MJLiverock

Just like Attanasio forced him to sign Wolf, Looper, Gagne, Hawkins, Riske, Davis...

There is no indication Lilly was interested in signing with the Brewers either. He may well have had a similar offer and chose the Cubs instead unless the Brewers were willing to pay substantially more. I think most pitchers/players given the choice of equal contracts would probably pick the Cubs over the Brewers.

The only evidence anyone has ever shown that Attanasio made Melvin sign Suppan is that Suppan is from L.A. and Attanasio went to dinner with him before the contract was signed. That is so weak that I would hesitate even calling it evidence. I suppose the new theory will be that Attanasio forced Melvin to sign Wolf as well since he is also from L.A. What about Ryan Braun, he is from L.A. as is Jim Edmonds. I don't get why it is so important to exonerate Melvin of the Suppan deal and grasp at straws to place the blame elsewhere. Offsetting the weak evidence of living in LA and going to dinner is a whole track record of Melvin being bad as signing free agent pitchers, developing pitchers and in general building a pitching staff. It seems to me that the evidence falls more on the side of Melvin just making another bad pitching decision. Suppan signed a market rate deal considering what Lilly and Meche got. The Brewers, being the Brewers, may have had to add a 4th year or pay a bit more than the Cubs or some other team to get him. Melvin may have had to ask Attanasio for permission to go that far but I seriously doubt any of these assumptions that Melvin unwillingly signed Suppan because Attanasio made him. As far as giving Melvin the vote of confidence being some acknowledgement that Attanasio knows he made Melvin make some bad choices I ask; When has an owner ever come out in May/June and said this GM has to work a miracle because his butt is on the line, I am ready to pull the trigger and fire him very soon. Pretty much never, unless Steinbrenner blew up some time in the past. Every owner or GM stands by the GM or manager in the media right up until the day they get fired. There is a reason why it is a "dreaded vote of confidence."

None of it. Just like every other draftee who doesn't pan out. That's the risk of paying bonuses. Is Jeff Suppan paying back money to the Brewers? He isn't living up to his performance for the money. Are the Brewers giving more bonuses to Corey Hart since he was a late round pick and probably didn't get much of a bonus when he initially signed? Why on earth should it matter how big his bonus was 4 or 5 years ago? The guy wasn't panning out, had been demoted, was pretty much just going to be an organizational soldier if that in the future. Should guys like that just keep sticking around forever until the team finally just releases them? The guy is 22 and pretty much has no future in baseball why go through the misery of it (riding around on a bus being that sad sack who just doesnt' know when to quit from small town to small town for next to nothing for pay isn't glamorous or all that much of a career if you have no shot at the majors). Had the Brewers just cut him loose would anyone care about the bonus? Getting on with his life while still young enough to do so is probably a pretty good decision on his part. Not everyone wants to play minor league baseball until they are 30 and finally get released with no job skills, no education, and no experience with anything except playing baseball. Why do you think a lot of guys build it into contracts to have the team pay for college if things dont' work or if they are smart sock some of that bonus money away for college scholarships forgone. I know the Brewers just cut the Cuban SS they signed a few years ago, I doubt he paid his bonus back and no one cares that he didn't work out.

Wow, some pretty harsh comments for the guy. Things weren't progressing, he has probably been playing baseball his whole life and finally realized the dream is over and or just tired of toiling away in the minors. I can't fault a guy for that. There is no reason someone has to keep hanging around scraping by in the minors for years until they are forced out or just become "that guy", you know the guy who is still in college for the 10th year at age 28, the Crash Davis character, the guy who never gets on with his life. Brewer may well get a chance to play college football or even just go to college while still young. If he was an accountant and wasn't doing very well at it and decided to make a career change people wouldn't bash him about. The Brewers took a chance on him like all drafted players, the majority don't pan out, realizing it on your own isn't anything to be ashamed of. The X post makes me laugh on two points. How was Escobar just handed everything? Because the Brewers traded Hardy who is hitting so well for 10x the salary? Citing the Lance Armstrong qutoe is great too, of course it could be modified to say, "Don't quit when the going gets tough, buy better PEDs." edit: acutally Hardy gets paid 12.5x Escobar to suck

If the Brewers were looking at a 25 man roster I could see the argument of utility infielder or pitcher but on the 40 man? Bah, who cares at that point, just keep the better player or the player you have no subsitutes for. As was mentioned the Brewers have a bushel basket full of soft tossing, mediocre pitchers to call upon. Utility players who can hit with a little power from the right side, not so much, especially if they need to bring a guy up to ride the pine in the OF or fill in some games if Edmonds, Gerut, go down again or Hart is traded at some point. Looking at the roster of 40 guys and if someone has to be cut for Gamel, Riske, etc. Just drop the guy with the least use or future with the team- - > Suppan. If some other team just offered a player like Heether to the Brewers for Suppan (assuming the Brewers still paid his salary) wouldn't most people take the deal? Suppan has been compared to not worth a bag of balls but in this case the Brewers decided he was more valuable than Heether. The Brewers had the choice to DFA Suppan but didn't, they lost a player who may never amount to much in the majors but they decided a bag of balls like Suppan was more valuable or irreplaceable. To me it was completely stupid decision.

I had been hearing talk about putting Parra in against the Cardinals for a few days on the radion before this. Without having looked at the stats I seem to recall St. Louis doing worse vs. LH pitching, I know my Cardinal fan friend mentions it once in awhile. It isn't like Bush has been all that great, the Brewers need to see if Parra has any future in the rotation even if just because they so desperately need him to. If the match up is Macha's reasoning, so be it, they need to look for any advantage they can manage at this point. Macha knows he needs to win.

I noticed today while looking at some splits that Gomez actually has a higher OBP vs. right hand pitching than Hart does this year. I thought it was interesting given the complaints about Gomez in the two hole and the occasional mention of putting Hart in the two hole.

Finishing with a strong September in baseball when completely out of the race is different that football. In baseball teams bring up young guys, shut down some guys, and basically finish out the string. It is fine to get excited about seeing the young guys play well, but winning a bunch of games against other teams young guys or other bad teams who are just finishing the string won't get me too excited about the next season. I doubt a whole of expected wins for the next season are based on a strong/weak September rather than the body of work of the season and offseason acquistions/departures. If the Brewers win 75 games but have a winning September I doubt people are going to expect 90 wins the next year.

Hart is off to a great start, better than I would have expected, but it isn't the first time in his career he has had a hot month. As JB mentioned his slugging is improved, particularly vs. RHers but his OBP is still only .303 vs. RH pitching. Hart is killing LH pitching with a 1.20 OPS vs. them while being .794 vs. RHers. He has 25 hits vs. RHers in 122 or so PA's but 8 of those 25 have gone for HRs. Even vs. LHer's 6/17 hits have been HR's. Unlesss he is in for one of the those special years I would expect that HR rate to fall and with it his slugging percentage pulling that .940 OPS back toward the .800 level. Especially since he is still only managing a .303 OBP vs. RH pitching, for all the complaints about Gomez batting in the two hole he has a .312 OBP vs. RH pitching. All in all, great start but I won't get too excited until he does it for a whole season and not just a month or two and can avoid his miserable months that trickle in every year.

I can live with Escobar's growing pains at SS. He is still out hitting Hardy this year so far on both OBP and SLG and as was pointed out when Hardy first came up he was much worse than Escobar to this point. I also remember sitting at Miller Park and watching Hardy let two grounders go right between the legs like a little leaguer in one game early in his career, young guys will make mistakes especially if they have to watch 75+ pitches go for balls per game. I don't know if every scoring decision is tough on him but yesterday's hit changed to an error seemed pretty tough. He made a nice play moving into the hole on Hanley Ramirez and stopped the ball, throwing off balance moving away from first and one hopped it to Fielder who dropped it. It was ruled a hit initially and later changed to an error, if anything I would have given the error to Fielder for dropping it.

Very nice lineup guys tonight, I find myself checking these link reports way more than I used to... not sure if it is disgust with the ML team or hope of seeing good pitching lines and development in the minors. I'll be at the game tonight to at least see Gallardo v. Santana.

Mench did what he was supposed to do, hit LHP. In 06 in 132 PA's vs. LHP he put up an OPS of .876, in 2007 in 166 PA's vs. LHP his OPS was .901. The problem was Yost insisting on playing him vs. RHP, in 2007 he had 142 PA's vs. RHP putting up a .564 OPS. For all the hate Mench recieved he did what he was supposed to do but was misused by the manager. Kind of a weird hatred given the lamenting over the trading of guy like Gross who is basically the same player but from the left side. Gross was and is absolutely awful vs. LH pitching but was protected for the most part from LH'ers. Incidently verus the their platoon strengths Gross vs. RH'ers wasn't even as good as Mench vs. LH'ers, Mench was bascially a high .800's OPSer while Gross was only a high .700's OPSer. Neither was much defensively, Gross was probably a little better because of his arm and slightly better range but still couldnt' judge a fly ball very well.

Exactly whose expectations are players like Davis, Hoffman, Bush, Suppan, Hawkins, Weeks underperforming? Yours? That is fine and in your argument then yes the team is greatly underfperforming your model. Plenty of other posters were very skeptical of Davis, Hoffman, Bush, Suppan, Hawkins, etc. going into the season. There were posters with below 80 wins projected, why? because their model of expectations didn't believe some of these players were going to perform as well as hoped. I figured anywhere from 78 to like 83 wins for this team because I thought the pitching would be slightly better and the hitting would be a bit worse. Am I shocked at these pitching results- - not really. I expected Wolf to be bit better and Bush to not be this bad but really after the last 3 years am not shocked. I have never been a big Davis believer so his results don't surprise. Hart is playing better and I thought Weeks would have a tough time matching the production the team got from Lopez/McGehee/Counsell at 2B last year. Hoped is all it really is when forecasting players results. They aren't robots or binary outcome models like a coin flip. There are so many variables in each player that saying some statistical model is going to predict when Trevor Hoffman will decline to the point of uselessness based on how other 42 year old pitchers declined that the model is completely useless. Same with Davis or Bush. Clinging to how they performed 3 or 4 years ago can show some ability measure but the more recent data and trend for each hasn't been good. Davis's ability to throw strikes has decliined for 6 seasons and he was playing with a thin margin to begin with. The error term on any model to predict one season of a player and or team is goning to be astronomically high. I've taken and done enough economic forecasting to know that I can build a model to generate any outcome I want and claim well my model based on statistics shows this will happen. It doesn't make the model right or the deviation from expected outcome to be wrong. It drives me crazy when people just fall back to some nebulous statisitcal model as their basis that anyone who doesn't buy into player X putting up a 4.50 ERA or a team winning 85 games as being wrong or just not objective. No one bothers to show this magic statistical model and if they do are they willing to admit some of their model assumptions are wrong or need to be tweaked? It always reminds me of the Long Term Capital blow up of the mid to late 90's. Basically a bunch of very smart math whizzes, PhD's, Nobel Laureates, built an investment model that was a money machine. They couldn't lose and made money hand over fist taunting the investment world that thier statistical model was so sound it accounted for everything. Well, until the day that it didn't and couldn't forsee a mix of things happening that made it useless while the company crashed and burned be being completely wrong and unwilling to adjust their model even as data came in showing them to be wrong. They just kept plowing money down the hole according to their model. Another more recent example - - in the latest housing meltdown and banking crisis a number of the pooled investments of mortgages were constructed using very sophisticated models to predict defaults, late payments, refinance rates, early paydowns, etc. Some had a built in assumption that just because one house in the neighborhood or 2 houses in a neighborhood defaulted it didn't mean much to the whole neighborhood defaulting, in fact some assumed it made it less likely since only a few houses should default. Well it didn't realize that in fact many times these events were highly correlated in areas like Detroit where entire neighborhoods and towns were reliant on one employer who suddenly started letting people go quickly driving up the defaults and all were related and cascaded through the whole area. I am sure the mathematician who built the model was quite sure it was accurate and reliable right up until the point that it blew up in his face because his assumptions were wrong. What does all this have to do with the Brewers? It is clear some people's "models" assumed pitchers would perform at a certain level, others assumed a faster decline because lets face it most of the staff is north of 30, the rate of decline is highly variable. It doesn't matter what 100 years of baseball says about how 10,000 different players declined past 30, the variance within that pool is huge so it should come as no surprise that in a small sampling of a dozen or so players they would vary greatly from the mean of how a 30+ year pitcher is going to decline. That is why I dont' give Melvin a pass - - I dont' care that some model out there said on paper this staff should be better, there is probably also a model out there saying this staff was terrible. Other teams had the opportunity to sign some fo the these guys and they either didn't offer or were not willing to pay as much - - maybe because their "model" told them to stay away. Melvin's job isn't to just plug a spreadsheet and throw his hands in the air and say not my fault if it turns out wrong. The model is only as good as the data and assumptions and being wrong on the assumptions is the fault of the model creator. No one knows for sure what the decline rate will be on an older pitcher but one thing everyone can agree on is that there will be a decline rate- - how fast or big makes a big difference in any forecast.

Well strawboss, one could say your arguments have been proven wrong by the fact that the pitching staff does indeed suck. The Melvin supporters want to give Melvin credit for the success of the hitting or picking up a McGehee but pass the buck on the pitching woes to scouting directors or underlings who apparenlty made all the bad decsions without Melvin's help while Melvin was buys making all the right calls. Or the old Melvin's luck has been bad with regards to pitching, never considering that maybe his luck was just good at drafting hitters if luck is such an important role. If luck can be blamed for poor choices it can certanly be used on the other side for choices that worked out. When a front office has been wrong so many times on pitchers I can't just chalk it up to luck, it is an alarming trend. All of these so called high ceiling prospects flamed out - - could it be that the opposing GM was willing to give them up as minor pieces of deals because they really weren't that good? As has been mentioned many times by the Melvinites, young projectable pitching is hard to obtain, so why do so many think guys like JDLR, Jackson, Aquino, were thrown in on package deals or Cappellan was nabbed for a broken down flash in the pan reliever? Melvin could very well be the sucker in all these trades rather than just having bad luck half a dozen or more times, he and his staff could just be really bad at judging pitching talent. Lookinig at the state of how bad the pitching is in Milwaukee I don't know why it is so hard to just admit Melvin may not be that great at assembling a pitching staff. He has done a great job in finding hitters, no complaints there even with room for improvement but overall pretty good. Pitching though has been putrid throught the draft and thru free agency. Plenty of guys are good at one aspect of coaching, managing, etc.

JDLR was being traded for a 2nd time when Milwaukee got him as part of a huge package of players - - he was projectable but I don't think he was still considered a top prospect anymore but out of that list probably the highest ceiling guy. Villanueva was had for Wayne Franklin while still in A ball, I doubt he was considered a top prospect or upper tier. Cappellan was already starting to lose status as well. Jackson was also losing his shine and was behind a few others in the Blue Jays organization as well as being part of a package of players which if he was a top tier prospect he wouldn't be part of a package of guys going for Overbay.

I don't know if this was in reference to my post above but I said Ohka wasn't a failure but he isn't someone I would use as a counterpoint to the Melvin pitching woes. Ohka is as you suggested a end of the rotation stop gap who didn't completely suck. It reminds me of all the posts that reference, well Davis isn't bad for a back of the roation guy, Bush isn't bad for a back of the rotation guy, Parra isn't bad for a back of the roation guy, Narveson isn't bad for a back of the rotation guy, Suppan's numbers are like other 5th starters, etc. The problem is they can't all be compared to the 5th starter.

Not singling you out in any way here but a lot of people on the forums want to give 100% credit for the good drafted players to Jack Z and 100% of the blame for the drafted players that didn't work out to Melvin. There is a pretty prevalent double standard at play on the forums. The same could be said about the Melvin supporters as well. Every pitching arm picked up for next to nothing who wasn't a complete failure (Tomo Ohka?) is used to offset any criticism of the pitching rotation. Or the success of drafting hitters is a feather in his cap but the pitching woes is just bad luck in drafting, not just good luk in drafting hitters. Melvin is/was the top guy he is going to get the blame and accolades because it is his responsibility.

Optimism is great and all but I don't buy into the Davis was struggling because of his heart. Pericarditis is usually an acute disease meaning it doesn't linger around for weeks, when it hits you feel it immediately. http://my.clevelandclinic.../other/pericarditis.aspx Guys don't just play through chest pains for a month and a half. This would be like saying Player X sprained his ankle on May 1st so that excuses his poor play in the month leading up to it because his ankle hurt. Sort of like the Hart excuse that his appendicitis, another condition that doesn't linger around for weeks but instead hits you like a ton of bricks immediately, was the cause for his slide before going in for surgery.

Serious question -- is an underage alcohol ticket something MiLBers get suspended for? Doing anything illegal could probably get them suspended. Marijuana will get you arrested and banned. Marijuana is waaaay different that alcohol and tobacco. Actually Marijuan possession in many places will just get you a ticket (I know of guys who got the $147 possession ticket matching the underage drinking tickets we received in college) not arrested or thrown in jail. TLB brings up an interesting question since legal penalties are quite similar.

lcbj68c's post reminded me of a story I read on my MLB app on my phone the other day. It was an article reviewing the draft history of the MLB teams for the last 10 years. To no one's surprise it mentioned the Brewers were one of if not the best at aquiring hitters but also mentioned they were among the bottom in drafting pitchers putting their overall ranking as rather mediocre. It went on to talk about the top teams having success in balancing out the two and who those teams were. I'll see if I can find the story again to fine a link on the internet.

That Zaun quote was great and sums up my feelings on all this stuff about the code and so called disrespecting the game. It's a game, have fun, enjoy it once in a while and it isn't a crime to watch a massive HR once in a while or celebrate a win.

The Rays fired their GM after the 2005 season after 8 years at the helm so I guess they didn't even wait forever to decide something wasn't working. I guess for me this year is lost and next year most likely as well so that would put Melvin at 10 years without much to show. Maybe the team would be on the upswing then but really the pitching will still be pretty raw, guys like Odorizzi, Heckathorn, Bucci, (guys in A now) will just be breaking in as MLB pitcher probably on limited innings, even Jeffress is probably in this same boat given his time missed. Realistically, I think it is more like 3 to 4 years before the pitchers at A level are going to make big contributions.

6 years ago Melvin was already two season into his rebuild so I think of it as generous to not count them. This team is on pace to lose a 100 this year, 90 is assuming they improve. What would it take for Melvin supporters to switch? 10 years of these results, 15 years? Never? Just curious how long of a leash management should be given. Everyone has different tolerances for failure and measures of success. I would be more inclined to side with Melvin if the team was trending in the right direction but having peaked with the WC berth and then falling last year and further this year with not much on the horizon for the next 2 years leaves me at the stage where he had his chance and it is time to find someone to get the team to the next level of above being just competitive. I think Melvin did a fine job resurecting the team fromt the ashes to competitve but I dont' see his methods bringing a higher level of success because he is too focused on the floor and not the ceiling.

The sum weighting of Melvin's success and failures is reflected in the team's record over his tenure and the summation isn't looking too great right now. I don't know how anyone will be able to defend his record if this year's team loses 90+ games, and looks to be no better next year depending on how the Fielder situation plays out. If they admit the team is not a playoff contender as constructed and blow it up to retool for the future they could be looking at a 100 loss team next year. I don't know that I would trust Melvin to do that rebuild, I'd be too afraid he would just go at the same way again with unimpressive results. Even tossing out his first 2 years at the helm since the Selig's purposely drove the payroll and franchise into the ground Mevin's team will have averaged an 80-82 record over his last 6 years (assuming they lose 90 this year) and will have had 1 playoff appearance, 2 seasons with an above .500 record and an average division finish of between 3rd and 4th. These win and place records will all be trending in the wrong direction as well.