MJLiverock

If the team is around $90MM today, with only 3% inflation that gets you very close to $100MM in 2015. Assume another $20MM from TV in you post and the team should be able to run a payroll of $110MM to $120MM in 2015. Braun at $12MM Grienke at $20MM Weeks at $12MM Gallardo at $13MM Lucroy at $3MM Ramirez buyout $4MM Narveson 3rd yr. arb $5MM Gamel $4MM Total $73MM for the core of the team leaving $37MM to $47MM. I don't know that Axford will be getting any big money from the Brewers in 2015, he may well be traded off by then rather than commit big money to a closer. Green or someone else will be brought in to play 3rd rather than pay Ramirez $14MM if he has deteriorated substantially. Schafer may be in CF by then. A couple of the young pre Arby pitchers to fill in the 4 & 5 spots in the rotation. SS and RF are unknowns at this point and bullpen filler. I don't think it becomes impossible in this scenario. The top 7 (I'll add in another $6MM guy on top of the $4MM paid to Ramirez to get a $10MM vet somewhere at 3B, SS, RF) would be around $80MM or 675 to 72% of payroll. The 2011 Brewers paid about 70% of payroll to their top 7 guys. The Brewers are going to have to take some gambles, a team with limited resources can't just play it safe all the time and expect to reach the top, they may remain "competitive" but won't win anything if they always take a conservative approach. I think I'd rather gamble on locking up the very best talent I could and then hoping my filler guys only have to achieve averageness vs. getting a bunch of high floor average guys and hope a couple achieve greatness.

Edit: I deleted the post and moved to the Grienke hires agent conversation.

Monty, I agree it gets expensive but team will have to decide where to spend the money - -locking in a few elite level players or keeping more average guys around. Someone else summed it up well in the Cain thread (reillymcshane). The team doesn't have any elite pitchers on the immediate horizon nor do they have a lot of young talent left to trade for pitching. I think it is easier to fill in for letting guys like Hart walk or trade a Weeks or Axford than it is to find a top of the line starter. I don't want to go back to the days of the rotation of Sheets at the top and 2 or 3 old vets getting paid $20MM to be servicable at best. If we don't want to rely onthe B/C level hitters then we end up relying on the C/D level starting pitchers. I'd run the gamble on the hitters given the organization's track record with developing offense and free agent market vagaries vs. pitching. I also liked an earlier comment that the team had to know Grienke's contract was looming when they signed Ramirez. If the Ramirez signing keeps them from signing Grienke then the front office made a huge mistake in my mind.

I'd rather be paying someone like Grienke $20MM per than locking up 2 $10MM per year talent guys like Wolf, Suppan, Marcum (looking forward), Lohse, Westbrook, especially knowing there will be additional young cost controlled pitching coming. Letting the elite talent guys go in favor of multiple average guys seems a good way to get to average.

I'll admit I can't stand Izturis but I just don't see the point of keeping him around. If Gonzalez is going play 150 games at SS and is supposedly solid enough defensively to not need pulling what is the point of keeping a guy like Izturis around? So he can start a dozen games? His bat is completely useless off the bench and his one attribute (defense at SS) is redundant. Green is gone for Conrad who is also pretty bad offensively. Fontenot can at least be used as a pinch hitter off the bench. If Gonzalez is down for a length of time Izturis or someone of similar ilk shouldn't be to hard to find to provide a warm body at SS which is basically where the team would be if trying to fill in.

I agree with TLB, what does Conrad add that Green doesn't provide? I typically don't look at spring training box scores much but did Conrad light the world on fire or something? I've read about Lucroy's torrid spring but Conrad?

I don't know that anyone thinks the Cardinals will be terrible or anything but the idea that they somehow have no questions and teams like the Brewers will be below .500 because they lost Fielder is what seems ridiculous. St. Louis lost Pujols, the best hitter in the game, the most feared guy in the NL. They will get Wainwright back but to expect Cy Young numbers from a a guy his first year back from TJ seems a bit high. Carpenter is hurt. Berkman exploded last year for his age and career progression,if I had to bet one way or the other I would go for regression. Furcal is always hurt and really didn't do much until he got to STL and had some timely hits. Freese may finally be healthy for a season, he's cut down on the drinking and night life by most accounts which contributed to some of his DL time. It isn't conjecture, I have plenty of friends in STL including guys who played with him in college/HS/minors and knew the rumors weren't just made up. The only reason STL even made the playoffs last year was due to an epic fail by the Braves. They also lost LaRussa and Duncan. Duncan somehow managed to polish the turds of other ML teams and squeeze a good year or two out of them. StL would let them walk and again they'd go back to previous mediocre at best results. Duncan is gone now and it will be interesting to see the effect on guys like Westbrook and Lohse. I really don't see how anyone can claim this year's team will be much better as a base case for the season. Sure they should be in that mid 80's win range along with Milw and Cincinnati. Milwaukee won't have Fielder but they will also not have the black hole that was McGehee at third either. The combined line of Fielder and McGehee is .259/.352/.458/.810 over 1292 PA. That number is not way above a possible line for a combined Gamel & Ramirez line. The Brewers also had Weeks miss the end of the season and Grienke miss the first month and will have KRod as a set up man for the full season moving Loe down the line. I have no problem saying the Brewers won't win as many games as last season, I don't think they will win as many. But to think the base case should be that the Brewers are going to fall off by 16+ games but expecting STL holds steady at worst or improves leaves me pretty skeptical.

He did not say that. He said that if Frucal and Beltran both play 140 games they should win 95-100 games, and no one else in the division was capable of winning 85. He did not say the Cards would win 85. Here's a link to the interview. http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/that-s-a-winner-says-whitey/article_d7061520-7733-11e1-bfc8-001a4bcf6878.html Good grief I copied the quote. The article you link to has the exact same quote in it. He thinks no one but STL will win half their games. Reading more puts the Card floor at 85 with upside to the 90's.

It was in yesterday's paper in a blurb section about baseball which the unfortunately don't put online. Probably got it off the AP wire but he definitely said the Cardinals will win 85 games with the injury to Madson there won't be anyone else in the division who will win even half their games. Here it is from a Cardinal blog no less: From Rick Hummel’s PD article: "When you look at the Central Division, I don't think anybody's going to win more than 85 games other than the Cardinals," said Herzog. "And with (Ryan) Madson hurt in Cincinnati, I can't see anybody else in the Central Division winning half their games. I don't see why the Cardinals would not win that division.” There you have it. The don of St. Louis sports management has had his fill of spring training and now it’s off to the post season for the Redbirds. I’m glad it’s settled. http://www.cardsdiaspora.com/

My post from the other thread got deleted. I'd rather have the pitcher comfortable for the roughly 28 AB's he has to go through than worry about the platoon split improvement for 2 or 3 AB's. I have no idea why Wolf and Lucroy don't mesh up, maybe it as just the lack of spring reps together during the last two years or maybe it is something else. Why did Ben Sheets have to have Chad Moeller? I don't know that RR is letting Wolf solely use Kottaras just because Wolf is veteran, it may well be he really pitches better or feels he pitches better with Kottaras calling the shots and he thinks the 28 ABs is more important than the 2 or 3 ABs.

I read today that Whitey Herzog said the Cardinals will win 85 and be the only team in the division to win half their games.

I can see both sides of the reaction and really don't think either is wrong. Lucroy is an average catcher, nothing wrong with that, I'll take it in comparison to the guys the Brewers have used regularly in the last 15 years. He is young has some upside. I don't agree with the statements claiming he is one of the best catchers in the league, I think that is what draws out some of the criticisms from people, the over statement of his results, probably because he is better than past Brewer catchers. He is a solid option, doesn't do anything really exceptional (the framing thing could be one, but hard to really measure and compare). While it is nice to have certainty, the Brewers didn't really lock him up, he was already controlled for 4 more years. While true that average catchers are getting $3-$4MM a year, Lucroy wasn't going to be getting that until his later arbitration years. I am glad that according to some reports the team is getting a 5th year, that first free agency year. If I was going to buy out all the arby years I would want to get at least that first year of free agency. That is where the real upside for the Brewers probably lies. I have no problem with the deal, but Lucroy was going to be here regardless of doing this, but if they got an additional year then great because an average catcher in 4 or 5 years during his final arby or first year of FA, will probably cost $5MM per.

It was actually a great play by Taylor. He drew the double team out, 5+ feet from the 3 point line and dished it to Wilson. If Wilson does what he's supposed to -- dribble towards the rim, or pass the ball to anyone but JT or anything but what he actually did, he either gets fouled, gets a dunk or Gasser gets a wide open jumper to win the game. Instead, he gave it right back to the guy getting double teamed, 8 feet from the 3-point line. You have to also remember that Wilson has spent his whole career on the bench and if he did get in a game, take a shot and miss, he was parked on the bench for the remainder. The whole team plays timid most of the time and looks afraid to shoot, Gasser passed up open looks multiple times during the game, but of course only 10 or 15 seconds had run off the shot clock then. I think these guy have the don't shoot mentality drilled into their heads so much they just automatically look to Taylor to jack it up whenever the clock gets low. Tough to change an entire season's mentality for one play, let alone not even taking a timeout to set something up or remind them Taylor doesn't have to shoot from 25 feet.

For the Star Wars fans out there. http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/unplugged/1-3-scale-model-star-wars-tie-fighter-215810505.html

Good point, Baldkin, I hadn't thought about that since we always try to have our draft later to account for injuries in the spring. This was the earliest we have ever drafted.

I noticed during a fantasy baseball draft last night that the column showing average draft position for Braun was around 23 in the Yahoo leagues compared to his player rating of around 6 or so. I know he was taken in the top 5 last year so it appears the average fantasy baseball participant is expecting a big drop off in production from him. He was taken 6th our league of primarily Twins and Yankees fans. (I picked 7th).

Where is this stat showing Gonzo will be a significant overall improvement? Their WARs are virtually identical for 75% of their careers. I've never said Gonzo isn't a better defender (maybe overrated judging by how his defensive stats jump around) but when combined with his offense as WAR is attempting he ends up ranking right with YB 75% of the time. But I guess I should expect he will hit or exceed his peak abilities in the second half of his 30's? Improvement maybe but significant, no way judging by 75% of his actual career including his peak age years. Just last year the difference between them was negligible, given that WAR can't be so precise given the vagaries of a single year of defense ratings that someone earlier pointed out. It's not like single year stats can't be overinflated to the good side or vice versa so I don't buy into their being any sort of significant difference in a WAR of betwen a guy at 0.5 and 1.0. If Gonzo puts up a 0.7-1.0 WAR that is not a significant improvement over the 0.5-0.7 YB likely puts up. On another note that we may agree on, I am interested to see if Gamel can help on defense at first just by being able to catch a few more in the vicinity throws of 1b that Prince didn't get to.

fangraphs.com defensive since 1999; -12, -4, -3, 3.2, 8.0, 7.3. -1.4. 9.7, 5.0, 7.0, 5.1 -0.3 = 5/12, tossing out the first year in'98 when he didn't play much although the 3.2 year wasn't a full year either so he could be 5/11 as negative on a fully year including last year and is getting older. How is that skewing a conclusion? Gonzo's WAR: 0.5, -1.8, 0.8, 0.5, 3.1, 1.4, 0.6, 1.4, 2.5, 0.6, 3.4, 1.1 -- other than the random years where for some reason he knows how to play defense really really well his WAR is around 1 or less. Betancourt has had one negative WAR year and the rest between 0.5 and 1.5. All of which is puts them in the same class of player. How is that skewing my opinion? Looks more like picking the most likely outcome for Gonzo and Betancourt. If anything cherry picking out the couple of really good defensive years for Gonzo (while ignoring all the years of WAR between 0 and 1.5 which is 9/12 which represent 75% of his career) expecting that level of defense at age 35+ is skewing the opinion into thinking there is any meaningful upgrade to the position. As I said a '78 Pinto or an '84 Yugo, crappy cars, just different model. Gonzo's three year average of 1.7 you cite is actually three years of 0.6, 3.4, 1.1, which year is the outlier? Again 75% of Gonzo's career is his below 1.5 WAR, which is right where YB has been for 80-90% of his career. I just don't agree that Gonzo is going to make any sort of meaningful difference to the team versus YB unless somehow this is one of those random years where he plays great defense but given his age I don't want to bank on it. Neither are good players. I don't like the accusation that there is no basis for claiming Gonzo isn't any better or that I am just making stuff up.

Somewhat related: I just returned from a vacation at a resort and was taking note of the consumer electronics devices people had (I'm a stock analyst so i like to look at things like that). The resort was toward the higher end range so that probably skewed the sample somewhat but I would guess that of the roughly 200 people reading by the pool over the 2 weeks that it was split 70/30 Kindle to physical book/magazine. I noticed 1 Barnes and Noble Nook, that's right 1 person was using the Nook while the Kindle was standard. I guess that just reinforces Barnes & Nobles terrible Nook sales lately. I didn't really notice anyone using the iPad as a reader, the iPad users were primarily surfing the net or playing games judging by the number of hand motions and what I saw on screens walking by. I also didn't really notice many Kindle Fire's, almost all the readers were the plain Kindle device. The only tablet I saw was an iPad, I saw zero Playbook's, Samsung Galaxy, HP, Lenovo, etc. On the plane it and in the airport it was pretty much the same. A good mix of Android phones but even those people usually had the iPad. I saw one business traveler with what looked like a Samsung pad.

First off why compare Izturis to YB. Izturis is on a minor deal trying to make the team as the 24-25th man. Not getting 500 ab's and playing everyday at ss. Second why is gonzo likely to be no better than YB when statistically he is better overall as a player, and helps the team in infield defense where they were their weakest in 2011. You base your opinions on what you feel and that's fine. Just don't be upset when people look at stats and history to refute your feelings. I added Izturis in because 1. People were mentioning getting him last year instead of Yuni. 2. Izuris is mentioned as playing a role in this year's team. Not to upset you with the use of stats but if Gonzo is such a defensive whiz why has he posted a negative defensive rating in 5/12 big league seasons? I don't like WAR as a stat but Gozo's last 3 years are 0.6, 3.4, 1.1 compared to -2.1, 0.9 and 0.5 for Betancourt. Everyone once in awhile Gonzo puts up a year like 2010, but most year's he is a 0-1 WAR player just like YB, neither are good players. And Gonzo being 35+ isn't going to make his outlook suddenly improve. It's probably 50/50 on whether or not he will even be a positive on the defensive ratings given his age and track record.

Actually he signed with KC. How many teams lined up to sign the guys like Renteria and Izturis? None and Milwaukee to a minor league deal. There just weren't any better options to be had last year.

I don't know that anyone has ever claimed YB was a good player. The constant bashing just got old really fast. In my mind there was no better alternative and banging the drum from spring training on to replace him with other bad players that were mentioned like Renteria, Punto(who is not an everyday SS), Izturis, etc. served no purpose other than to constantly complain about the guy. Really would the team have been any better with the alternatives that were available? I don't think so. Even now by adding a player who I think is actually worse than YB in Izturis and a player Gonzalez who is just as likely to be no better than YB really won't matter but at least we don't have YB and that is all that seemed to matter. Comparing YB with the replacements that were available is like driving an '84 Yugo and thinking that if only you could replace it with that '78 Pinto things would really start looking up.

When I read the Adam Mcalvy story from Feb 22 I didn't see it as spin regarding Gamel or a reporter with an ax to grind. The trainer from the gym was quoted saying he was in poor shape and didn't seem to work hard enough. Gamel himself said he was not in good shape and didn't work hard in the offseason and just liked hitting. I think that article confirmed the comments by Money and others, he needed to mature, work harder on things beyond hitting. Probably true of many young guys who have succeeded at many levels, but it doesn't excuse a guy or shield him from deserved criticism and when it comes from multiple sources including the player I think it is pretty true and telling.

He isn't Gamel, so Tom probably wont spin it that way. Didn't Gamel himself recently admit he came into camp last year carrying a few extra pounds or something which didn't help his oblique? I just don't see every criticism of Gamel as a conspiracy against him.

My dad and brother both have peanut and tree nut allergies. Both have it bad enough that if a knife used to spread peanut butter isn't cleaned perfectly and they use it to spread butter or jelly on their toast they can go into anaphylactic shock. I saw my bother bite into a brownie with nuts a few years ago and immediately vomit before heading to the hospital. (the woman who made it assured us it didn't have nuts, then when he reacted and said it had nuts she said, "no just ground up pecans"). Neither have ever had a real problem at sporting events or on airplanes with the peanuts around us. I asked my Dad once at a Badger football game if he was OK because three people around us were all chomping on peanuts and I could smell them pretty strongly and he can usually pick up the scent well before I can when it is faint. He said all he had was a bit of a tickle in his throat but was fine. Both have been to Miller Park with me and had no problems with peanuts around us. But I think having a peanut free section is a great idea, it doesn't hurt anyone, and provides a choice for those allergic or hyper protective about their kids who may not say anything about feeling ill until its too late and they need a shot. That said, I think people sometimes go way overboard in worrying about making sure nuts aren't in the same zip code. I find it funny that now there is all this precaution and warnings on things and when my brother and I were kids the teachers thought he was making it up that he was allergic to nuts and the school nurse once just wanted him to lay on the cot for a bit when he felt ill from eating nuts in something at school. Luckily they happened to call my mom who rushed to the school and over rode the school nurse who insisted he was fine and my mom administered an Epipen shot. Now of course every food package carries the label, "made on a machine or in a facility that processes tree nuts or peanuts", 90% of these things have been eaten by my dad and brother their whole because they so rarely have anything in the product that would cause a reaction. One product I do know that always caused problems was plain M&M's, as a kid they carried no warnings and were "plain" but that one set off the reaction. It really isn't fun for those with the allergy but they cope with it pretty well and watch out for themselves, I know both have told me that nuts taste just awful, they can taste even trace amounts of it in food and know immediately if the food is contaminated. edit: If they could come up with a bee free zone at Badger football games that would help. My cousin is severely allergic to bees and freaks out about the bees swirling around the soda at the early warm weather games. The family joke when we all used to go camping together was that a jar peanut butter and some bee attracting sugar could wipe out half the family tree.