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That Beyond the Box Score article is an outstanding read; thanks, Baldkin. The writer really looks carefully at Fiers and doesn't overclaim. But he makes a good case that what we're seeing from Fiers portends at least a solid midrotation talent, and I'm inclined to buy that right now. Yes, his MLB sample size is small; but it's very consistent with what he did in the minors over several seasons, and he was able to sustain his results as he moved up levels. Put it this way: if part of the equation in a Greinke and/or Marcum trade scenario is whether we should bet on Fiers to be a productive member of the 2013 rotation, I think we should.

I don't think the Ramirez contract is bad, for the reason DollarBill and others before have argued: his production actually warrants what he's being paid. The interesting variable is that a contract that's objectively "good" -- one that provides market value -- may not be good for a noncontending team. You don't want to pay market value for players when they aren't going to win you anything. On that basis, two seemingly contradictory things may be true: (1) Signing Ramirez when we thought we could contend this year (and beyond?) was a good idea. (2) Trading Ramirez as we expect not to contend this year (and beyond?) is a good idea. A lot can happen in a half season.

I myself had a particularly rotten day yesterday, so I empathize with the Brewers' farm system. You know it's a bad day when the whole high minors in the organization has like eight hits, and Corey Patterson has three of them. I've never understood why anybody had confidence that Mark Rogers would turn into anything. I didn't get it on the day he was drafted, I didn't get it a week or two ago when people were talking up his recent bright spots, and I guess I'm never going to get it. I think TC07 nails it in his summary above. Good thing about the other Rogers, though!

I think Raw Biz pretty much nailed it. Hart has been underrated, and he worked hard after cratering a few years back to reemerge as a valuable player. He deserves credit for all that. But he's going to be a 32 year-old, .850 OPS 1B, and you just don't shell out big money for a guy like that when you have lots of other holes to fill. I think you listen to offers this year, deal him if somebody makes an offer you can't refuse, and otherwise aim to deal him in the offseason.

3000 hits in 25 years is 120 hits a year. So the question becomes, how much do you value longevity for its own sake? He's been a pretty consistently poor hitter who plays great defense at the toughest defensive position. What a weird case. I don't buy the argument that he will, let alone should, have a better chance if other guys are left out for juicing. If you choose to disqualify an era's best players (however justified that choice is or isn't), you don't then let in the next tier. That makes no sense to me. Also, I'm not entirely convinced that either Smith or Aparicio belongs -- certainly not convinced enough to say that a guy who's almost Smith, or almost Aparicio, also belongs. One important part of the debate over Vizquel, I think, has to do with the relative importance of ss defense in his era. Maybe this comes out in WAR; I'm not sure. But Vizquel has played in an era when HRs and Ks have been, I'm pretty sure, more important parts of the game than in Ozzie Smith's era, let alone Luis Aparicio's era. Let's assume for the sake of argument that Vizquel has had close to the defensive skill that Smith had, but that Vizquel's skill hasn't helped his teams as much as Smith's did because that skill was relatively less important given the era Vizquel played in. How should we deal with that? I think it should diminish his chances, even though on one level that seems unfair. But the game is what it is, at any given time, and winning takes what it takes. If you're a guy with a gift for hitting 360-foot flies, but you play in an era of 375-foot power alleys, it's the same deal. I think the right way to judge a player is to try to figure out how much he helped his teams win. Just knowing that he got 3000 hits, and/or that he was a great defensive ss, doesn't necessarily answer the question. Nine chances out of ten, a guy with those characteristics is a probably Hall of Famer. But the guy who took 1988-2012 to do it may just be the tenth.

I agree that this is the likeliest scenario. Having said that, I also think it's unfair to Braun to take seriously the idea that he's more likely than any other player to have used a banned substance. There is no evidence against him. The appeal process is part of the evidence-gathering process. The arbitrator, in a system that's notoriously designed to be very tough on players, found that what initially came back as a positive result could not support the accusation against Braun. I know the "technicality" meme has caught on with a lot of people, but I think it's out of bounds. This isn't the U.S. criminal justice system, where the government has to show proof beyond a reasonable doubt and the accused gets various constitutional protections. There is no due process protection in baseball. If the arbitrator threw out the test, that means he viewed the test as unreliable -- exactly how and why, we may never know. The anti-doping crowd -- whose motives and methods I'm afraid this affair has taught me to view with a lot of skepticism -- likes to go on about the integrity of baseball. In my humble opinion, holding an unsupported allegation of steroid abuse against Ryan Braun harms the integrity of baseball. By the way -- unrelated point: if a player did use a banned substance, and that substance (a) wasn't illegal under federal drug law, and (b) couldn't be shown to have enhanced the player's performance, then I have serious questions about whether the substance, used in that way, should be banned. Not answers, yet, but serious questions.

Well, with all due respect, I believe that's ridiculous. Adam Dunn would have to struggle to be at 400 HR's by the end of this year and should EASILY be at about 410 HR's. He's 32 years old. Lets say he plays another 8 years and averages 25 Hr's a year(very low, but for the sake of argument). That would put him at about 610 HR's. And you're going to tell me that when not a single player who has hit 500 HR's without the stink of roids on him or has admitted to using them HASN'T made the HOF, this player who could EASILY surpass 600 HR's has "zero chance?" Sorry, this is a pet peeve for me. To me, he doesn't FEEL like a HOF'er, but to just blandly throw out there that he has ZERO chance of being a HOF'er...which...given the career he's had to this point at 32 years of age is ridiculous. He has ZERO chance. He is a career .243 hitter who has stuck out at a 34% clip over the course of his career. Never once in my life have I ever thought "Wow, Adam Dunn is absolutely dominant." The HOF is supposed to be for those WOW type players who were dominant MVP types while they played. Again, I personally think he should have zero chance to get it. I have to disagree with you about a couple of things. First, the HOF isn't just limited to "dominant MVP types." It's possible to be exceptionally consistent for a long time and deserve to be in the HOF; Molitor is a guy like that. This is the peak vs. career argument. Some people argued that Eddie Murray shouldn't get in because he never really had that one dominant season -- in WAR terms, he never topped 6.3. But he topped 4.4 ten times, which is fairly remarkable. Same with Molitor -- no seasons over 6.3 WAR, but eleven seasons over 4. Among pitchers, you could say the same thing about Don Sutton. Second, I think chickinbrickin is right to call you out for saying Dunn has zero chance. First of all, I agree with you that Dunn shouldn't get in. But that's a different question than whether he has a chance to get in. Dunn has a very good chance to hit more HRs than any non-HOFer has ever hit. That makes him, by definition, an interesting case. If he gets to 600, or even 550, I can absolutely imagine how the HOF voters might decide that he belonged; and, FWIW, he wouldn't be the worst player in the HOF if he made it. Again, I don't think he should get in. But saying "I personally think he should have zero chance to get it" is like saying "I personally think Rhett Miller's new album should top the Billboard charts" (which I do) -- it has nothing to do with how the world actually is.

But I'd rather have a guy who can hit for power and get on base than one who can put down a bunt or move runners over. Gantner was a "small ball" player because that's all he could do; to say "he was fine for that lineup" is just a polite way of saying that most of the rest of the lineup was good and he wasn't. Yes, he put the ball in play -- weakly, most of the time -- and then he didn't do much of anything, because not only wasn't he a good hitter but he wasn't fast. He was a bad hitter before his modest two-year peak and a bad hitter afterwards. He was a better fielder than Weeks when he was young, and he was a lot better at staying healthy, but unfortunately in his case staying healthy was bad for the team, because the Brewers after 1983 really could have used a 2b who did something well. Keeping him around was the ultimate in late Dalton / Selig laziness.

Huh. Three straight one-run losses to the Royals. I don't want to go out on a limb, but I'm starting to think -- stay with me here -- that this just possibly may not be our year.

This is another fun argument, and I strongly agree with Oldcity. Gantner was a good player in 1982 and very good in 1983, but that's basically it for his usefulness. He just stuck around for a very long time, hurting the team for much of his career and riding Yount's and Molitor's coattails to semi-immortality. Weeks is a controversial player around here, given his lowish BA and high strikeouts even when he's good, and of course this is the worst possible moment to be nominating him for glory. But Weeks has done a lot more to help his teams win than Gantner did.

I say this respectfully and as a fully qualified old guy: Vuckovich's Cy Young season was one of the worst years ever posted by a player who won a major award. He was a decent pitcher in 1981 and 1982 whose record was inflated by a great offense; after that he was fodder. He was actually a better pitcher earlier in his career, with the Cardinals. Caldwell was magnificent for two seasons; he definitely belongs in the discussion. Haas was a very good pitcher, much better than Slaton IMHO. The J-S selection of Slaton really has me shaking my head. I'd say the top ten looks something like this (again, leaving out Sabathia because I don't really know how to rank him): Higuera (29.6 WAR/10 seasons) Sheets (31.1/8) Bosio (22.7/7) Caldwell (16.6/7) Haas (22.8/10) Lary Sorensen (13.2/4) Gallardo (14.3/6) Jaime Navarro (15.7/6) Doug Davis (10.8 WAR in 3 years, not counting one very good and one very bad partial season) Ben McDonald (7.9/2) Don Sutton (6.9/2, plus spare change for 1982) So that's actually 11. Then you get to guys like Bill Wegman (16.7/11), Slaton (12.6/9), and Eldred (11.6/9) -- guys who stuck around for a long time and ate innings with a very good year or two sprinkled in. Then you get to guys like Jim Colborn, Vuckovich, Scott Karl, Steve Woodard, and Ricky Bones, who did roughly the same thing but didn't stick around as long. Obviously WAR isn't the be-all and end-all, for all kinds of reasons, and I don't mean to use it as such. In discussions like this you always have to argue about peak vs. longevity. I rate Higuera over Sheets because Teddy's injury decline years deflate his numbers, but it's very close. There's a big gulf between the top two and Bosio and then between Bosio and the pack. I rate Caldwell over Haas because of Caldwell's great peak and Haas over Sorensen because of longevity, but for me those three guys are about even. I had forgotten how good Sorensen was, and Navarro looks a lot better than I thought when you put his numbers in context. BTW, not until I flipped through old team lists to write this post did I realize that the Brewers had Bob Gibson, Kevin Brown, and C(h)ris Carpenter.

I agree about Prince over Burnitz. The big mistake on the list, for me, is Slaton. Just to use WAR as a starting point, here are three Brewers pitchers' career numbers: Pitcher A: 9 seasons, 12.6 WAR Pitcher B: 6 seasons, 14.3 WAR Pitcher C: 7 seasons, 22.7 WAR Unless you think WAR is basically a dartboard, pitcher C establishes a strong initial case for being substantially better than the other two and a darn good pitcher. Pitcher A looks very much like the worst of the three. Pitcher A is Jim Slaton. In fairness, Fangraphs doesn't have WAR for his first three seasons (1971-1973), but he was nothing special in those years; I don't think they would help his per season average. Pitcher B is Yo Gallardo. Pitcher C is Chris Bosio. I looked at Brewers pitchers a while back, and I concluded that, if you put Sabathia in a special "freak of history" category, the top three were pretty clearly Higuera, Sheets, and Bosio. I think Bosio may be one of the most underrated Brewers ever. He was very good for quite a while. His rep takes a hit from his 5.24 ERA in the storied '87 season, his first full year. But Fangraphs chalks that ERA up to monumentally bad luck: they credit him with 4.1 WAR that year off a 3.38 FIP. That seemingly generous judgment gains credibility from the fact that Bosio's FIP and ERA barely diverged after that. Another guy who can make a strong case for the team is Geoff Jenkins. In ten seasons, Jenkins put up 26.9 WAR; in nine seasons, Ben Oglivie put up 24.1 WAR. That's almost a dead heat. In ten seasons, Gorman Thomas put up 22.7 WAR (that doesn't include 1983 or 1986, but at a glance his time with the Brewers in those seasons appears to yield very close to nothing). If you want to be strict about distinguishing CF from the corners, which we probably should be, then Thomas deserves his spot. But Jenkins vs. Oglivie is a great argument.

Yeah, this is another old Bill James thing that I recall -- years ago he looked at sets of harder and softer throwing pitchers and found that the harder throwers aged better, which was counterintuitive for a lot of people. It might be true for either of two reasons: one, like you're saying, is that losing velocity from a lower starting point puts you in the red zone faster, and the other is that some off-speed pitches (on which the softer throwers place greater reliance) may put more strain on various parts of the arm.

I definitely think lower-velocity pitchers are higher risks as they age, but I also think some of you are undervaluing Marcum. Jeff Suppan never had Marcum's peripherals, or his results. Suppan never cracked 5.5 K/9 in a season of more than 80 innings; Marcum's at 7.3 for his career. Marcum, at this point, is a perfectly serviceable #2 starter on a contending team. Of course I'd rather have Greinke, but if we don't get him, and if we can have Marcum for 4/50, and (here's the key) if we think we have the other players we need to contend for the next two years, I'd sign him.

This is a fun discussion, and I really like the way you framed it: how do we reconcile the classic benchmark (500 HRs) with our sense that the guy was never quite dominant. I'm old enough to remember this same basic argument about Dave Kingman. At that time, I think 400 HRs had been pretty much automatic. Kingman, as an all-around player, was pretty bad, and he got to 442, but sane heads prevailed. I think the HR benchmark has changed. The biggest reason is still the DH, but steroids are in the picture as well, and there may also just be a movement toward more specialized roles. This is just off the top of my head, but I'm not sure we saw that many "power only" guys before Kingman -- hitters whose value was fully concentrated in their ability to hit HRs. I feel like those guys have become more common. I don't mean to denigrate Dunn by comparing him to Kingman, by the way; the difference is that Dunn walks, and that's a huge difference. I think TooLiveBrew is exactly right about why the Killebrew comp doesn't work. This is what OPS+ is for. Killebrew had a career OPS+ of 143, which includes his decline years. Dunn is at 128. They really aren't close. We should take every opportunity to remember how badly great hitters got screwed in the late 60s. Killebrew's 1967 and 1969 seasons, in context, are superhuman. Russ, I think the argument about players with "old skills" aging badly is that, if you don't have anything else, and those skills atrophy, you can fall off a cliff in a hurry. I recall seeing studies about "speed" vs. "power" players, indicating that players with more of their value tied up in speed aged better than comparably valuable players with more of their value tied up in power. I always assumed the real issue was breadth of skill sets. Anyway, that's the argument, as I recall it. As for Dunn, I think he'll have a case if he gets to 550. But he still might have to win a championship to seal the deal. If he gets to 600, I don't see how you can leave him out.

I always thought being a ballplayer's wife would be, in some ways, a tough gig. Reading about the negative messages to Sarah Lucroy really bothers me. Nobody deserves that kind of crap from people they don't know, and nobody needs help feeling bad about something that isn't her fault but that she probably blames herself for even so. If a little residual goodwill from strangers helps make up for some of the rotten negativity from other strangers, then I'm in. Particularly because no spouse ever had fun sharing space with an injured spouse who can't work. Hang in there, Sarah!

Yes really, that's his only MLB action of any kind, and he's just 22. I realize what his ISO currently is as I posted the relevant part of his line, however he projects to have double digit HR power at his peak. Do we really have to go through the same debate about age and stats for every single MiLB player we discuss on the MLB forum? He'll SLG in the mid .400s someplace if he makes it, CC he is not, you can't MLE his power projection. That's as silly as comparing Jurickson Profar to Royce Clayton which was done in a different forum. Based on the available evidence, I stand by my characterization of Gennett as a singles hitter. I agree very strongly with the underlying point that I think you're making, which is that hitters develop as they get older, and we can't limit their ceilings to what they're doing at the moment. But you're ignoring the fact that I wasn't speaking to Gennett's ceiling at all. I was responding to a comment that Gennett, right now, would outproduce Weeks. Right now, Gennett has negligible power. His power numbers at AA are very poor, and they would likely be worse if he were in MLB right now. The ST cycle . . . I'm sorry, but that's meaningless. Now, to address ceiling: while again I agree with the idea that hitters develop, I don't see a basis for your confident projection that Gennett will ever SLG in the mid-.400s in MLB. A .450 SLG from a 2b is a really strong performance. It would be foolish to assume that a guy with strong hitting skills couldn't develop that kind of power. But he has to show something before I'll start to feel good about his chances to hit with that kind of power.

Farris has a 603 OPS this year at Nashville. Last year it was 689, the year before that 659. The idea that he would have produced more than Weeks this year is absurd. You could describe Weeks' problem this year by saying that he's hitting only slightly better than Eric Farris would hit. Scooter Gennett has never shown that he can do anything for a major league offense but hit singles. He's kind of the anti-Weeks. Maybe, given Weeks' struggles this year, Gennett would have produced better numbers overall. It's possible, but it's nowhere near a sure thing. Green, of course, isn't hitting better than Weeks. I like Green a lot, but nothing in his record suggests he's a good bet to outproduce Weeks in the forseeable future. Overall, factoring in his whole game, Weeks is providing more value to the Brewers this year than McGehee or Betancourt did last year. Weeks has been a far, far better player in the past than either of those guys had been before last year. He has a broader skill set. We have no strong alternatives. If there's a concrete reason that sitting him would help him shake the funk -- a timing thing, whatever -- then fine, sit him some. But if the question is who at 2b, right now, gives the Brewers the best chance to win, the obvious answer is Weeks.

I always hate when we give up on guys and they succeed. But in this case, as others have said, we had a pretty reasonable basis for letting Cappy go. Plus he's one of my favorite Brewers ever -- just seemed like a really good guy who loved the city. I'm really, really happy to see him succeed on a big stage.

If they were really lucky, he'd be so mad, he'd retire. If the Brewers could trade him, they'd do it in a heart beat. There aren't takers for guys hitting .155 and leading the league in strikeouts, much less guys with contracts like Weeks. The good news is we'll be spared having to watch him in the HR derby this year. He'd probably swing and miss. Seriously, you are going to throw out his entire career for 1/4 of a season, and then assume every GM in baseball would do the same. Well, come on -- he's no Yuni.

Could the mods please re-title this thread "Spinal Tap drummer"? Parra should not start. His starter / reliever splits are breathtaking. Actually, the real issue is that he should never go more than once through the lineup; you can either pull him after one time through, or he'll take care of it himself.

The sad irony of the Bonds situation is that he was a surefire first ballot HOF'er and probably top 10 player of all time even BEFORE he took one drop of steroids. Yes, this is what kills me. I think most of these guys we're talking about -- Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, probably Sosa, let's throw in Bagwell although no one has persuaded me he used anything -- easily belong in the HOF based on what they achieved under their own power. If we're arguing against including them, we should be clear about why. The only reasonable argument against voting for, say, Bonds is that he disqualified himself by the (presumed) fact that he cheated. The argument can't be that we doubt his credentials; that's absurd. If someone was pushing Ken Caminiti, then yes, his credentials are (to say the very least) in doubt. But that doesn't work for these premier guys. I'm not saying whether I think the cheating argument is sound on its own terms. But we should be clear that it's the only argument worth considering for keeping these guys out, and we should judge it accordingly.

I'm glad Invader started this, because I agree that Lucroy is a player to celebrate even knowing that his bat almost certainly will come down to Earth. His secondary average is right around .250, which is fine, but singles have driven his big numbers pretty hard, and that will slow down. Even so, I think we're very lucky to have him. Funketown is right about his basic offensive value, and his relative youth and strong minor league numbers suggest he still has some room to grow. Beyond that, there's the Fangraphs (Hardball Times?) study from last year suggesting that his pitch-framing alone was preventing a whole bunch of runs, and the sense I've had for a while that he has strong leadership skills. We're set at catcher for a while. I can't remember the last time we could say that. P.S. -- I forgot TLR was managing the All-Star team. Lucroy called him out hard and well last year, I think for lying about throwing at Braun (it's so hard to remember which of TLR's lies and character lapses happened when; they tend to run together after a while). TLR, being a vindictive, vicious jerk, won't pick Lucroy if there's another biped available.

Green had a monster year in the minors last year, and he's just getting started at the big league level. For me, the weight of the evidence is still strongly on his side. But I agree that Lucroy is a better hitter at this point, certainly one of the five best bats on the team with Gamel out. Lucroy's career, I think, shows why you shouldn't be so down on Green. Lucroy had strong numbers in the minors -- not as strong as Green's last year, but over more seasons and without the big injury as a complication. Then Lucroy got to Milwaukee. First year OPS: 628. Second year: 703. Third year, so far (SMALL SAMPLE): 890. I expect that to drop quite a bit, but I think the improvement is real and predictable. Lucroy is 26, and the most common peak age for hitters is 27. Young hitters develop. That's why I think it makes no sense to sound alarms about Green at age 25 based on 58 major league PAs.

That is seriously cool. The amazing part is that he made such an effort, and then he didn't ask for the moon when given a chance. It's even better given the flak Braun has been catching; how nice must it be to have an opposing team's fan do something friendly for him? I'm glad somebody got this story.