gregmag

As one who complains early and often about drafting HS pitchers -- and who isn't seeing any need to apologize any time soon for all the negative things I've said about Mark Rogers -- let me be about the fiftieth to note that Gallardo and Inman are just toying with people right now. Those K/BB ratios defy gravity. Please please please let them not get hurt. Greg.

I tried to access the Power 50 archive and player tracker features Friday and again today, and I got the "technical difficulties" screen (which is cute, btw). I just wanted to let the PTB know, and I apologize if someone already mentioned this. Greg.

The whole pitching depth development strategy looks to be working out very nicely. Even on a bad night the link report typically features two starters who have real hopes of pitching in the bigs someday, and it's common for all four games to feature legit pitching prospects (bearing in mind hat there is, of course, no such thing). So far their performances in the aggregate have been strong. We have good reason to hope that the pitching pipeline will flow reasonably well over the next several years. Greg.

Somewhat lost in the general malaise of the Huntsville "offense" is that Steve Moss has been just terrible so far. Of course it's limited action, but I'm keeping a close eye on the upper-level CFs this year. Cruz continues to rake, Krynzel looks like somebody may have flipped his switch, and Gwynn has shown flashes of power. All but Cruz have something to prove this year, so Moss needs to get it going. Greg.

For me it was Ohka, whether you want to talk about overall importance of his contribution to the win or performance against expectations. Greg.

I love that the last play of the game was Rickie turning a nice DP, even if Prince did have to dig out the throw. Maybe that feeling will stick in his head overnight and reinforce his confidence in the ability we all know he has. Ralph, what's with the axe grinding? When the team plays a bad or so-so game, bad things happen, and people who pay close attention will talk about those bad things. When the team plays a great game, there's a lot of great stuff to talk about. I'm with you on the optimism tip, but why do you have to swerve out of your lane to take a shot at people for saying negative things about negative events last night? Anyway, this was a great win. We've now played almost half our games on the road against good teams, and we're 7-4 overall. Huge game tomorrow (during which I'll unfortunately be airborne). How great is it to feel like early-season games matter because we actually expect to win them? Greg.

Arrgh! This is one of those game-of-inches things. Based on raw inputs of quality pitches, quality contact, and fielding skill as opposed to dumb luck (I'm talking about Jenks' last grounder), we should be winning this game. But the team that lives by the close game will eventually die by it. At least Cappy can escape all the "high run support" comments for a few days. Greg.

Um . . . Dave Welch? I know it's just five innings, but I at least pay attention to anybody who can pitch like that for five innings. 22 years old, fine numbers last season in a few R+ innings, and I completely missed him. What gives? Does anybody know anything about him? Greg.

D! L! R! Man, can you imagine if he finds himself? Greg.

He's getting killed on two-strike pitches -- the Gonzalez homer and now Jackson's RBI. I've grown to love Doug, but man is he maddening to follow when his command is out of whack. Greg.

I was looking at the MLB game tracker thingy, which I don't know well, so I assume this can't be right -- did the Brewers record (need) only one outfield putout? The box says 11-3 GB-FB outs for Bush, and obviously the HR was in the air -- what about Byrnes' double? Were the other FB outs on the infield? Damn, if he can come remotely close to doing that consistently, he's a lot better than a #5. Greg.

What the heck is the Brewers' organization feeding its starting pitchers? Unless I'm forgetting something, out of 11 games thus far the only less-than-fine start has come from Mark Rogers -- the organization's consensus top pitching prospect -- tonight. I can never remember a season in which the minor league rotations were so stacked with guys who had realistic chances to make the show (not to mention one in which the big league rotation consisted entirely of guys who deserved to be there). Greg.

Oh, yeah -- for this season, I think your Bush projection is quite sound. Thanks for the responses. Greg.

Russ, that's just an outstanding post. Very informative. Because I was sniping with you about Hall a few days ago, I want to say that your assessment of him here is about as even-keel as I could possibly imagine for such a hard player to predict. One thing I wasn't clear about . . . if Bush performed over the past two years at a 3.75 NL ERA level, and he's young enough that we should expect improvement -- both premises that sound right to me -- then doesn't that make him more than a solid 4/5? Maybe you just meant that would in fact be his role this year, but the factors you identified make him sound like his ceiling is solid #3, maybe even a little better than that. Greg.

Yeah, Al . . . as all four players were relatively nondescript, I'd wager that a good 25% of those who cared about the trade would have identified Valentin as their pick to click. I seriously overrated Kinney, but I certainly knew enough to let loose a big "d'oh!" when DM traded Valentin. I wouldn't put this on your prognostication highlight reel. Also, while I'm in the relatively unusual mode of arguing with you, I still don't get how you can be as down on Krynzel as you are and as high on Gwynn as you are. We haven't had that argument on the board in a few weeks, so there's the bait if you want it. Greg.

Russ, that last big post of yours was great. I've tried to explain that distinction before, but you really nailed it. One thing I wanted to throw in is that some kind of curve must define the relationship between contact rate and productivity. The inverse relationship between contact rate and OPS is very interesting, because it's so counterintuitive. The intuition -- that contact is good -- isn't completely wrong, is it? A guy who never makes contact won't be productive. So there has to be a tipping point at which contact becomes a problem. I'm just wondering if anybody knows where that point is, to flesh out the discussion of contact rates. Greg.

Yes, of course you're right. I guess I misunderstood your earlier point as being about the forum rather than the chat. Part of what's strange about this situation is that the decision to lock the thread seems to have had less to do with the thread itself and more to do with actual or potential fallout from the chat. At that level, my complaint is pretty narrow: I don't see the bad chat mojo as a good reason to lock a thread on the forum. But whether or not it was a good reason, this was a weird combination of events that isn't likely to recur. On a related point, kudos to Jamie for starting the "how do you like our press guys" thread. That absolutely answers and obviates the concerns I've expressed here. Again, I greatly appreciate the mods' openness to discussing and considering this issue. Greg.

Thanks for the discussion, guys. I have no doubt about the good intentions behind the decision, and I also agree that Don made a very bad (although I'm sure not malicious) call when he used "BF.net" in his chat I.D., let alone in asking very provocative questions. You guys' assessment of the state of the thread, while differing from mine, is at least as valid as mine, and madbad, you make an excellent point that starting a new thread would be appropriate in this situation. The one point you made with which I have to take issue is the one about "what if Doug Melvin saw insulting content in a thread?" First of all, we have to distinguish the JS chat from the forum. It's one thing to go out in public and slam somebody; it's another thing to do it here, in a context specifically designed for vigorous debate, even though, as you note, anyone can access that debate. Second, what if I posted this in a forum thread: "Doug Melvin sucks as a GM. What the hell is he thinking? Anybody with an ounce of sense would know that high school pitchers are terrible draft risks, and trading Javier Valentin for a bag of balls three years ago opened a gaping hole at catcher that a real talent evaluator would have known was filled. We need somebody competent to run this team!" For the record, I love DM, although I used my two biggest (only?) beefs with his decisions to make the illustration vivid. Anyway, if DM saw that in one of our threads, he might well take offense, and he might think badly of the site as a whole (although that would clearly be unfair, so hopefully he wouldn't). But the post, while one-sided and larded with a couple of unneeded insults, is basically substantive. That's the danger I'm saying we have to live with. Sorry if I'm hammering the point. I'll stop now. Once again, thanks to jamie and madbad for the very thoughtful discussion and for being such dedicated stewards of a great site. Greg.

Jamie, I'm grateful for your elaboration, and I appreciate that you took this issue very seriously. Even so, I have to express my strong disagreement with your decision. What I get from your explanation here is that you shut down the thread because (a) people were ripping each other, (b) people were ripping Drew, and © both of those things, especially (b), make the site look bad to the outside world. If we start basing allowable standards of speech on how we look to the outside world, then we can't have free, frank discussions. We just can't. I can understand enforcing basic standards of civility (no swearing, no personal insults, some measure of sensitivity to minor leaguers' feelings), but I didn't see any posts in that thread stoop to profanity, name-calling, or unsupported attacks. Yes, some of the comments about Drew were harsh. Well, this is a Brewers fan Web site, and Drew Olson is a public figure of great importance to Brewers fans. People are going to say strongly negative things about him, and Ned Yost, and Geoff Jenkins. That has to be okay -- even if some of the negative comments would strike most reasonable people as one-sided or exaggerated -- for open discussion to happen. If you're really trying to make this a site that will never offend Drew Olson, because he might think badly of us if we denigrate him, then we probably shouldn't pretend to have a fan forum at all. Even if a thread contains posts that violate standards of civility, I think the threshold for locking threads should be extremely high. (I'm not thinking about cases in which threads are irrelevant or redundant, which happens fairly often.) Moderators here have occasionally warned particular posters or even removed offensive posts. Those steps seem to me far preferable to locking a thread that includes even a substantial number, let alone a majority, of valid posts. For whatever my opinion is worth, I think the moderators should only shut down a thread for content reasons when the thread has completely degenerated into a shouting match or exchange of insults. The Olson thread didn't get to that point. Not even close. It was a somewhat impassioned exchange about how good a job Drew Olson does and whether and why we should care or comment. That's a substantive, mostly constructive discussion. I hope you'll forgive the length of this diatribe, and I say everything with respect for the fact that you've undertaken a difficult job that I don't have to do. I just value the standards of frank, wide-ranging discussion this site has established, and I don't want to see it sterilized. Thanks for listening. Greg.

Congrats to Jamie. I have to say, though, that locking the Drew Olson thread was not exactly an auspicious beginning to your career in your new position. Most of the posts in that thread were substantive, and I found the discussion of Drew, the importance of baseball journalism, and the appropriateness of criticizing baseball journalists very interesting. If the site is more than an autocracy -- and it has always been run very openly in the past -- then I think you owed us a much better explanation for locking the thread than you provided. Based on what you did write in your locking post, I respectfully suggest that your decision was unjustified. Greg.

Fantastic article. Exceptionally thorough and thoughtful even by your high standards. Greg.

Obviously it's up to your judgment. IMHO, none of what was said (including the deleted post you refer to, which of course I didn't know about) was so bad as to warrant shutting down what was mostly a substantive and civil discussion. Having said that, I'll drop it. Greg.

I just got done writing a fairly detailed post in response to something Brian wrote in the Branyan thread, hit "add reply," and found that Brian had locked the thread because "people are acting like infants." With all due respect, the comment was out of line. I just got through reading the post-resigning posts in that thread. A few of them were ad hominem, but even those were pretty mild, and most of what people wrote was on-topic and measured. What was the problem -- the guy who called for correct spelling of "Branyan" and the other guy who responded by misspelling it deliberately? Granted, the response was stupid, but did it really warrant shutting down discussion of the biggest Brewers news of the week (granting that the competition isn't exactly high-octane)? I respectfully suggest that Brian -- who, for whatever my opinion is worth, generally does a great job maintaining the site's temperature -- jumped the gun and overreacted. At the very least, when a thread doesn't include blatantly obvious, harsh personal attacks or something similar, you should be more specific about which posts are bad enough to warrant shutting down discussion. Greg.

Steroids, alcoholism, spousal abuse, other drug convictions, racism, cheating--all of those crimes are part of the game and its history. But none of those things are as serious as gambling. You can't have the paying public questioning the legitimacy of one team competing against another team. And that's exactly what happens when gambling is introduced. Why? This is a familiar assertion, well-stated. But I don't see a real argument, just an assertion. You're actually making two assertions: a normative assertion ("I think gambling is worse than other offenses") and an empirical assertion ("Other people think gambling is worse than other offenses"). The normative assertion I just think is wrong: to me, betting on baseball simply isn't as bad as committing a crime or mistreating people based on race, even if you're a manager. We'll have to agree to disagree on that level. On the empirical level, you need some kind of objective basis for your claim. Didn't the public come to question whether artificially keeping black players out of the game undermined MLB's claim to be presenting the best players? Even if the public didn't ask that question, shouldn't they have? Did the pervasiveness of racism make baseball's color line okay because, by and large, the fans didn't care? As for gambling, did Rose's gambling really undermine public confidence in "the legitimacy of the game"? I didn't see fewer people buying tickets after the Rose revelations, like we saw after the '95 labor stoppage. Maybe they should have cared more than they did -- but that just brings us back to the normative issue. Greg.

Yes. I hate Pete Rose. Not only is he a lying, pathetic gambler who wiped his butt with the game's reputation, but his oft-praised competitive fire was really just the contemporary equivalent of Ty Cobb's psychotic bullying streak. Even if Rose had never gambled on anything, his style, attitude, and personal qualities would have dragged the sport down a notch. I hate the idea of his ever milking another moment of pleasure from the game, especially a pleasure as profound as getting into the Hall of Fame must be. For all of that -- so what? The Hall of Fame isn't for the people who get in, however much they enjoy it; it's for us, the fans. Beyond that, we need to keep a clear view of what the Hall recognizes. The Hall is replete with guys who went out of their way to keep black players out of the majors, guys who beat, cheated on, and otherwise humiliated their wives, guys who didn't always play their hardest because their talent allowed them to get away with less. There are also some great human beings in the Hall, which makes me happy; but the point is that good character and winning baseball are two absolutely different things. Our culture deceives itself when it pretends that excellence in sports has anything to do with personal virtue. The people who run MLB cheapen our culture when they pretend that the integrity of the sport matters any more than any of the other values against which various great ballplayers have sinned. Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame because he was a great baseball player, and nobody should ever believe for one second that his enshrinement stands for anything more than that. Greg.