igor67

Mostly because it's more fun to be optimistic right, but that puts him out for 2 of our 3 series left with the Reds, so the timing is ever so slightly more useful in that way.

I'd be more interested in selling if I thought we could get players who were as good in return. Greinke, Ramirez, Marcum most of these guys have been well above average not just this year but for awhile. Regardless of the quality of the prosepct it is hard to match that level of above averageness. Greinke is in the conversation for one of the all time best pitchers we've ever had on the team. Ramirez is essentially an older Fielder (slightly less peak offensive value, but more defensive value). The 'future' we've traded away has yet to sniff any of these guys in terms of actual production. Some certainly could, but Mike Adams is probably the most valuable guy we've traded away in the last ten years. On the flipside all of our best players we either drafted or traded/signed for as established players. 15 years of following trade for the future deals and I haven't seen us pick up a whole lot of any future in those deals.

For the above post on Lucroy's skill at framing, it is worth noting that Baseball Prospectus recently was questioning some of the magnitude of Lucroy's skil because Maldanado was putting up similarly high numbers at framing in limited ABs. Keep in mind the skepticism was not a dismissal just raising the idea that the numbers were unusually high and possibly there was some contribution from an unknown park factor. For the purposes of this discussion both catchers are quite good defensively overall with Maldanado have a more complete set of defensive skills. Maldanado's numbers will almost certainly regress a little, but after having no stick for most of his career he looks to have found enough of a bat the last couple of years that his current offense isn't ridiculously over his head. Further he is good enough that he should play often enough to keep Lucroy fresher throughout the season in general. There is plenty of playing time to go around between those two to keep them up. Frankly I'd rather teams get a good look at Maldanado, so we can see if he can make the on going adjustments hitters need to make to stay viable. Kottaras has modest value, he might not have hit much over the fence since April, but he is still walking like crazy and someone has to be #25 on the bench. I'd rather it be someone who has some use to the team than a random punchless middle IF.

I think it is a mistake to assume that anything of substantial value will be traded again for this year even if the Brewers do go on a run and Melvin decides to hold. It's not like SS's have suddenly started growing on trees. I think we have a decent stable of gritty IF, so there doesn't seem to be much need there. They only thing that makes any sense is a fresh bullpen arm, and even then it wouldn't be a closer type, so the price in terms of prospects would likely be pretty modest. So I'm not really sure where the concern about mortgaging the future is coming from.

A simple comparison that has some value in this case is to look at what teams paid for the big 3 hitters this offseason (Pujols, Prince, and Votto). Votto is the only one out hitting Braun right now. Braun in his mid 30's at 19 million is not a steal, but it is pretty good value, and there is value to the team in having a home grown Brewer lifer. People do like that and it does in fact let people hold onto that hometwon loyalty a little bit.

They did however gain ground on the other two teams ahead of them. It's good to keep chasing the division lead, but the most likely scenario for them having a big comeback in the second half was always chasing down the wildcard teams. Wit the Reds sweeping they might not have picked up ground on the division lead, but if the Brewers swept the Cards now they'd only be a 1/2 game behind them, which would obviously be a pretty big turn around in less than a week.

I concur that with the current talent the most effective collection looks like dropping Izturis and keeping Kottaras as a back-up 1st, 3rd catcher, pinch hitter. In some sense he's actually fairly well suited to that role as the last guy who sees little playing time, but can still hit when needed. It is also worth realizing that at this point in the season you'd be talking about carrying that configuration for only about a month until rosters expand again.

At this point the Brewers guessed well and picked up an incredible value in Ramirez. One can quibble productively about which summary value statistic is best, but they all get to about the same answer as long as they make some attempt to account for position, defense and offense. So by Fan graphs WAR Ramirez has already posted 2.2 for the season. His projected finish is 4.1 ( again given his track record and different systems one could argue at length, but the best estimate for the rest of the season is still going to be about 4). During the last offseason teams paid $5.5 million dollars (median) per WAR on the open market. Which if you put those 2 together means Ramirez is on pace to generate about $ 22 million dollars of value this season. You can start playing with the numbers in all kinds of fun ways. The Brewers paid on average 4.8 million/WAR projected to FA. This yields about 19.5 million dollars in value for this season. The best any team did was $3.3 million per free agent WAR, which is still $13.5 million in value. Certainly the contract escalates in payout somewhat, but there is also on going free agent inflation, which makes hitting $10 million dollars in value each of the next two years pretty easy for a hitter of Aramis' level. Inflation is hard for us to adjust to because most of have a value perception in terms of contracts that lags what teams are actually paying. It wasn't that long ago that 10 million a year was for a perenial All-star, not an average starter. The reality is that those are the costs on the FA market. Certainly the Brewers can't go crazy in that market, but they do need to acquire talent, and doing so only by the draft and waiver wire types while running a large surplus doesn't really help in the long run either.

I'll second Mass's comments 3 teenagers hitting well in the Pioneer League is pretty exciting. Which leads me to suggest that even though things have been pretty fluid in our prospect ranking for awhile it feels like this last month and a half could really scramble our perceptions in some big ways. So many of the big names with early starts like Nelson have not been falling, but kind of stuck in neutral. Others like Gindl have somewhat turned it around, but will it stick enough? Morris is making me a believer and Gennet has been consistent in his own way, but neither has yet gotten to that level of undisputed top position prospect.

In thinking some more I wonder if this might not make some trades a little easier. Afterall the draft pick largely eliminates the difficulty of finding a guy with the right talent level at the position you want when trying to set-up trades. A high draft pick basically means you get to pick the type of prospect you want.

Yes it is in some sense supposed to punish wild card winners, and give teams a reason for wanting to be division winners. In that sense it is more fair than football where some of the division winners also have an extra play in game and others don't.

I think it pays to be cautious and assume the .900 OPS days are gone for Ramirez. However given his historic tendency to start slow I think it is also fair to say that his season OPS will probably be higher than .821 as well. This is an arguable point, but what is not arguable is that an .821 OPS is currently good for 5th among all 3rd basemen qualifiers in OPS. Number 6 on the list is the only other guy with an OPS over .800! If you relax the standard to anyone over 100 ABs he is still 10th on a list 3 times as long. We have a premium talent if older talent and the expected return needs to be premium talent. With a healthy Either and Kemp next year as well Ramirez's bat is probably enough to push the Dodgers into a top 1/3 offense in the NL. Green could have easily out played Casey last year and would have been an upgrade over that this year. Ramirez however was an even bigger upgrade. I was all for the Green and use the money elsewhere option, but at this point money on our side doesn't seem to be the issue holding back a Greinke extension, and given the inflation we are seeing in contracts because of increased TV money, I have serious doubts that freeing up that modest amount of money to Aramis will let us go out and sign other premium talents. That's where the focus needs to be getting premium talents. Our farm system seems plenty capable of providing guys to plug in, but contention is built on having enough guys who are well above average.

While more power would certainly be nice, McFarland's debut out of high school in the Pioneer league so far is looking pretty good for a middle IF prospect. Plenty of average and a solid eye at the plate. Arguably enough to make him the 3rd best middle IF prospect we have after Rivera and Scooter.

The Rays accomplishments have been impressive, but the seeds of that success were multiple years of drafting in the top 5 to get a massive amount of premium talent both pitching and hitting. I can't think of another team in the modern farm system usage who has been able to sustain that level of farm system development on both sides year in and year out. This argument reminds me of when everyone pointed to the As. It turns out they didn't have a special sauce for developing pitchers, they just happened to get 3 top level guys who panned out together. It is kind of ironic coming from the sample size minded sabermetric community, but you can't point to one outstanding success and assume that is the universal template. The Rays have had a fair amount of luck on the development side just like Oakland did. This is not mutually exclusive with them making good decisions, but it also doesn't mean that if the Brewers had followed an alternate path they would have developed into multi-year challengers for the NL central in perpetuity.

The team has had chances the last month or so to really change the dynamic, but certainly this is the time for that one big hot streak. You pull off an 8-1 mark and you pretty much cut that deficit in half in a week and a half. Not the most likely thing, but it can certainly happen. Just remember how badly the Pirates imploded at the end of July last year too. They might be somewhat better, but their offense is still pretty suspect.

Perhaps all picks should be tradeable and such, but it seems very reasonable to look at this as a way for a conservative institution to try that out and see what sorts of ramifications it has. And with 12/13 teams getting picks the Brewers are very likely to get an extra pick, but they also end up being the one team most likely to end up without an extra one. You just have to be careful how you phrase and think about it.

For what it's worth Green's ZIPS projection coming into the season was a .264/ .326/ .423 line. A little under Weeks career .777 OPS. Even crediting Weeks for his more recent performances and his looks like more of a lower .800 OPS guy (pretty good for a second basemen) but a long way away from Aramis and the nearly .900 career OPS. In short in a hypothetical world where you would get the same prospect talent back for Weeks and Aramis trading Weeks looks like it gives you a more competitive team for next year as well.

Getting an extra early round pick almost every year that is tradeable seems to me like it more than makes up for the go way over slot on a number of players every year draft strategy. If we get one after the 1st round we could really be swimming in picks next year.

It certainly looks like Estrada and Fiers are at least major league caliber pitchers, certainly they would draw an opening day start over Rafeal Roque. I'd have some serious concerns though about how good the team can be if the rotation plan drops Marcum and Greinke and fills it out with guys like Fiers, Estrada, and Burgos. League average starters are very useful, but if we go from having 3 above average starters to one that is a big talent loss to make-up elsewhere on the team. On an innings basis that would be equivalent to taking this years pen and replacing it with one of the top 5 pens. Not impossible, but looks like a stretch. Things look a lot better if you can find at least one other guy who looks like at least a traditional #2 to compliment those guys.

High upside guys are easy to find narwhal. There are skads of Olympians making less than peanuts who will be unemployed in a few weeks. Given the constraints of where we are picking these days high upside guys available to us tend to have a lot more in common with the Olympians than the Mark Appel's of the world. In that universe the Melvin strategy of taking big power guys even with an injury question mark or a weight question mark seems like a pretty solid valuing the value of prospects thing to me.

Cameron Garfield only had a walk tonight, but he is closing in on 100 PA with an OPS well into the .800 range. For a guy having missed that much injury time that's pretty intriguing as a 21 year catcher.

I rarely get to watch the Brewers, hence my question.

While the doubles record would be great for Morris and far more impressive than a Texas league record, his real prospect emergence has coincided very nicely in a lot fewer doubles since April and a lot more HRs. I'm starting to come around on him and that big time power tool he already has more extra base hits than Hart did during his MVP year. I was checking and to my surprise the park factor for Huntsville has not changed that much since Hart's performance (it is a pretty HR friendly place, but mostly neutral otherwise). The reason for more surprise is that a decade ago it was very much a pitcher's league where as the last few seasons it has seemed to play much more offense friendly.

It seems like the reports on his defense are still kind of vague, and not helpful in figuring out what to expect. If is still a little raw is it range, hands, or wild arm? For the first time in forever we actually have a first basemen who can help rather than hinder guys who may have a strong but wild arm. Which leads to an interesting question, how many errors from Gamel could Corey have saved, and how many less would have let Gamel's range shine through as the asset it was?

Ramirez and Hart are similar in that they are both being paid about what they are worth. Mostly because of age Ramirez seems more likely to actually be a negative at some point. Based on that factor he probably makes more sense to trade, but on the other hand in the uncertain prospect world Green is the only other potential starting replacement on deck. Hart does have more people who could potentially replace him. In both cases replacing them might be harder than some imagine. Both consistently can deliver offense north of an .850 OPS. Green can't really match that , though he can make up some amount of ground defensively. To help put some of this in more perspective despite the injuries and black holes the Brewers are still 5th in the NL in runs and 4th in OPS. Braun is obviously the most important player in the line-up, but the Brewers are a good offensive team because they still have a number of other very good hitters. I'm going on a bit because a number of times is has come up that Hart or Ramirez would look better lower in the line-up. Well this is undoubtedly true, but it misleads. The Brewers have the 4th best clean-up production in the NL! If those two were hitting 5th and 6th they'd be right behind the league leaders in OPS at that batting order. There is a substantial risk if you burn the line-up to the ground looking for younger players you will take the teams strength and leave us with the Dean Taylor years part II. I'm not saying hold onto every veteran, but lowering payroll doesn't automatically put more talent into the system!