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Listening to the Cardinals' submoronic TV announcers talk about how great it is for the Brewers to have Kotsay and Counsell on the bench, I honestly didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Also, for Brewers fans of a certain age, it's really weird to see Cal Eldred on St. Louis TV as the hometown hero. At least Cal, unlike Ricky Horton and Al Hrabosky, has a brain in his head.

I love how a small market is a team that doesn't win. Houston is a huge market, #6 in the US at 5.9m.I never said that a small market is a team that doesn't win. My point should have been that playing in huge markets such as Philadelphia, Boston and New York is totally different than playing in huge markets such as Houston, Los Angeles or Phoenix. Think that was relatively clear from the post but thanks for giving me the chance to clear up what was said. I think you're generalizing a lot and not explaining very much. How/why is playing in Philly tougher than playing in Houston or L.A., assuming both teams are performing at the same level? I'm not suggesting you're wrong across the board -- I lived in Philly, and some of the fans there get incredibly mean and bitter when the team is losing. But it's not at all clear to me that Philly is a tougher town to play in, other things being equal, than Houston or L.A. Heck, L.A. has a lot more media than Philly, and I'd say (based on my limited experience, and I say this affectionately) that L.A. is certainly a weirder place overall. I think NYC and Boston get overhyped in every conceivable way, and this is one of them. Does it really take a special type of player to play in NYC? If so, what kind of player are we talking about, and in what circumstances have the NYC teams actually and wisely avoided acquiring such players? I'm willing to believe that a certain special kind of player *can't* play in NYC -- a player who is unusually attentive to the media, unusually afraid of failure, and unusually sensitive. But I've never gotten the sense that major pro sports are full of that personality type. Greinke isn't that type at all. I sometimes get the sense that he's only vaguely conscious of where he is and what's going on around him -- he just goes out and does his thing.

I agree with a lot of what's in your post beyond these two points, and I think some people have tended to evaluate DM with one-sided negativity. But: (1) You're completely missing the point about why the Carroll move stinks. Hairston, right now, is probably our best option at four positions: cf platoon partner, 2b, ss, and 3b. Obviously he can't play all four. Lopez is decent cover for 2b, as these things go. Carroll was decent cover for the cf platoon, as these things go. At ss and 3b, we have . . . well, we know what we have. Dumping Carroll forces the cf platoon to the top of Hairston's to-do list. This is especially inexcusable when we're carrying not one, not two, but three bad shortstops. Even if you think Yuni should get more rope, there's no strategic value in carrying both Wilson and Counsell over Carroll. (2) Your "beyond rational" accusation is ridiculous. You really think "all" (your word) of those carefully thought-out assessments of Melvin's mistakes are entirely outside the realm of reason? That they're random collections of nonsensical words? Come on. There's a big, really important difference between "not what I think" and "not rational," and when you ignore that difference, your own credibility suffers a lot, at least IMHO.

So let me get this straight: Because we have other bad defensive players, we should resist the temptation to upgrade our defense at shortstop? What, we're afraid Prince and Casey will feel upstaged if somebody else in the infield starts beating rigor mortis? I'm conflicted on the "hot hand" argument re: Yuni's hitting, because I don't think I know enough about how baseball players function to reach a firm judgment. I'm a stathead, but I don't think players are just like coin flips. Players do seem to "figure it out" for stretches and "lose it" for stretches. So I'm willing to consider the possibility that Yuni's "hot hand" on offense right now is a real thing. But even if it is, that just means he should be gone after his next 0-10. He's still a corpse on defense, and we know he's a bad hitter over the medium and long term. Let's put this in perspective: Yuni has needed every bit of his big hot streak to get his OBP up to .273 and his OPS+ (which overrates him by overrating SLG) up to 75. Those are monstrous numbers. I don't know if Ozzie Smith helps you if he's hitting like that. We now have a replacement in Hairston who can play the position at least the bulk of the time, so the team can no longer swaddle Yuni in the "he's the best we have available" argument (assuming that argument was ever credible to begin with). One more thing: At least two posters in recent days have accused people who want Betancourt replaced of being irrational or biased. I'm not going to throw that charge back in the other direction, because (1) I always know I may be wrong about anything, and (2) I understand and take seriously the arguments made by people who want to give Yuni more rope. But there's no way you can look at his numbers and say that those of us who want him out of the lineup don't have a strong basis in reason for our position.

You've now said that twice. Are you saying that based on specific knowledge, or just on the fact of his age and the demands of the position? I just haven't seen that statement anywhere else. I would love to have seen more upgrades, but when you make such a big splash in the offseason, and to a lesser extent in-season, you sort of diminish your expectations for the deadline. I didn't see any allegedly realistic deals that I'm mad we didn't make. If Hairston can indeed play ss at least semi-regularly, I'm not sure I see him as a less attractive pickup than Furcal. Also, I hate trading top prospects for relievers (assuming such a trade might have been possible), and our bullpen situation seems to have settled down lately.

Bill James actually looked at this, years ago -- I forget which book it's in. He ran a computer simulation with one lineup full of OBP guys and one full of SLG guys (I think he used one player who exemplified each type) over hundreds of games. The OBP team scored a lot more runs. You could do a more sophisticated version of the study with, say, one team that's .400/.400 and another that's .300/.500, and I'm pretty sure (though I don't have the knowhow to test my intuition) that the OBP team would win again. Not making outs is the single most important part of a baseball offense.

Darnit -- I'm gonna miss Komatsu. He was one of those guys I just particularly enjoyed following and cheering on. But rationally this is a very smart move. I like Hairston, overall, more than most of the guys we've been talking about getting. He brings a little bit of everything -- OBP, versatility, pop -- and we need a little bit of everything right now.

Man, that would be nice. I hope you're right.

Then compare them to Brandon wood in AAA at 23. I'm definitely not saying green shouldn't have been given a chance by now...but if he struggled mightily in the majors he wouldn't be the first guy to do so, and he certainly wouldn't be the last. He should have had his shot by now...but aaa success certainly doesn't always translate well to MLB success Of course this is true, but sometimes people here (and elsewhere) seem to think minor league performance has no bearing on major league performance. It's all baseball. We all know that various elements of the game get tougher as you climb the ladder, but at bottom you're playing the same game. Taylor Green's AAA performance this year is highly significant evidence that he has a good chance to succeed at the major league level. Just for the heck of it, a couple of things about Brandon Wood. (1) He always had poor K/BB rates; 2:1 was his best, when he repeated AAA at 24. (2) Based on a quick search for data over the past several years, Salt Lake looks like one of the premier hitting environments in AAA. Wood's raw numbers weren't quite as good as Green's current numbers even in 2008, let alone 2009, and you have to let some air out of the raw numbers to make a true comparison. (3) This might cut differently for different people, but Wood's OPS at AAA was more driven by power than Green's numbers are; in his big year in 2008, Wood hit .375/.595.

So Haudricourt is sick of Taylor Green questions? Man, what a self-important jerk. The contempt he shows for his readership is just astonishing, given that he's consistently lazy, not especially bright, and lucky enough to have a plumb job that a great many people could do far better than he does it. One of the many things that a good beat writer does, and Haudricourt doesn't do, is strike a balance between expressing his informed views on the team, including critical views, and maintaining a good relationship with the people he covers on a day-to-day basis. A lot of beat writers would see Taylor Green's numbers at AAA, look at the Brewers' infield situation, and see what actual journalists call a story, worth what actual journalists call reporting. But Haudricourt just gets the noninformative dismissal from DM, reports it, and then tells people to shut up about Taylor Green. What a professional.

We can't just look at "bad" below a certain level as if differences in degrees of badness stop counting. Eric Farris has put up a .665 OPS at AAA -- as a 25 year-old, repeating the level. Last year at Nashville he was the same, .659. If you put stock in MLEs, I found a post on RealGM from our own trwi7 that gives Farris' 2011 MLE as .227/.268/.305/.573. Intuitively that seems reasonable to me, figuring that MLB performance just takes some of the air out of minor league numbers. But let's assume that MLE is unduly unkind to Farris. He's 25; he could still improve, although he has shown no upward trajectory in his minor league career. But let's assume he'll OPS .620 for the Brewers (the midpoint between his AAA and MLE numbers). Felipe Lopez, in his career, has OPSed .620 or below twice -- as a 23 year-old in 2003 (.612), and this year, in 102 PAs (.567). His next-lowest seasons are .659 (2007) and .656 (2010). Now, you can certainly argue that he's declining, based on the fact that he had two terrible years in 2007 and 2010 and has been terrible this year. But he OPSd .730 in 2008 and .810 in 2009, so the picture is muddy. The bottom line is that you have to stack the available evidence heavily in Farris' favor to find any reason to think Farris would come within 50 points of Lopez. We're talking about bad vs. awful, but 50 points of OPS is a lot. It gets worse if you emphasize OBP -- only in his first two seasons, in 2007, and in this year's small sample has Lopez put up an OBP at or below .308, which is Farris' AAA OBP this year. Could Farris' defense offset Lopez's advantage on offense? I honestly don't know; that's the right question. But I think we need to start the discussion by recognizing that Lopez does, in fact, have a major advantage on offense.

I thought we were talking about your claim that Melvin had made only "2 moves that improved the team at a significant expense in the last 2 years and 3 moves in the last 3 years." Now you don't want to count good moves; you want to offset good moves with bad moves. You're moving the goalposts to suit your preformed conclusion. Look, I agree with you about much of the substance here. I absolutely agree that Melvin has made some monumentally awful free agent signings, particularly Suppan, Riske, and Gagne. Maybe I'm too much of a wishy-washy compromiser by inclination and training, but to me the subject of Melvin's record as GM looks like about the most classic case of mixed evidence that I could imagine.

I guess one positive thing you can say from the Brewers' standpoint is this: for Brett Lawrie's future, which involves more team control but less certainty, we got two years of Shaun Marcum. For Colby Rasmus' future, the Cardinals got two-plus months of Edwin Jackson and Octavio Dotel. It makes me glad DM got down to business in the offseason.

The problem with your logic is that you are simply assuming that a younger player has only "potential" while an older player carries some kind of guarantee. We can't know how Rasmus is going to do tomorrow and next year; we also can't know how Jackson and Dotel are going to do tomorrow and next year. All we have is predictive evidence, and one big piece of predictive evidence -- along with stats, tools, and indications of attitude (which are harder than the others to pin down) -- is age. As a group, players under age 27 tend to improve, and players over age 27 tend to decline. Rasmus is in his age 24 season; to have performed as he has at the MLB level by age 24 is unusual, even with the caveats about consistency that you note (and he has been above average even this year). Jackson is in his age 27 season (and has alternated very good seasons with average ones for four years); Dotel is in his age 37 season. I'm certainly not going to call the trade stupid, especially because it helps the Cards in the short term. But over the long term, looking at all the predictive evidence, I see this as a huge risk for the Cards and a great investment for the Jays. In other words, I think the Cards mortgaged a decent piece of their future, and I'm sure they know it.

It's a small sample, and I'm as much of a command/control fetishist as anybody, but the number that jumps out at me there is 7 walks in 26 innings, which is a huge increase over his rate before. Again, SMALL SAMPLE, but maybe people were right that he was going for the plate a bit too much earlier in the year. Could he be a pitcher whose "not quite on his game" mode entails excessive control? That would be kind of, well, wild. I'll be interested to see what approach he takes over the rest of the year.

How so? He's made 2 moves that improved the team at a significant expense in the last 2 years and 3 moves in the last 3 years. They weren't aggressive trades either, the trades were ultra conservative as far as I'm concerned. Where's the risk in trading for CY winners? Young players without a proven track record are risky, Melvin doesn't trade for young impact talent anymore as he got burned in the past.I'm not going to dispute your criticism on its own terms, but I think you tend to overstate the negative and understate the positive. In fairness to DM he deserves a lot of credit for picking up McGehee off the scrap heap, picking up Narveson off the scrap heap (not sure whether that was within the past three years), signing Wolf to a contract that I think has been a good deal given his performance, and getting Nyjer Morgan for next to nothing. These are all moves that have helped the team significantly, notwithstanding the boneheadedness of sticking with McGehee too long this year. Also, I like the winter trades. Two years of frontline starting pitching is a valuable thing to get; that's the kind of return for which a smart GM at the right time does trade a Brett Lawrie or, especially, a Jake Odorizzi. I was just saying this in another thread, but those trades aren't like getting Scott Linebrink for a guy who could do Scott Linebrink's job plus two other guys, and they aren't like getting 30 innings of relief upgrade for Taylor Green and Mike McClendon, just to pull a hypothetical possibility out of thin air. They're legitimate value-for-value trades that addressed the team's biggest need, and I think they're very much to DM's credit. The big problem, IMHO, is the failures of roster management that have followed those trades.

I'm praying it's the 40-man thing, and I don't pray. If DM trades Taylor Green as part of the price for 30 innings of decent relief help, it's "Linebrink II: Electric Suckaloo," except in this case he's given up a potential position starter. I should add that I was fine with the winter trades, because we got frontline starting pitching for two years. That's big. But those trades had downsides, and you need to turn around and shore up your weaknesses, not multiply them. Right now, Taylor Green has a lot of value to this organization. As for Eric Farris, sincere congratulations and good luck. Everything I have ever heard suggests that he works hard and gets the most out of his talent, and that's the hallmark of an admirable professional. I have never seen any evidence that he's even a fringe major league player; as X suggested, he isn't even a good AAA player.

"People on here" presumably excluding you, whose pronouncements the rest of us are, what, supposed to take on faith?

It's math, but with very faulty logic setting it up. WAR tries to represent a player's aggregate responsibility for wins and losses, taking all factors into account. In contrast, you're assuming that a relief pitcher's losses and blown saves beyond what's (your arbitrary definition of) average make the relief pitcher fully responsible for losing those games -- as if the other pitchers, hitters, and defensive players who didn't succeed at various points in the game have nothing to do with the result. You're comparing apples to something that isn't even a fruit.

Evidence of performance is relative. Newly drafted guys haven't "proved nothing"; they've performed in high school or college ball. Conversely, as some folks here emphasize IMHO to a fault, a guy at AAA has "proved nothing" at the MLB level. All you can do is evaluate a player's ability based on the available evidence. I don't like the idea that a player has to "earn" his prospect rating. Does a gathering snowstorm have to "earn" its designation as a blizzard? We're talking about predictions of future performance based on available information, nothing more.

This argument lacks force for three reasons: (1) May counts, and Yuni's May was beyond horrific. (2) Being better than Yuni's career stats is not remotely the same thing as being adequate, and Yuni's April and June numbers are quite bad -- especially June, when you remember that OPS underemphasizes the relative importance of OBP. (3) Yuni's defense is bad enough that he needs to hit not just passably but really, really well to help the team. He has had a very solid July at the plate, and that played a meaningful role in the recent nondisastrous road trip. I'm glad for that, and I give Yuni credit for not folding and for picking up his game. But the weight of the evidence still says this is a seriously bad player. A team in a pennant race with competent management replaces him ASAP.

This really says it all. I have always had a generally high opinion of Melvin, but his darker / weaker impulses seem to have overwhelmed him this year. Just this morning in the JS, he's saying that they just need to get McGehee going and he really likes what Kotsay can do. I understand that he often blows smoke for strategic reasons, but those comments just don't have any relationship to reality. I'm old enough to remember when something like this happened with Harry Dalton. Dalton was a great GM for quite a while; he basically saved the franchise from perpetual suckitude. But late in his tenure he started to get complacent and overvalue his players. I'm coming around now to the view I eventually came around to then -- it's time for a change.

I'd take Gindl in a walk. Age for level is huge. I agree that Khris has been held back artificially, and so Gindl really has more like a two-year headstart on him than three. But two years is a ton, and A-ball stats are A-ball stats. Gindl has basically held his value as he's climbed the ranks, and that's a great predictor of MLB success. I'm rooting for both guys like crazy, but if I had them both on, say, a PTBNL list right now, I wouldn't even think about it.

Nobody takes this strawman position . . . . It's really simple. Pitchers have some control over how many walks they issue. Hitters have some control over how many walks they draw. If Nolan Ryan pitches to Barry Bonds (I'm being anachronistic for the fun of it), walks likely ensue. If Greg Maddux pitches to Yuni Betancourt, nobody's walking anywhere. If we reverse those pairings, then it's an interesting confrontation, with different outcomes over a range of PAs. This is how all pitcher / hitter matchups play out; neither guy has complete control over home runs, strikeouts, or line drives either. What makes walks any different?

The haters won't give him props if he hits .400 the rest of the way and is playoff MVP. They've never been objective. Ever hear the Ted Thompson haters give him props when the Packers won the Super Bowl? Gosh, it must be great to have so much insight and wisdom that you can just sweep away the diverse arguments of numerous people with the simple crack that they aren't objective. That way you never have to confront anyone whose view diverges from yours; you can just puff up your chest, assert whatever you want, and maintain serene confidence that you're right about everything. That is some nice work if you can get it. I'll jump on board with others who have said that I would love to see Yuni turn it around. I have nothing against the man, and he plays for my team, so I'm rooting for him. I do have something against his numbers, which -- every way I slice them -- tell me that he has hurt this team tremendously this year. Right now he's on a bit of a hot streak, but everybody gets on a bit of a hot streak. Yes, he has shown decent pop for a shortstop. But as Bill James once said about Charlie Moore in right field, "So he can throw. Everybody does *something* well." If Yuni can do multiple things reasonably well over the remainder of this season, then he'll help this team, and I'll applaud him. Right now? Replacing him with anything down to filler is still the smart move, and I hope DM keeps his eye on the big picture.