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gregmag

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Everything posted by gregmag

  1. gregmag
    It is what it is. This is what the Cubs can do; we all knew this. They can afford to offload their top prospects because they can spend their way out of their problems. Obviously that approach has its pitfalls, but as others have said, the pit is a ways off for the Cubs. They're going to be good for a while. This move cost the Cubs, and I think people are right to say that we did well to force their hand, but it still makes sense from their perspective. The Brewers' plan has to be the same as it's always been: Do our thing our way. That means talent acquisition and development up and down the organization. It doesn't foreclose spending prospects for MLB talent at the right moments, but I'd say it sure forecloses trying to match what the Cubs did here for what they got. If we're going to beat them, it will take our continuing to unearth hidden gems and develop our best prospects into MLB contributors. Let's see what happens.
  2. gregmag
    I figured Maddon would pitch Corey for three or four innings just to slag his arm, so I was pleasantly surprised. Kid needs the rest; he's been overworked.
  3. gregmag
    Ortiz really worries me. He seems fragile. Of our top pitching prospects, he's by far the guy I'd be most comfortable trading. Someone made a good point above that teams seem to value present performance in trading for prospects. If that's right, then this isn't the time to trade Ray. People who are optimistic about him say he's a lot better than his stats, but he hasn't proved anything. I think trading him now would be selling low. The top OF I'd be most comfortable trading is Phillips. He's smack in the middle of our OF logjam, and he's putting up good numbers this year. Obviously everyone knows PCL hitting stats are inflated, but again, present stats seem to matter. If we can't get what we want for a package built around Ortiz and Phillips, I'd be inclined to stand pat. The thing about this year's Brewers is that we lack glaring weaknesses. Even the middle relief has been coming around. We don't have any superstars, but we have solid performers just about everywhere. Adding another rotation arm would be great, but given the likely price, I'm okay rolling with Davies, Garza, and Suter. Anyway, I have a lot of faith in this team's talent evaluations. I think they have a good sense of how much of an upgrade Gray would be over our bottom-of-rotation guys. Also, as somebody said above, we'll use every bit of the next 20 days to figure out our playoff odds.
  4. gregmag
    This bears repeating: 3.5 game lead on July 5! Also, I like how this team bounces back every time it starts to lose ground.
  5. gregmag
    Good Lord our division is bad.
  6. gregmag
    I'd like to see him shut down until after the break. He looks seriously gassed.
  7. gregmag
    If Villar can be 80 percent of the player he was last year, he's a good starter, mental mistakes and all. In one of the transaction threads, I think, people are taking it as given that he's just a utility guy now. That seems very premature to me. He was our best position player last year. He's young. He has a broad talent base. I love Sogard more than most people (I'm probably the biggest nerd here), but penciling in Sogard over Villar even for the rest of this year, let alone beyond that, seems to reflect recency bias. I don't know what Villar's deal is with baserunning. I agree that Counsell's benching him after he didn't run out that squibber was wise and refreshing. OTOH, Villar landed on the DL by absolutely, almost literally, busting his butt to make a spectacular defensive play. He's not a low-motor guy across the board. I don't know if he's arrogant, flaky, stupid, immature, or something else, but if he starts hitting I won't lose any more sleep wondering about that than I did when he was hitting last year. Let's also remember that Villar has gotten the royal Bill Hall treatment. You're a shortstop. Okay, we're bringing up Arcia; now you're a third baseman. Wait, we dumped Gennett and got Shaw; now you're a second baseman. All of this in like half a season. I think Hernan Perez may be spoiling our ability to realize how difficult it is for most normal mortals to play regularly at new positions. So that mitigates some of Villar's boneheadedness for me. Anyway, let's see if he can find his offensive form. Tonight's a good start.
  8. gregmag
    I really like Stearns' efforts to find value for the back half of the roster, and I like the willingness to cut bait when guys don't produce. It's true that Franklin got a limited shot, short of statistical significance, but it was something, and he couldn't take hold. I hope he finds success down the road. That strong bench we have now -- all free talent pickups, right? Aguilar, Sogard, Perez, Vogt . . . IIRC we didn't give up anything to get any of those guys. (If Villar's a bench guy now, he breaks the pattern, but only to the tune of Cy Sneed.) Same thing for much of the pen, but with more mixed results: Hughes, Torres, Drake. Then you look at other cheap pickups who have cycled through and are gone: Milone, Marinez, Scahill (may be back someday), Bandy (may be back, cost us arby-eligible Maldonado). Feliz is the exception only insofar as he cost real money in FA, which makes the team's willingness to cycle through guys even more emphatic. Then there's the cheap (not quite free) talent higher up the roster: Thames, Guerra (pretty much free), Villar if he starts, and the breakout guys from multiplayer trades that also brought us prospects -- Santana, Shaw, Pina, Anderson, Knebel . . . okay, I've gotten off topic. I just love this team's approach to roster building.
  9. gregmag
    You're probably just going to call me a "stat nerd" and try to steal my lunch money, but I'm pretty sure the defensive metrics that the various WAR stats use already do what you're suggesting. IIUC, they try to measure defensive runs saved. By definition the more important defensive positions can save more runs. Whether the defensive metrics do a good job of measurement is a different, harder question; but that question applies to all stats, even the relative Cory Seager-ness index.
  10. gregmag
    When my daughter was born she had a minor scary problem, nothing compared to this, but it's enough to put my heart in my mouth when I hear about new parents' dealing with a scary medical situation. I dearly hope that everything works out for the three of them, and It's great that being in Milwaukee puts them in a good place to get the care of their daughter needs.
  11. gregmag
    That was one of the crappiest games I have ever attended, and learning this after the fact makes it worse. I hate everything.
  12. gregmag
    I assume the Brewers aren't going to tell the media "he needs surgery" when they're going to be negotiating with the kid and his family, who might not think he needs surgery. Plus no team in the run-up to the draft gets to give him a full medical work-over, so they don't actually know if he needs surgery.
  13. gregmag
    At this point in the draft I don't think a few dozen rank spots make that much difference. Teams are looking at players, and different teams are seeing different things. I assume, unless we find out otherwise, that this is just where the Brewers had Lemons on their board.
  14. gregmag
    Someone tell me I shouldn't be having Max Walla flashbacks please.
  15. gregmag
    From the PG article that Patrick linked above: “He’s a bright guy, he’s an articulate guy, he’s mature, he’s got personality, he’s got a sense of humor,” the veteran head coach said. “Sometimes when guys have the gifts that he has you get some big-time arrogance and ego along with it, but not with this guy." Always a nice bonus when a guy is easy to root for.
  16. gregmag
    I've been following this stuff casually, piggybacking on all the smart commentary in this thread. Having taken everything in, Hiura wasn't in the front of my mind -- but looking at him now, he just seems like an obviously good fit for what we need. Maybe I'm just being a homer, but the pick feels right. Two important things: (a) the numbers make pretty clear that the analytics guys are happy, and (b) Patrick loves the pick. That's enough to sell me. I wonder if the organization has developed a firm position of avoiding pitchers in the first round. IIRC many analytic types don't like placing big bets on young pitchers, so it would make sense. I've always hated hs pitchers in the draft, but what do I know?
  17. gregmag
    I'm old enough that if they draft a high school pitcher named Rogers, it's going to be hard on a gut level to get happy about.
  18. gregmag
    Yeah, this deal is exactly why I want to avoid trading for marquee relievers. The notion that we'd be five up with TT . . . That would mean he'd be having one of the great relief seasons in MLB history. We also wouldn't have Shaw.
  19. gregmag
    Very cool little Fangraphs item today on Corbin Burnes: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/brewers-prospect-corbin-burnes-is-missing-barrels/
  20. gregmag
    1. Higuera 2. Sheets 3. Bosio 4. Gallardo 5. Haas 6. Caldwell 7. Navarro 8. Sabathia 9. Greinke 10. Sorensen 11. Slaton 12. Colborn Wegman is next; he never had a year as good as Colborn's 1973, but he had a few years better than Colborn's second best. Sutton (as a Brewer, of course) and Vuckovich weren't good enough to crack that group. Vuke's Cy Young award is just offensive. I'm a Caldwell-era guy, but he only had one great year and one other very good year. Sheets' 2004 was better than Caldwell's 1978. In fact, as I said in another thread, no Milwaukee Brave or Brewer pitcher has ever had a better season than Sheets in 2004. Once you get past the top seven, the pickings are so grim that I think the short-tenure superstars, Greinke and Sabathia, look better than the longer-tenured guys. McDonald is like that only not as good, falls in right after the guys I listed. It would have been really great if Phil Garner hadn't murdered Cal Eldred.
  21. gregmag
    If we continue to churn bodies and roles in the pen somewhat intelligently (or if it turns out we've already churned optimally), then the relievers' performance going forward should somewhat exceed the past numbers. The encouraging thing about the rotation, which I've slagged off a lot, is that it isn't just one guy stepping up. We have Guerra back; Anderson just had the two best starts of his career back to back; Nelson looks like he may be figuring some things out. I still don't think Davies is as bad as he's been pitching. Plus Garza has been mostly competent, and Woodruff or Espino look like credible gap-fillers, at least, if needed. I think the rotation will be better going forward than it has been so far.
  22. gregmag
    Ooh, this is fun. Adcock, Fielder, Cirillo, and Cooper is close. Burdette and Sheets is close. I think I actually knock out Fielder first from those six, as his tenure was just too short, and his defense blunted his value some. If I have to knock out one more . . . Man it's close. Sheets was really good. He peaked in a hitter's era, but he compares quite favorably with Burdette. Sheets' 2004, by WAR, is the greatest pitching season any Milwaukee player ever had, including Spahn. Maybe you knock out Sheets because no real postseason glory and packed so much value into one season. I probably knock out Adcock because he was never more than a 4-win 1b. After the first six, I'd go 7. Cooper 8. Burdette 9. Higuera 10. Sheets 11. Cirillo 12. Adcock 13. Fielder
  23. gregmag
    Villar has had one very good year. I'd say great but the mental errors were racked up at a historic rate. He isn't guy with five plus years of good/very good hitting. I know CC is trying to get him going, but Sogar has to play somewhere for the time being. Why can't Sogar be this year's version of Villar or Guerra? His 'one good year' was last year, and that was the only year he played full time. I'm not thrilled with his production, but this year we need to find out if he can really put things together and be a consistently productive player. He has too much talent to discard it to easily. Sogard looks great in limited action, but at 5 years older than Villar, he doesn't likely have a long future ahead of him. This is the core point, I think. The Brewers want to win a championship. They need to gamble on upside. Gennett has none. What he's doing now is what he can do for a little while against righties sometimes. That won't move the needle. Villar may fail, and we can second-guess going with him when that happens, but at another level you have to assess the Villar upside gamble in the context of the overall building strategy. A mindset that keeps Gennett likely chooses Carter over Thames, likely doesn't pick up Guerra or Broxton, likely doesn't ride out Santana's development, likely keeps Maldonado rather than pick up Bandy and doesn't give Pina a shot.
  24. gregmag
    Maybe (hopefully) more with this season in mind than permanent? It would make a ton of sense to use him as a six-out reliever for the Brewersthis year. The team would benefit, the MLB staff could work with him, and really he has no place else to go at this stage -- CS is likely hurting his development.
  25. gregmag
    Burnes only went six? And gave up a run? Well, that promising career was nice while it lasted. (In related news, I don't know how to make text blue when posting on my phone.)
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