development for the start of next season. The same principle applies to Green.

Hardy went 2 for 2 with a home run and 2 walks tonight. Asking price going up along w/ his .OPS, which is now at .862. I hope for Doug's finance's sake he doesn't play the stock market.