gregmag

I think we might reasonably expect aging from 27 to 29 to eviscerate a 6-6 power hitter's speed. Training regimen might be a factor as well, but then again aging may have prompted the change in training regimen. Also, remember that back when Hart was still fast, he wasn't performing very well overall, which creates an incentive to adjust. Hart is a fairly unusual player, in terms of size and skill set. I don't think abrupt, age-driven changes in such a player's skills should surprise us.

Do you mean "non-tendered" if one of those things happened? I think McGehee is a pretty strong non-tender candidate right out of the gate. We all know the back-and-forth arguments about him. The most neutral way I can figure to project him is his career stats: .265/.320/.426. That's roughly dead average MLB production. He'll play at age 29 next year, and he doesn't have classic "young player" skills, so I don't see any reason to expect him to improve. Obviously he's been wildly up and down, so you can't rule out another 2009 or another 2010. Is it worth betting almost $3 million (Casey's arby projection minus the MLB minimum) that Taylor Green (or Mat Gamel, if -- Jah forbid -- they're thinking of Casey at 1b) can't top a .746 OPS? I can't see how it is. To put it another way, even if you're pessimistic on those guys, is the difference between them and dead-average production worth the premium you'd have to pay Casey? That's not even taking into consideration any other options we might have for upgrading the infield corners. If we can get something for Casey, then of course that's better than cutting ties for nothing. But I wouldn't be shocked to find that he has close to zero trade value.

I'm very glad they're making the outfield awards positional. Treating "outfield" as one position makes no more sense than treating "infield" as one position. If that means Braun could win a GG even though he couldn't make it in CF or RF, that's fine; they give a GG for 1b too. Next frontier: proper outfield position listings on the All-Star ballot!

You're right, of course -- some of my best friends are Yankees fans. I just get carried away. Also, I would have never assumed, or believed, that your gf was a stocky, cigar-chomping man.

Sizemore seems like an intriguing option to replace Kotsay as the primary backup OF/1b. I wouldn't dump Morgan to pick up Sizemore, given that Morgan at this moment is probably both cheaper and better. But Sizemore could get plenty of PT if he was willing to embrace the supersub role, and if he came back strong, he would likely force the team's hand to increase his role. Having both Sizemore and Hairston around could give the Brewers a lot of flexibility as they integrate Gamel and Green into the lineup.

That's a great photo / caption, TLB. What's that fool doing? It looks kind of like Dead Beast Mode. Yankees fans deserve only pain. They are so far overdrawn at the karma bank, I'm surprised they don't all have meteorites fall on them. Every time I think bad thoughts about the 80s, I remember how bad the Yankees were, and I immediately start joyously humming "The Safety Dance." The world would be a better place if more five year-old Yankees fans were sobbing uncontrollably over their team's failures. They would grow up to be better people, rather than growing up to be -- well, that guy in the photo.

I like all of those selections. Braun, to me, is an easy choice over Fielder, which takes nothing away from Prince's great year. I think the top three starters were probably more valuable in absolute terms than Axford, but none of them had a knockout year, while Axford was borderline superhuman in the context of his role. I love the recognition for Lucroy -- I'm really persuaded that his catching mechanics help the team win, and his leadership (which seems relevant to that award) is very impressive for such a newbie. Hawkins should feel really good about his award, because there seem to be quite a few good guys on this team.

The great thing about this is that he didn't die, he just retired -- so no canon of civility requires us to say nice things about him. No manager has ever done more to encourage a breathtaking range of substance abuse, from alcohol to steroids. No manager in my memory has done more to undermine the integrity of the game by routinely lodging false accusations against his opponents. No one in baseball since San Diego's "John Birch Three" in the 80s has done more to promote paranoid, hateful ideology (John Rocker doesn't count; he was just a knuckle-dragging buffoon). No carbon-based life form has ever done more to promote the notion that "unwritten rules" entitle him to dictate the behavior of the people around him. So he won. Great for him; Vince Lombardi lives. For anyone who cares about reconciling a love for baseball with any sort of humanistic ethic, Tony LaRussa is the lowest form of life to debase the national pastime in this era. The only thing that could make me feel better as a baseball fan than this news would be an announcement of full revenue sharing. I'm sure LaRussa has managed to alienate everyone around him by now, because how could you not hate the man if you actually have to deal with him on a day-to-day basis? I hope he lives a long and healthy life in loneliness and misery.

I hate when the Cardinals, or anybody, starts lecturing anybody else about unwritten rules. Just go about your own business, and let everybody else take care of theirs. If Nyjer Morgan sprinted across the field and sprayed shaving cream all over the faces of the Cardinals in the dugout, the right response would be to carry him back to the Milwaukee dugout, wipe off the shaving cream, and play the bloody game. There is no good justification for telling other people how they're supposed to conduct themselves. None. I don't care about the other stuff. I don't care if players taunt each other. I don't care if Pujols watches his home runs. I don't care if Carpenter screams obscenities at the hitter. I mean, I care insofar as it makes me not like him, but that's just me; I don't think it's bad for baseball. What do I know about what's good or bad for baseball? All I care about is that people shut up and leave the unwritten rules as unspoken rules. Conduct yourself in a way you feel good about, and let that be enough to get you by.

Well, clearly you were trying to support your argument by posting a random quote from somebody who might appear to have some credibility. So, obviously you think his opinion matters in the context of this discussion. Obviously there are those who prefer to stick with Gamel this season and those who think we need to upgrade and some who think Gamel has no future. Count me as somebody who thinks he still has a future, and we should give a chance while being open minded to an upgrade but not necessarily pursuing one. I'd much rather put time and resources into signing Barmes, bringing Ramirez to play 3rd or upgrading pitching.The sky can look red sometimes, I rarely call people idiots, and if I did, it really shouldn't matter to you. He does have credibility - he gets paid to write about baseball. He's also someone objectively looking at Gamel instead of some blatant Brewer homer. If all I had to go on with a player was Matt Klassan's opinion and BF.net's collective opinion, I'm taking Klassan's. I also don't get how I don't think Gamel has a future. He has a chance to be a 2 WAR player - that's good! That's a valuable piece that I'm excited to have. And the fact that you would "not necessarily pursue" an upgrade for your baseball team is insane. It's like saying, "Well, we could make the team better, but...nah". And, as for your plan, why Gamel over Taylor Green? That makes 0 sense to me So let's see if I have this straight. Everybody who disagrees with you, whatever their basis for disagreeing -- and people have certainly made a bunch of different arguments about why you may be seriously underestimating Gamel -- is a "blatant Brewer homer." Because, in order to think Mat Gamel is better than you think he is, someone would have to be a "blatant Brewer homer." Because you're right. That's a neat trick: call people who disagree with you a dismissive name, and it proves that you can't possibly be wrong. I think, at this point, giving Mat Gamel 250 PAs' worth of regular time is probably a very good idea, simply because (a) he has no trade value at the moment (we can debate why that is) and (b) we need some offense, especially from the left side. If a clearly superior 1b option falls out of the sky, then sure, take it. But if not, see what we have in Gamel. I agree with you that our budget doesn't preclude paying some money for a 1b. But 1b's tend to be overpriced relative to their contributions (see Howard, and for that matter Fielder in three months), we have a lot of needs, and Gamel is closer to a potentially decent solution than anything we have internally at ss. If Gamel tanks, we can find a 1b in-season more easily than we could find a lot of other things. On balance, I think giving Gamel a shot is probably, as of now, a smart plan. On MLEs . . . I don't know why they annoy some people so much. It's just a method of taking the air out of a player's minor league stats based on whatever knowledge we have about factors that affect the numbers (league difficulty, park, etc.). It's a calculation process, so of course it introduces possibilities of error. But unless you want to dismiss past minor league performance as a factor in predicting future major league success, MLEs provide very useful information. I would want to know more than a player's MLEs before deciding whether to give him a shot, but I would definitely want to know his MLEs.

I never could wrap my head around paying big money to a guy named "Lackey." It seemed like you should just be able to make him do what you wanted.

TooLiveBrew, I respect your moderational efficiency in bumping this thread rather than starting a new one, but for a second you made me think we claimed Herrera again. It wasn't a happy second. Please think about the delicate sensibilities of a family-friendly forum before you callously bump threads with scary titles.

That interview Berkman gave about the Brewers-Cardinals antipathy was one of the best interviews by an athlete that I've heard in a while, because he was both honest and fair-minded. That and Greinke's interview were both fantastic. I have a ton of respect for Berkman. Plus he's agreeably goofy-looking. Several of the young guys on the Cardinals seem fine. Freese appears to be a decent guy. He's from here, and he seems genuinely stunned and thrilled to be playing for his favorite team. Jay keeps his head down and plays hard. Both of those guys, as players, deserve a huge chunk of the credit for beating us, and -- when they aren't beating us -- I like watching both of them play. I also sort of like Scrabble because of all the grief he takes for his name. The interchangeable (especially to Saint Tony in game five) hard-throwing, heavily facial-haired relief pitchers seem inoffensive enough. But of the veterans, Berkman is the only one in whom I've noticed any signs of likability.

I would add Bill Hall to that narrative. He was very good as a shortstop in 2005 and 2006; then the team moved him to cf in 2007, to 3b in 2008, and to Seattle in 2009 when he had lost all his value. The Brewers have done an astonishingly bad job of managing their ss resources. Maybe we can forgive the Scutaro giveaway, but the team has developed three straight ss prospects and then sold low on them (granted, Escobar may never rise above "low"). This may be Doug Melvin's greatest failing as GM -- arguably he has done worse with signing old pitchers, but at least there he has managed a few wins against his losses and seems to have learned some lessons over time. If DM picks up Yuni's option, rather than paying peanuts for whatever AAA scrub is at the top of the unwanted ss talent pile, it will be another sorry chapter.

yeah, I haven't warmed up to my wife, either. I've only been with her for 11 years but, you know, she won't be around forever so I might as well not get very comfortable having her around. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/eyes.gif I honestly don't know why you even follow this team. There's something strange about being a Brewers fan while not being especially fond of Braun's and Fielder's personalities? I don't understand this. I've been a Brewers fan for decades, and the star players often haven't been my personal favorites. On this year's team, there are a lot of guys I like personally more than Braun or Fielder -- Weeks, Lucroy, Gallardo, Axford, Greinke, Counsell, probably more if I think about it. Also, if you look at the quote, logan said he DID NOT think his feelings about Fielder had to do with the fact that Fielder wouldn't be around forever. I'll miss Fielder's bat, and I've grown to like him pretty well, but I won't have much of an emotional reaction to losing him.

I think race has a lot to do with why an African-American with a "street" rep doesn't get the benefit of the doubt from the media and a lot of fans, and I think race has a lot to do with why white athletes have to do a lot worse before they get tagged as bad guys. I know people don't like to talk about race a lot, but I agree with joepepsi that it's relevant to the Carp-Morgan story. I may be wrong, of course, and I can't prove my thesis with data -- pollsters don't tend to test the underpinnings of baseball feuds. But I've seen the same pattern unfold enough times, in sports and elsewhere in society, that I believe there's a racial factor here that has to be part of the discussion. To be clear, I'm not accusing anyone concerned of overt racism. I think stuff like this is a matter of ingrained stereotypes that people almost never think about consciously.

You are dreaming. Take away Prince and K-Rod and this is a .500 team. No, don't extend Greinke either.. Grienke's ERA the last 2 years are 4.17 and 3.83 (essentially the NL equivalent of 4.17 in the AL). He's going to want $90 million over 5-6 years. Those numbers represent more risk than paying Fielder. You drafted 2 pitchers in the top half of round 1 last year so you don't have to take risks like that. If you want to wait and see, it's likely you could parlay Greinke into some decent prospects at the trade deadline. There are 1B out there that aren't bad.. Gamel might turn out to be okay, but nobody is going to give you the presence in the lineup that Fielder provided. I certainly agree that it's a .500 team if you take away Fielder and K-Rod. Especially Fielder. I mean, I know he has limited range, but that's a lot of balls getting through the right side, and the other infielders would get worn out trying to run all those grounders over to first base themselves. But seriously, folks . . . if you replace Fielder and Rodriguez with replacement-level guys, and then do nothing else to upgrade the team, then right, you're close to .500 -- I'm not sure you're all the way there, as a matter of true talent, but you're certainly there or worse in a bad year, especially if the Rodriguez hole causes a bullpen mismanagement cascade. I don't think that's realistic, though. In modern baseball, bullpens need reconstruction almost every year. Getting an average rather than replacement-level 1b, one way or another, should be doable. Most important, we have scads of room for improvement over last year's ss and 3b situation. Remember, the team won 96 games with two lead weights tied around its leg. I absolutely think we should try to extend Greinke. He's young, he's healthy, and he strikes people out with great control. I'm not sure any team ever made a mistake extending a starter who fit all those criteria. His mediocre ERAs, which have a lot to do with bad defenses behind him, are a gift at this point, because they drive down his price. We're actually in a pretty great position to improve, for a 96-win team that's going to lose two of its key players. This offseason is a huge test, and a new kind of test, for Doug Melvin, but he has the scenario and resources to succeed.

All of this makes a ton of sense to me. Best summary / diagnosis I've seen. I would only add that, past this, there are going to be opportunities we can't see yet. DM's greatest strength as a GM is probably seizing opportunities to grab useful mid-roster talent on the cheap and quick (Morgan, Rodriguez). I have no doubt that at least one of our immediate problems will get solved that way, and such a move may have domino effects on other spots.

I feel crazy depressed about the loss. I couldn't even watch the last two games. Also, I live in freakin' St. Louis, so that doesn't help. But when I stop to think about it -- what a great year. The team won big. A lot of things went right. We won a playoff series for the first time since I was in high school. On a personal level, I've had a rough year, and the Brewers gave me a lot of lifts. The strange thing about the postseason is that we lost primarily because of our biggest strength. Starting pitching won us the division, and starting pitching deserted us in the postseason. There's not a whole lot to say about that. We would be insane to blow up the rotation this winter -- it's excellent from top to bottom, and everybody is under contract. Heck, Estrada was an excellent #6. We'll have some very strong arms a phone call away at AAA. I'm not saying we shouldn't trade a starter under any circumstances, but it's not something we do unless the return makes it irresistable. Prince is gone. We need to use that fact as a spur to get better, and losing this series may make that easier. Yuni has to go. McGehee can't come back in anything close to a frontline capacity. We need to find bodies for 1b, ss, and 3b that can field the positions and compensate for the combination of Fielder, Yuni, and McGehee in the lineup, which is very doable -- Gamel, Hairston, and Green may be all or part of the solution. Rebuilding the bullpen will be tricky, because bullpens are always tricky. My bottom line for the offseason is that we had a very good team with some huge flaws. From a retooling standpoint, that's great news: there's no reason, not even Prince's departure, that we shouldn't be able to get better.

http://gatewayredbirds.co...opic.php?f=1&t=47531 See also the thread titled "Nyjer Morgan reminds me of a crusty, little turd." To put this in context, Gateway Redbirds is the most intelligent Cardinals fan site I've seen. Honestly, "I hate your team and I hate you"? Can you even imagine anybody on this site treating a polite (or even impolite) visitor like that? In fairness, a couple of the posters behaved like grownups, but the level of arrogance and just plain nastiness makes me feel a lot better about our little fan community.

Somebody, it may have been Jayson Stark, did an analysis before the division series of what happens when you have starters go on short rest in the postseason. The basic message was, it isn't pretty. Then Greinke and Carpenter both went out on short rest and got shelled. This is obviously one of those things that comes down to individual pitchers' tendencies, but I wouldn't want to come back with Yo, or Wolf, or anyone on short rest unless Kranitz has a good reason to think it will work better than it usually does. I'm convinced that Marcum is worn out, but I don't know that you help yourself by putting a couple of guys out there in difficult circumstances rather than letting him go. Now, pitching Narveson instead of Marcum -- I can see an argument for that.

I agree with those who have defended RRR on the Wolf / Kottaras decision. Wolf was dealing, and there's no need to risk handing the ball to somebody else at that point. But not hitting for Morgan mystifies me. Nyjer absolutely can't hit lefties, and I'm not sure having him around to play RF is worth losing leverage in such a key run-scoring opportunity. OTOH, Nyjer did make a nice running grab on that slicing liner later in the game, and perhaps Hart doesn't make that play. I can't be too hard on RRR about this, because he did get something for his decision, but it seems to me like the wrong gamble. On Kotsay the night before . . . I think in what profiles as a pitchers' duel, when your guy has flyball tendencies and your corner OFs aren't very good, you have to place a premium on CF defense. Does that mean you play Gomez? I don't think so; I think Nyjer gives you very good defense and a decent chance to do something against Carpenter. If you want to play Kotsay for Hart, I think that's defensible, if (as seems to have been the case) you have good reason to believe that Kotsay will get good swings off Carpenter. But even that isn't an easy decision, because you're replacing a power bat in Hart with a poor hitter. Looking at that game, obviously you can't say what would have happened with different variables, but Kotsay really cost us on defense and on the bases.

I wouldn't say gloom and doom, but I've been worried for quite a while that the Cardinals just have the superior team. In the lineup, I think they have the edge at every position except 2b and LF. I like our rotation better in theory, but Marcum is clearly gassed, and you don't know what you're going to get from Wolf. I like our bullpen a little better, but they have five guys who throw hard and a very good LOOGY. They've been trending strong since August, and nothing has really slowed their momentum, whereas we've been cooled off for a while. Also, LaRussa is evil, but he's like prime Darth Vader evil; he knows what he's doing. Tomorrow is huge, because their rotation is very mortal after Carpenter and Jackson. If our best can beat their best in St. Louis, then I think we have a good chance to win the series. If not . . . well, we could still win it, because we have a good team, baseball involves lots of tricky variables, and somehow I'm expecting a big game from Greinke. But I think it would be extremely tough to win three of four.

Sam Ryan stuck a microphone in the face of one of the most notoriously excitable people in pro sports, while he was in the middle of celebrating the biggest moment of his career and clearly had no idea where he was, let alone what he was saying. Hilarity ensued, and the FCC is now going to have to consider fining reporters based on stupidity. Nyjer Morgan can marry my daughter, as long as it's okay with her and he doesn't mind waiting until I let her start dating at 40 (she turns five this week).

Tony LaRussa's ten likeliest complaints: -- There's more fluoride in the visiting clubhouse water than in the home clubhouse water. -- Too many blue shirts in the stands give the Brewers an unfair psychological advantage. -- Several times the umpires called a strike on Cardinals hitters when they already had two. One strike may be an accident. Two is a trend. Three is a conspiracy. -- The clouds kept forming distracting shapes when the Cardinals were hitting. The fact that the roof was closed makes no difference, because among the Cardinals' powers is x-ray vision. -- Using an underground network of fiberoptics and hydrocapillaries, the Brewers changed the ph balance in the mound dirt every time the Cardinals took the field. -- Several Milwaukee fans were heard saying, and some even shouted very loudly, that they would prefer that the Brewers won the game. -- The Brewers kept smiling after base hits. Smiling isn't classy, which is why Tony LaRussa has never smiled in his life. -- In light of the Cardinals' well-documented, heroic struggles with the seductive urge to down 17 Bud Lights and then tear down crowded highways at 90, singing "Roll Out the Barrel" during the 7th inning stretch was a deliberate provocation. -- Milwaukee fans' comments about Albert Pujols are wrong and unfair. In fact, Tony personally knows at least two bags of hammers that are dumber than Albert. -- The damn unclassy water in Lake Michigan refused to support Tony's weight when he tried to go for a simple walk on it.