gregmag

Yeah, I also absolutely agree with FTJ about the "short leash" thing. Ned has managed this team for five years; the personnel are largely in place. He is what he is. Either commit to stick with him, or can him now and get a new on-field management team in place to start spring training. Indecisiveness would hardly help to legitimate firing the manager. In fact, this is such a bad idea that I'm inclined to think Olson doesn't know what he's talking about. Greg.

"Totally wrong"? Braun has a 1.480 OPS against lefties (vs. .834 against RHPs). That's in 127 PAs, which isn't a huge sample -- but it's plenty, given the extremity of the stat, to support the premise that no manager should let a lefty face Braun if he can help it. Greg.

Giving the other team a baserunner in that situation is inexcusable. For whatever else Yost has or hasn't done wrong this year, picking the macho baseball code over the pennant race in that situation is completely on him. This is probably about as close to a firing offense as any single act of a manager could possibly be. Greg.

Nah, I tried this. Totally didn't work. I'm with number59. Other than He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Thread -- and I'm even fairly ambivalent about him -- it's hard to slam anybody too hard. Yes, Capuano and Hall were big disappointments, but everybody has off years, and each guy in his way was hampered by defensive concerns. It isn't like either one had a failure of character or effort. I think they'll both bounce back. The criticisms of Melvin are reasonably stated, but I can't sign on to them: Bullpen help -- if we mean guys who were obviously, clearly better than Turnbow and Wise -- was not exactly falling out of the sky last winter. Relievers are always the biggest risk on the block; the team that looks like it has the best pen almost never does. The Brewers had some guys with reasonable track records for their roles, and things didn't work out. Note also Melvin's implication in comments yesterday, discussed in another thread, that He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Thread screwed the bullpen by pulling Capuano from the rotation. As for trades, the Davis trade made reasonable sense at the time, and our catching situation really was dire. I've slammed Doug as hard as anyone for the Linebrink deal, but you certainly can't argue that it hurt us this season. As for Mench, I hate watching him too, but if he's used properly (i.e., if he never sees a righthander) he can help the team. Besides, the Carlos Lee trade -- which I and many others criticized at the time -- also netted us Cordero, an indespensible piece for our pennant drive. Greg.

I've been increasingly critical of Yost, and looking at today's starting lineup made me wish I had been harsher. I mean, come on, I said to no one in particular -- Joe freakin' Dillon hitting third and playing LF in a pennant race? What kind of idiot would write out that lineup? Score one for Ned, plus Cordero's back-to-back four-out saves makes two. Greg.

I have to say, this really bothers me. I understand the need to police posts for civility, and I understand the decision to preempt discussions of religion out of a categorical concern that such discussions too often undermine civility. But calling someone out for antisemitism isn't a discussion of religion any more than calling someone out for rape is a discussion of sex. The civility concern, as I understand it, implicates arguments about religious substance -- this or that spiritual belief is silly or profound; this or that religious ritual is beneficial or pernicious. Fine. But this ain't that, and I think it matters, because fostering vital discussions of the kind we have here means limiting censorship to what the moderators conclude is absolutely necessary. I understand lines often are hard to draw, and I appreciate the effort the mods make. Usually your decisions are understandable, and mostly IMHO they're clearly right. But with all due respect, this one is nowhere close to right. If you're going to stand by this, then nobody should even mention the nickname "Hebrew Hammer," and you should have prohibited anyone from even noting the fact that Jeff Suppan's advocacy against embryonic stem cell research in MO was related to his Catholicism (which I know was mentioned here, because this is where I learned about it). Oh, and Tulo isn't half the hitter Braun is. Braun could play every defensive inning in a straitjacket, and Tulo still wouldn't have a prayer -- um, that, is, a snowball's chance in he -- well, you get the idea. Greg.

He appears to have remembered how to drive the ball. Look out. Greg.

Small sample size taketh away and small sample size giveth back. As of now, Weeks' September OPS stands at .751, which is also his season OPS, which is pretty darn good for a 2b who's having about the worst year he could possibly have. Maybe more importantly -- given that he's a leadoff man -- he had a .500 OBP in August and a .433 in September. I can't see how you can chalk up over a month's worth of numbers like that to "a few great games." I agree with you that Weeks' midseason dive warranted benching him and then sending him down, but we should give credit where credit is due. Weeks isn't all the way back with the bat, and he's definitely in a fielding slump, but he's doing his job very well. His work in the leadoff spot -- which lately includes drawing a ton of walks -- is a big reason for the Brewers' recent resurgence. Greg.

I think it's going way too far to infer some kind of genetic deficiency from the fact that a player's dad vented on a message board. That's a huge and significant leap from very little knowledge. Our parents' quirks have all kinds of consequences for our behavior. Maybe a circumspect dad doesn't instill competitive fire in his kid. Maybe a sloppy drunk parent intensifies a kid's determination to succeed. Even if we can sort out those effects, it's another huge step to chalk them up to genetics, as opposed to environmental influence. Then there's the question whether a person's message board demeanor even amounts to a meaningful quirk, let alone evidence of a substantial personality flaw. I remember taking issue with Sarfate's dad at least once when he ripped on posters here. For the most part, though, I recall his posts as informative and reasonable. Yeah, he got mad at the organization for what he saw as his son's slow progress through the system, and objectively I don't think he was correct, but his position wasn't crazy. Other teams might have gotten more excited about some of the numbers Dennis put up early in his career, although -- as Al points out -- time would have proven them wrong as it proved the Brewers right. Greg.

But FTJ, there's one big factor you aren't taking into account -- the uncertainty of managers' contributions. If you upgrade from Mike Jacobs to Ryan Howard, of course nothing is guaranteed, but you have a lot of valuable information that tells you how much that upgrade is going to help. That's why it costs so much to do it. In contrast, whatever side of the debate you believe about how and how much managers influence wins, I haven't seen anybody (not just here -- I mean ever) come up with even a vaguely meaningful metric. There's no real basis for saying a manager costs X wins or adds Y wins; there's no real basis for measuring the W/L consequences of clubhouse leadership vs. good in-game strategy vs. good handling of players over the season. I'm in the "Yost has to earn his return" camp, and I'm comfortable defending that view, but I would never pretend that it's based on concrete information. That's why managers are a lot cheaper than players. If we knew that luring LaRussa away to replace Yost would be worth six wins, we'd offer LaRussa $10 million. But we don't know that -- not even close. By the same token, one really can't use this uncertainty to defend Yost categorically, as in "We don't know that he's killing the team, so we should keep him." If we thought about the problem that way, then every manager would be a manager for life. Teams shouldn't just sack managers reflexively, but after several years of losing, you start to realize that, whatever the manager's contributions have been, you aren't winning with him and you just might win with someone else. At that point you just have to think about the whole problem -- what do we know, what are our options. In the end, you put down your money and you take your chances. Greg.

I hated the deal at the time, and like Brett, I was kind of stunned by the vitriol of some people who couldn't imagine why anyone wouldn't love it. Other people, of course, made some very reasonable arguments for the trade, and who knows -- there's still time for Linebrink to salvage his tenure here. That said, his failings so far as a Brewer are exactly what we skeptics predicted, given his decline over the past season and a half (excellent point, NDOG, about how DM appears to have had the rose-colored glasses on) and his move to a tougher HR park. We dealt a top-50 prospect in all of MLB, another youngster with some upside, and a MLB-ready reliever for -- based on the unsurprising results so far -- less than nothing. Unless you think pitching prospects are utterly worthless, even as trade bait for something else, that's a terrible trade. I still think DM's worst trade by far -- maybe his only truly awful trade of any consequence before Linebrink, given that I can't really quarrel with the results of Lee for Cordero/Mench -- was Javier Valentin for whatever scrub OF we got for him. No one talks much about that one now, but the catching situation has caused us no end of problems in the ensuing years. The Linebrink trade is a solid #2 for me, and it will be an easy #1 if any one of the three pitchers we tossed away has a career. Greg.

Boy, I sure am glad we gave up our best trading chip and gutted our minor league pitching depth for Scott Linebrink. He has really made a difference in our bullpen. I hope we trade more prospects for declining middle relievers. Maybe we can even get a younger guy on the rise -- I wonder what it would take to pry Joe Thatcher away from the Padres. Greg.

I can see why you make the comparison, and I don't want to rekindle all the old Branyan arguments -- I haven't found myself pining for him or anything -- but the difference between a guy who can draw walks and a guy who can't is enormous. Greg.

I'm not sure what's more amazing: that the AZL Brewers have a chance to provide the only team highlight on one of the most utterly crap nights on the farm I can ever remember, or that Matt LaPorta hit two singles. Greg.

Not to beat my own dead horse, but I agree that Brantley profiles as a fourth OF only if his power doesn't develop at all. He's 20; there's a better than decent chance, based on age alone, that he will develop some pop over the next two or three years. Ranking any prospect confidently is difficult when his eventual ceiling turns on such a major and unpredictable variable. You almost have to have a dual-tracked projection. Cain is kind of the same way -- if you look at him as a RF he's no starter as of right now, but if he develops some pop he easily could be. Gillespie faces a big test next year. I think both his supporters and detractors have made good points here -- you can't fault him too much for being on the older side of prospectdom in the FSL, because of how old he was when he started, and you also can't fault his deflated numbers in that league/park. If he doesn't break out next year, though, his chances would seem to drop a lot. Greg.

Maddux may not be a genius, but quite a few pitchers have brought their walk rates down under his supervision. McClung seems like just the sort of pitcher Maddux could help. I'm not sure he could do it tomorrow, though. Greg.

Excellent job, Patrick. I'm glad you guys are willing to move people a little more aggressively; I think that's appropriate, with the system in flux and a lot of the system's prospect value at the lower levels. I was really surprised that Derek Miller wasn't on the list, so I'm glad to see him back. So here's my token challenge question for this month: Brendan Katin is only a month younger than Brad Nelson. Katin is playing one level lower, albeit in a tougher hitting environment for the level; Nelson seems to be having a better year, although they're certainly similar types of players. Why is Katin 12 places higher on the P50? We've had a couple of discussions of Nelson in threads, and certainly his impending free agent status makes him less likely to help out in Milwaukee, but does that enter into the P50 rankings? Or are you assuming, despite Nelson's raw edge in age/level, that Katin has more potential because Nelson is repeating AAA? Greg.

Wasn't he drafted as a 3b? Baseball Cube indicates he has never played there professionally. This could mean they're trying to increase his versatility with an eye toward using him, or it could mean nothing at all. Obviously if he can play even a little 3b, it helps his stock a great deal. Greg.

And don't gimme the whole career stats arguement. The last three years is a much more accurate comparison. Why? Do you have any basis for that statement, other than the fact that it supports the point you want to make? I can see the argument that what Dye and Jenkins did at 25 has receded in predictive value. I can't really see why what they did at 31 is so much more worth knowing than what they did at 28. The trick is to know where they are on their decline curves -- how quickly they're sliding away from their peaks -- and I don't think we know that. Given that career stats put their peak years (and especially Dye's seeming outlier year) in more context, on balance I'd rather go with the career stats than a three-year window. Greg.

All right, this is going to be one of those annoying "maybe he can catch" type posts, but I wanted to at least throw it out there so that somebody could tell me the specific reason why this won't work. Here are some of the Brewers' biggest pitching problems: -- Suppan doesn't appear to be a good starting pitcher right now. In particular, he can't go deep into games effectively. (Maybe he'll figure it out and be great down the stretch, in which case this whole conversation goes away; but for now, he's hurting the team in the rotation.) -- We have at least five starting pitchers who look like better options than Suppan for next year's rotation. -- However, we're stuck with him for the next three years, and we're stuck with him at a high price, which means -- given the way these things work -- he has to have a big role. -- Meanwhile, our closer and our newly ransomed set-up man/closer candidate are about to become high-priced free agents. You see where this is going . . . Is there any way that Suppan could be converted into a closer? The obvious reason to say "no" is that he doesn't have that one killer pitch that most closers rely on. IIRC, however, he does seem to pitch better his first time through the lineup, at least this year. He seems to have the competitive/unflappable attitude that closers have. There are closers who don't throw hard; does he compare to any of them? Could he add a freakin' splitter or something? Like I said, this seems very implausible to me. But it would be such a perfect solution to two big problems at once that I think it's at least worth throwing out there and making sure there's no possible way it could work. Greg.

but whose fault is that? Brad got demoted the previous 2 years, it's not like the team didn't give him a shot. I don't think Pogo's point boils down to a question of fault or credit. I think he's saying, and I agree, that Nelson is still on a normal development track; it isn't like he's settled into AAAA purgatory. A great many players who go on to be useful MLB hitters spend their age 24 seasons as good, not great, AAA hitters. However, they have much better track records than him. Youth doesn't necessarily mean a guy will develop. Youth, however, does mean that a guy has a meaningful shot to develop. That's the real point -- and we all seem to agree, the essential point, for whatever we think it's worth -- in Nelson's favor. Of course he may not get any better, but 24 year-olds who have had serious prospect mojo in the past, lost it, and show signs of getting it back are exactly the kinds of players on whom smart organizations make low-stakes bets. He has some pedigree and some upward trajectory. Also, when you say Dillon and Cruz have better track records, present tense, are you comparing them to Nelson now? That's . . . well, not quite apples to oranges, but it's a hard comparison to sort out. Nelson Cruz at 24 put up his first good year, a 954 OPS, but that was between A+ and AA. He just grazed AAA that year, put up an 872 OPS in half a season at AAA at 25, didn't stick at that level until he was 26. Joe Dillon at 24 put up a 776 OPS at A+. He didn't put up a 900+ OPS at AAA until he was 29 and didn't play his first full season at that level until he was 30. Nelson, right now, is ahead of where Cruz was and way ahead of where Dillon was. All I'm saying is, if the Brewers could figure out a way to re-up Nelson to start next year at Nashville, I would consider that to be a potentially helpful move. Greg.

Doc, "butcher" was my word, and it may well be unfair. I was trying to paraphrase what I recalled folks' having said in the other thread, and in my effort not to softpedal the criticisms I may have implied that I knew more than I do. Your point about his assists is interesting. Maybe it's enough to say that he's limited to 1B and LF, unless anyone who has seen him play the field has more informed insights. Greg.

Man, if what Gindl has done is "holding his own," I'm scared to ask what BA considers "pounding the living crap out of the poor baseball." Greg.

It was a little attempt at humor, because Al is usually very good at grounding his arguments in facts, and this one he just kind of tossed out there in a way that stood out to me as uncharacteristic, as well as not quite sound. I thought my tone was mild enough that it wouldn't be mistaken for pique, but maybe I was wrong. Sorry if I offended you, homer. Greg.

Doc, I brought up Nelson a couple of weeks back, and a lot of people made very sound points about why he's unlikely to help the Brewers. Summarizing and adding: he's a one-dimensional masher who doesn't mash quite enough to exemplify the type, his K/BB ratio is lousy, his BA isn't high enough to sustain his low walk rate, and he's a defensive butcher. Also, you mention hitting with RISP, but I'm a pretty firm believer that hitting with RISP isn't an actual skill. However, loathe as I am to differ with Al's unqualified and meticulously documented assertion that Nelson is "a rather weak hitter for AAA," I do think there's at least another side to the story. As you point out, Nelson is a normal age for AAA; 24 is still young enough to get better; and the Brewers might actually have use for a platoon LF in the near future. But I think your best point has to do with the possibility that he's just getting over the injury. Check out Brad's ISO numbers for the past five years, starting with the year he got hurt: 2003: .095 2004: .180 2005: .141 2006: .134 2007: .226 There's a basis in those numbers for hypothesizing that Brad is only now getting back into his power game. Now, maybe he's not; maybe he's just having a fluke year. Also, if this is the very best he can do, he won't quite cut it; and then there's the six-year FA problem. But I'm just intrigued enough, and the Brewers are barren enough of power bats at the upper levels, that I would love to have him around next year if they could swing it. Greg.