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gregmag

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Everything posted by gregmag

  1. gregmag
    Who's to say what's "meaningless"? People who root for their countries' teams in the WBC think it's meaningful. MLB players are allowed to play in the WBC, unless their contracts say otherwise, so nothing about the player-team-MLB relationship renders the WBC meaningless. Objectively, WBC games are just as meaningful as MLB games. It's all just sports; none of it affects the world beyond the extent to which people care about sports. I've never watched the WBC and don't feel any burning need to do so, but that's just me. I don't see why my perspective matters more than anyone else's. Also, I think Fluff makes a good point.
  2. gregmag
    I agree with you that aggressive ignorance is as bad as passive ignorance. But I don't accept your argument that one person's (or many people's) aggressive ignorance justifies another person's (or many people's) passive ignorance. If that's why somebody is dismissing advanced metrics -- because he's in a snit that other people seem to use them indiscriminately -- then (a) that's intellectually lazy, and (b) given the premise that he hasn't bothered to learn for himself how the advanced metrics work, why is his judgment that other people are using the metrics indiscriminately even credible?
  3. gregmag
    Reading comments from people who reflexively dismiss information they don't understand is a waste of time.
  4. gregmag
    I strongly agree with these sentiments, and I think you both said it very well.
  5. gregmag
    New York sports fans deserve Rodriguez. I hope his salary continues to inflate their ticket prices and cable bills for many years to come.
  6. gregmag
    That's some wishful thinking. Gamel hasn't played in a game of any kind since early May. Green didn't do much at all off the bench last year or in AAA. Morris hasn't played an inning above AA. The Brewers would be advised to add Sean Halton to their list of invitees and see what he can do too. At least Halton (.274/.354/.497) has AAA experience. Mat Gamel at AAA: .301/.374/.512 in 290 games. Taylor Green at AAA: .311/.386/.513 in 197 games.
  7. gregmag
    I was thinking the same thing about Coulter at 3b. The oddest thing for me about that rather odd list is that they don't project Schafer as the starting cf in three years. Almost as odd is that they don't project Hunter Morris at 1b. On Paul's point, I think you have to give the organization credit for going out and getting Segura, and for that matter Bianchi. They did neglect ss in the draft for a long time, but they fixed it another way. That's a legitimate strategy, and I don't think it involves any greater amount of luck vs. planning than drafting does. Now, 3b . . . the organization's feet are to the fire on that one. I agree with the doubtful comments above about Gennett and with igor's enthusiasm about Taylor. I can't remember the last time we had a kid like Taylor, a young, raw super-athlete, who seemed like he really could be something.
  8. gregmag
    I'm not expert at this kind of analysis, but I can't see any obvious reason to believe in Gomez's improvement last year. He has a broad skill set, and that's a reasonable basis for believing that he has really taken a step forward. But he has always seemed like the kind of player who didn't know how to use his talent, and last year I got the sense the hits were just falling for him. But even if that's wrong, he's not such a high-impact player that he's likely to make a huge difference before the nonwaiver deadline. I would be shopping both him and Hart. If you like what somebody offers -- young, credible talent at any position, as others have suggested -- then pull the trigger. To me, that isn't a rebuilding move, because we have in-house options to replace both guys. To put it another way: I think the Brewers can contend this year, but I don't think they're such world-beaters that we should be completely afraid of risk or of making our talent younger. If we can decrease our chances of winning this year by 10-20% while significantly upgrading our talent level for 2013 and beyond, I'd do it.
  9. gregmag
    Ewitkows, how can you not think Estrada's a starter? He did the job for most of last year, and he did it exceptionally well. He doesn't go deep enough into games, and he gives up lots of HRs, but he has amazing command. He was midrotation quality last year. Advanced metrics bear out what the baseball card line shows. What more can he do to prove he deserves a rotation spot? Fiers is also no rookie, and advanced metrics rank him a bit better than his ERA. Both of these guys have started games for roughly 2/3 of a full MLB season, and they've both performed very well. They plus Gallardo give us 3/5 of a very viable rotation.
  10. gregmag
    I've said this before, so I won't belabor it, but Hart is a relatively easy type of player to replace. He isn't an OBP guy, and at this point he has little speed or defensive value. What you get with him is power, and that makes him valuable. But that's really all you're replacing: 30 HR. You can replace him with a guy who adds offensive value the same way or different ways, and the only position the guy has to be able to play is the easiest one on the diamond. Then you look at the Brewers' internal options. It isn't like we have only Gamel, or only Morris, or only Khris Davis. We have all of those guys. If one of them fails, you cycle in another one. The odds are that none of them will be as good next year as Hart was last year. But I'd say the odds are very good that one of them will be at least as good as Hart over the next, say, three or four years. If it all goes completely south, then it isn't like 1b's at Hart's projected level of production in his early 30s are rare beasts, so you go find one. It just seems to me that re-signing Corey Hart for 3/36 or something is an incredibly bad use of available resources. If you can use him to fill another hole via trade, with the cheap internal 1b options the Brewers have, you have to do it.
  11. gregmag
    These are all good points, much more thoughtful and substantial than my initial burst of venom. One theme that comes through what everybody is saying, I think, is that your critique of MLB's approach to payroll disparities depends on your baseline view of what a competitive sport should be. I believe pretty strongly that raw resource inputs shouldn't be very relevant to where teams start out. I'm (not surprisingly) strongly in agreement with WTP and Briggs -- when some teams are able to contend over a period of years because their resources cover their mistakes, while others are consigned to years in purgatory, I have a hard time staying interested in the "competition." If the goal is to entertain people in the biggest population centers -- well, I'm not them. Ennder has, I think, a very mature response to my brand of cynicism, and I really wish I could get into that mindset, but I've never been able to.
  12. gregmag
    I really like Greinke, and I'm glad he got a huge payday if anyone is going to. I'm also thrilled the Brewers got what they got for him. But how is this a sport? With this kind of payroll disparity, I have a hard time taking MLB seriously.
  13. gregmag
    I've spent the past few nights reading a very enjoyable book called Cardboard Gods by Josh Wilker. It's a memoir of his childhood and young adulthood, with each short chapter keyed off a baseball card from the late 70s, when collecting baseball cards was what kept him sane. It's beautifully written, funny, and sad, and it draws a lot of great connections between baseball fandom and life (or not having much of one sometimes). I particularly love it because he's almost exactly my age, and he discovered baseball and baseball cards exactly when I did. I bet a lot of people who post here would enjoy it. But the real reason I bring it up here is that, maybe 150 pages in, after barely mentioning the Brewers in the book, this lifelong Red Sox fan suddenly lets forth with the funniest page or so that anyone has ever written or will ever write about our favorite team. His basic point -- and this guy is a Red Sox fan -- is that for the Brewers to have left the American League is an absurdity of cosmic proportions that makes it pretty much impossible for any sentient person to stay centered, but there's much more to it than that. It's unexpected, hilarious, and worth the price of admission all by itself.
  14. gregmag
    Without Curt Flood and Miller, ballplayers are serfs. Marvin Miller didn't invent labor strife in baseball; he just made it two-sided. You can argue about the extent of change in baseball economics since the 60s, but you can't seriously argue that baseball economics didn't need to change. He belongs in the HOF, and I think Funketown nailed the (bad) reasons he isn't there.
  15. gregmag
    Based on your earlier post, I wouldn't go tossing the word "moronic" around at other people. This new post is more coherent, which is nice (though inevitable), but it isn't any more persuasive. It basically says: "You shouldn't argue what you're arguing. You might be wrong, and therefore your argument is stupid. I, on the other hand, claim that all approaches to the problem are equally valid and should be taken into account. That is not a mere argument; that is truth, and I am therefore right."
  16. gregmag
    I think Posey deserves the award. I don't care that he isn't a great defensive catcher; he fills that position, and putting up the numbers he did while filling that position is special. Yes, Piazza failed to win the award with even better seasons than Posey's, but it's strange to argue that we should use past mistakes as precedent. Plus, of course, the comparison is meaningless without factoring in the competition. Headley, like Posey, lost some numbers to his home park, and he plays 3b; but even so, his numbers aren't in Braun's league. I'll be very unhappy if he or Molina finishes ahead of Braun. McCutchen is a closer call, but he's another of, and he simply didn't have quite the season Braun did. Any writer who penalizes Braun for the drug story is beneath contempt.
  17. gregmag
    Considering the key word there is "possibly," then no, it wouldn't be a waste. Young players aren't the only risky players. Veterans are risky too. Hart has of course lost his speed, he has little defensive value left, and he has never been a strong OBP guy. His power is everything, and at this point it's a great asset. But he's approaching the age where a lot of players shed skills, and only one skill keeps him in the lineup; he can't afford to lose ground. Add to that the fact that we don't just have one younger 1b candidate who has shown promise. We have Gamel, Morris, maybe Khris Davis. Plus, if you decline to pay market value for your 1b, and he keeps hitting for somebody else, and all of your in-house young options flame out -- if that complete worst-case scenario comes to pass, slugging 1bs who want market value aren't that hard to find. I think signing Hart to an extension makes little sense. We have him under contract for next year. I'd trade him if he could bring back something we need, but that's a closer argument with the team arguably in contention mode. So let him play next year, trade him at the deadline if we're out of it. We'll have more and more useful information about him and about our young 1b options in another six months.
  18. gregmag
    On top of what everybody else has said, Morgan threw the Cardinals into fits of rage like no other player. Even if he hadn't made such a difference in 2011 or been an all-around good guy or entertained us with his antics, I would love him for that.
  19. gregmag
    This is a very good statement of the case for Veras, and I'm leaning the same way. JB's critical point, I think, is that paying for relief pitching is always risky. Paying $2.6m for Veras seems like a good point on the risk curve. If he crashes, you aren't out huge dollars; if he succeeds, he could easily provide excess value. Plus, how many new relievers can a team add in one offseason? If we start with Ax, Henderson, Veras, and Kintzler, and we assume we can fill the seventh spot internally (have I mentioned that I hate seven-man bullpens?), then we need to find two relievers, plus one starter. That's plenty to do.
  20. gregmag
    I guess there are different sorts of rivalries at different times. Of course the Brewers had rivalries with division competitors, when the Brewers were contending. The same thing is true for any team. But these rivalries are meant to be geographic, because of course most teams never had an opportunity to develop interleague rivalries before interleague play. As for the geographic rivalries, I grew up in Milwaukee, and I don't remember the White Sox being a major concern of Brewers fans -- although we'd get a lot of Chicago fans at those games, and many of them were obnoxious drunks. Twins fans were always better behaved; maybe that diminishes a rivalry. I suspect that, on balance, Brewers-Twins was a meaningful rivalry for people in northern and western Wisconsin, while Brewers-Chisox was a bigger deal close to Milwaukee. Anyway, the Chisox obviously have a bigger / closer interleague rival, and the Twins have nobody else, so I don't mind the pairing with them.
  21. gregmag
    44, Trout. The only factor that makes it less than a complete and utter blowout for me is that Cabrera did play more. But if you backfill Trout's stat line with extra replacement-level production, you still get the best player in baseball. Of all the arguments I've seen here, the hardest for me to understand is that defense and baserunning don't count and/or shouldn't count in MVP voting. We aren't in 1987 anymore, and thank goodness for that. Defensive value is hard to measure accurately over a short run, but that doesn't mean the difference between elite defense and poor defense is invisible. Baserunning isn't hard to measure at all. I love that Cabrera won the triple crown. The last one happened just before I was born, and I've always wanted to see one. But I don't see how the fact of winning the triple crown has anything to do with anybody's version of what a MVP is supposed to be. Best player in the league? Best player on a winning team? Player who does the best in key situations? A triple-crown winner is more likely to be any of those things than a random non-triple-crown winner, but that doesn't mean he IS any of those things; you have to look harder at what he actually did. Saying that a guy who wins the triple crown should automatically win the MVP makes no more sense than saying that a guy who hits for the cycle should automatically win player of the game.
  22. gregmag
    How great that a guy who experienced that kind of injury frustration (as we all did, right along with him) can retire on a high note. Thanks for some great memories, Ben. Other than Teddy Higuera, the Brewers haven't ever had a starting pitcher do so well for so long. Have a very happy life.
  23. gregmag
    I've said this before, but: I think he's a real talent; he was almost certainly pitching a bit over his head when he came up, or else he's Greg Maddux; he clearly hit a wall when he got up over his projected innings limit; he has certainly earned a rotation spot next year; and we'll really know what we have in him after a couple of times around the league next season. I'm optimistic that he's a 2/3 type, but we'll see.
  24. gregmag
    I agree with all of this, except that I think Green is the grizzled veteran who plays the game the right way. Okay, I'm kidding about that, but the exact bench you're suggesting -- Maldonaldo/Bianchi/Green/Gamel/Schafer -- sounds perfect to me. I think the gritty veteran bench thing is a shibboleth, and I think it's especially easy to dismiss when you have our veteran starters (especially assuming Hart stays). If you can get a veteran who actually has plus skills (JHJ) then great, but getting old guys just because they're old is throwing good money after bad. So what if Bianchi doesn't hit as our backup ss? We haven't had a starting ss hit much for years, and his minor league numbers show he has at least a chance of hitting. If neither Gamel nor Green hits, that's a problem, but I'm willing to bet it won't happen.
  25. gregmag
    Fiers is fatigued. I don't think he's as good as he was when he came up, because nobody is that good, and he was due for a second-time-around-the-league correction. But I believe that stretch was a truer reflection of his actual ability than this one is. Let's reserve judgment until he's in the rotation next April, rested and no longer unknown. I think he's earned the chance to show his true measure in the middle of our rotation. I agree that Gallardo isn't at Sheets' level. I don't agree that you need a "true #1" to contend -- not if you have, say, three #2's and two #3's. I'd take a rotation like that over a conventional 1-5 any day of the week, and I think it's more stabilizing (hence a better bet) for a low-revenue team in particular, because if you can sustain it, you always have a couple of pitchers you can build around. Gallardo's a very good 2, Fiers I think is a 2 or 3, Estrada's a good 3. The question is what Rogers and Peralta will give us, but they're both high-upside guys who have shown good control in the majors. I'd love to have Greinke back, but realistically I think we'll be in good shape if we can sign another 2/3 guy. I don't know if Edwin Jackson would come to Milwaukee, but that was a hell of an audition last night.
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