LouisEly

Nice work sveum. Just curious, there are some names off the top of my head I don't see on the list and I'm wondering if they were omissions or somehow didn't make the cut: Tom Glavine, C.J. Wilson, Barry Zito, Orel Hersheiser, James Shields, Carlos Zambrano, Tim Hudson, Chris Carpenter, Ryan Dempster.

Some project Peterson and Demeritte at 2B though I'm not sure how accurate that is. Given how RH-dominant the Brewers are and that a majority of pitchers are RH, all things being equal I go with the LH hitter, thus my preference for Neuhaus & McMahon. Caratini is more likely to be around in the 3rd/4th if the Brewers go pitching at #54 & 72.

Yep, and today two of those guys failed to get any runs home when the Brewers had bases loaded with nobody out, and another guy twice couldn't get a runner home from 3B with less than two outs striking out each time.

The organization doesn't have much for 3B prospects, and there are several guys projected to go in the 50-90 range that I wouldn't mind seeing them pick: Tucker Neuhaus, HS (Tampa), L/R (some have SS, some project 3B) Ryan McMahon, HS (Mater Dei, CA), L/R Victor Caratini, Miami Dade CC (Freshman), B/R Some have Riley Unroe (is he the son of Brewer legend Tim Unroe?) projected at 2B, but that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if he ended up there - they could use a 2B too. As for pitching, if Kevin Ziomek is still there at #54 he would be a nice pick - gave up only 63 H in 99.2 IP and K'd 102 in the SEC. Something tells me he will be gone.

Weren't there concerns about signing Bailey? For a system that was lacking in talent, the risk of not being able to sign someone was possibly greater than taking a player rated slightly lower because they needed to get talent in the system. CMIIR, this was well before teams got a pick in the subsequent draft if a guy didn't sign, so if they couldn't sign Bailey they got nothing. It's not like Rogers was Matt Bush. Rogers had talent, he just got hurt.

Bradley pulled in the 4th due to injury; they don't think it is serious. Hopefully it is something minor that has been bothering him for a while and the cause of his up-and-down year, and a relatively short DL stint will clear it up and get him back on track.

I'll give you Jose Fernandez, but is it good for him to be rushed to the majors so quickly? And would he have signed with a club that wasn't so close to home? Guerreri is putting up nice numbers for a 20-year-old in low A; let's wait until he gets to AA to declare him an impact pitcher. But you say Sonny Gray and Matt Barnes are impact pitchers, and Taylor Jungmann is not? Let's take a look at their AA numbers, excluding the start where Jungmann was put on the DL immediately after the game: Pitcher A: 9.0 H/9, 0.5 HR/9, 3.5 BB/9, 5.9 K/9, 1.385 WHIP, 4.14 ERA, GO/AO 1.65 Pitcher B: 9.7 H/9, 0.7 HR/9, 3.2 BB/9, 10.9K/9, 1.432 WHIP, 4.62 ERA, GO/AO 0.77 Pitcher C: 6.7 H/9, 0.3 HR/9, 4.6 BB/9, 4.6 K/9, 1.258 WHIP, 3.77 ERA, GO/AO 2.23 So you're telling me that two of these three are impact pitchers and one is not? Obviously based on K/9 Pitcher B is not Jungmann, and while that pitcher has the highest K/9 of the group he also has the highest H/9, HR/9, and by far the lowest ground out/fly out ratio - is that the type of pitcher you want pitching in Miller Park?

TheCrew, how many guys with #1 potential who don't have some type of concerns do you think there are in any draft? It seems like based on your criticism that you think they are bound and plentiful several rounds deep. Guys with #1 potential who don't have some type of concerns go in the top 10. Once you get past #10, depending on the depth and talent of any particular year, you have to gamble that a high velocity guy will be able to develop plus secondary pitches, a wild guy will be able to develop control, a low velocity guy will be able to add velocity or develop an outstanding change, or an immature guy will grow up and make good decisions. Other than the last of those four, that is development, not identification. I can't tell based on your analysis who you think the three guys were who had #1 potential that Jack Z. drafted (or who in your opinion are the "potential" impact pitchers), but if one of them was Rogers he was a top 10 pick, something Seid has not had the luxury of having. In two of Seid's drafts he hasn't picked until at least #26, and one of the others was Covey who didn't sign so his first pick that year wasn't until #64. How many #1 guys do you expect to still be around at #26, #27, and #64?

http://mlb.mlb.com/images/2004/01/16/k6Bmu2Y8.jpg

You're right, there were concerns about those guys, but I was speaking strictly to ceiling/potential. Some around here think that the Brewers have exclusively drafted high floor/low ceiling pitching and that is not true.

The heck does Aoki have to do with developing pitching? The more I think about it, the more I think it is development and not identification. They have drafted high-ceiling pitching (Rogers, Jeffress, Odorizzi, Frederickson, Covey), they have drafted HS pitching in rounds 2-8 (Hall, Lintz, Lasker, Anundsen, Hill, Inman, Gallardo, Langille, Parillo, Wooley, Marion) as well as college pitching. They have thrown enough against the wall for something more than Gallardo to stick.

Michael Reed is quietly having a pretty good season for a 20-year-old in low-A. Have to like the .391 OBP and 8 SBs.

Last night while playing sand volleyball my big toe got caught under me in the sand and I rolled over it. Not uncommon, it has probably happened to me 20 times before, but when I got home and took off my shoes the area around the knuckle(?) of my big toe was pretty swollen. This has not happened before. I can walk on it fine as long as I don't stretch the toe too much one way or the other, but it is a little tender in one spot when I press on it on the top. Does the swelling suggest a broken bone? I have minimal insurance right now so anything minor I have to pay out of pocket, and I don't want to pay for a bunch of x-rays and an urgent care visit (my doctor resigned two months ago and I don't want to drive 30 miles to see anyone else in that system) if it is just a sprain and will be fine in a few days. Thanks!

Yes, he has had great seasons out of Segura and Gomez so far, what we sort of expect from Braun, and a very good season from Aoki. He has also had abysmal seasons far below what anyone would have anticipated from Weeks, Lucroy, Maldonado, and Gonzalez (even though Gonzalez was supposed to be a bench player). He lost his cleanup hitter for a month (who still isn't 100%), and lost his top three 1B to serious injuries (Hart, Gamel, Green) forcing Gonzalez to play a position he shouldn't be playing; Morris and Halton haven't had seasons in AAA to suggest that they would have been much better options. I don't know that you can fault RR for the injuries that have handcuffed him in filling out the lineup, and the focus on pitching in the last five drafts has left them without much positional depth in the upper part of the farm system. The bullpen has been better, but the starting pitching has been worse and starting pitching is more important. Lohse has been what we expected but Gallardo and Estrada have been worse, and we knew that the other two spots were going to be question marks. Peralta is a rookie, we didn't know if we would get the Peralta of the first half of 2012 or the second half of 2012, and maybe the league has figured out Fiers, maybe the issues with his mother's health are distracting him. As for Axford, is it RR or DM that should have made the decision to send him down to the minors? His decision-making hasn't been perfect, but it goes back to who is to blame for poor performance, the manager, the player, or the GM?

Promote Marcus Hanel

It's the curse of Gorman Thomas. They haven't been to the World Series since they traded him.

Anyone have the old SNL skit with Jon Lovitz and Phil Hartman where Phil is playing an older classic Hollywood actor who doesn't realize he is washed up, and Lovitz is playing the director/producer who keeps telling him very bluntly. Lovitz: "You're finished! You're through! You're the worst actor on the planet, and I get a thousand letters a day telling me so!" Hartman: "What's the word on the street?"

I've been saying this for two years. Yes, A-Ram is decent against RH pitchers and they have Aoki in the lineup, but that's two out of 9 batters. The other seven are getting eaten up.

I say none of the above. With Gorzelanny on the DL they need someone who is effective against LH batters, and while K-Rod doesn't have the fastball he once had he has a good changeup which is effective against LH hitters. There wasn't a big difference in the LH/RH OPS-A splits last year (.684 vs RH, .723 vs LH), but what is interesting is that his SLG-A was much higher against LHP (.456 vs .317) because all of the HRs he gave up were against LH batters, but his OBP-A was much better against LH batters (.367 vs RH, .268 vs LH). If you subscribe to the belief that OBP is more important than SLG, then the net effect was that he was roughly equally effective against LH as RH batters. I don't know where to find historical minor league splits, but in a small sample this year Wooten is worse and Sanchez is much worse against LH batters than RH batters.

I prefer SoundHound to Shazam. I prefer WeatherBug to WeatherChannel. The latest WeatherBug update is pretty cool. I prefer Sportacular (Yahoo!) to ESPN. There is a specific Brewers app (MIL - Baseball News) that pulls in articles from Yahoo! Sports, MLB.com, and Journal Sentinel. J-S sometimes gives you flack about the number of articles that you view, but the Yahoo! articles come up quick and clean. There are also Packers (Packers News) and Badgers apps too. I have a Bubble app that acts as a reasonably good level when you don't have one handy. I also have a Compass app. I use Catch to capture notes when I think of random things that I don't want to forget. I don't use this app nearly as much as it is capable of being used. DrinkOwl and UrbanDaddy are kind of fun for going out.

I don't think he has much of a choice, that's going to be his niche, unless his secondary pitches are leaps and bounds better than they were at the start of his career. I haven't watched him pitch since college but BA didn't even mention his curve which he featured through college in his scouting report over the winter talking about his slider and change instead. I thought that was odd considering there was a feature article talking about Taylor working hard to tighten up his curve. It's possible that he's working on improving specific pitches and not caring so much about results. Guys like Mike Leake, Rick Porcello, and Ryan Perry who were rushed to the majors didn't get the time to work on secondary pitches and now are mediocre starters or mediocre bullpen arms. Jungmann is still less than two years from when he was drafted; it took Jimmy Nelson two years before he found his stuff, and two and a half years before he started to develop control. Jungmann also started his second full season at AA where Nelson started his second full season at Brevard, so I think that suggests a more rosy future than his stats so far suggest.

Because he gave up an opposite-field home run that bounced off the top of the fence to a 26-year-old two time All Star who was the #3 NL MVP vote-getter last year?

So a sawed off bloop single was the tipping point for you? No, because Roenicke for some reason took Gonzalez out with Neil Walker coming up, who has a significantly lower OPS as a RH than LH hitter, followed by the lefty Alvarez. I realize with Gorzelanny on the DL he only has one lefty in the pen, but he only had one lefty in the pen all year last year. Would Walker have gotten a hit if he had been batting RH against Gonzalez? We don't know, but statistically it would have been less likely.

Apples and oranges, but Jack McKeon connected with a young roster and took them to a World Series title. A bigger age gap is sometimes better, kind of like how many kids like their grandparents better than their parents. But the reality is that as long as star players can whine and orchestrate where they want to go (LeBron/Bosh, Paul, etc.) and as long as there are franchises in LA, Miami, and states with no income tax (TX, FL) the Bucks are unlikely to win anything. Who are people liking in the draft? If he's still there, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has ideal SG size, improved his shooting % significantly this year, and at 20 years old still has upside. If Reggie Bullock can play SG he is another guy who has improved each year and shot 43.6% from 3 last year. My sleeper is Erick Green - the knock on him is size and athleticism, but he led the nation in scoring despite playing in a great conference (ACC) for a bad team, and teams knew that Green was their best player and keyed on him but he still managed to lead the nation in scoring which suggests he can create his own shot. He improved his shooting % every year, and lack of supporting cast hid how good of a distributor he can be. If both Jennings and Ellis leave the Bucks will need some perimeter scoring; the question is if he can be a player or if he's the next Shawn Respert. In the second round I hope they draft the best perimeter defender who is between 6'5" and 6'8"; they really need to improve their defense against taller outside shooters. Michael Snaer is supposed to be a good defender, has decent size (6'4"), and a decent outside shot (38.4% and 40.4% from 3 the last two years). Another guy who I think has value is James Southerland - he has a great outside shot and at 6'8" is tough to guard from the perimeter. Alex Oriakhi won't give them much offensively, but at 6'9", 255 he won't get pushed around under the defensive boards like Henson, Sanders, and Ilyasova.

Yes and no. I think Sanders missed too many games/too much time late in the season, and ultimately lost the league lead in blocks to Ibaka. Had he been healthy and subsequently finished with the league lead in blocks, yes. When is the last time that a Buck led the league in any positive statistical category?