igor67

Of the options listed only Gamel would project to have a bat close in value to Prince, the others are acceptable alternatives depending on defensive alignments and such. Keep in mind that at this point even an average defender at first would make up a little og the ground on Prince's bat.

I'm pretty sure that even one playoff series nets the 5 million of CC's salary. Now if they went a little overboard before this that's one thing, but the really big dividend is next year's ticket sales.

Suppan has done exactly what he was signed to do so far, but my concern about the deal was always next year and the year after when the money went way up and he got up to those kind of ages when all of a sudden it ain't there anymore. I'd much rather take the risk on Sheets for 5 years than Suppan for two. On that note looking for players that might be somewhat off setting, Adrian Beltre as a possibility? I'm sure any deal would be more complicated.

I wouldn't be opposed to Green getting a sprained eyelash and going on the DL for 6 months, and trying AA next year http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif. My gut tells me this highly increases the chances of Lawrie being a 3rd base prospect.

I agree in a universe where the Brewers were way out of it this year getting a prospect package like what they gave up for Sheets would make me quite happy ideally it would include an arm as highly rated as Laporta is as a hitter.

I could see why the Giants would say not to Cain and Lincecum publicly, but the Brewers could really give them a shot in the arm towards rebuilding a functional roster. How many games did we win with Sheets and one real big league hitter as our only real quality? We could easily give them two bats that could come in and play right away (say Nelson and LaPorta), and something like say Salome and Brent Brewer. For some comparison I dug up a 2002 top 100 prospects list. Imagine it's 2002 and we have been offered the following for Sheets. Keep in mind that you realize some of the players might not have ended up turning out. Mark Texieria, Josh Phelps, Christian Guerrero (yes I know we had him, but he's a good Brent comparable high risk high reward), and Erubiel Durazo. As a prospect package back in the day that would have been pretty huge. That kind of package should really appeal to a rebuilding GM. If not Bedard is probably a lot cheaper.

This would seem like the perfect time for Melvin to remember Arod and not bid against himself.

I have some doubts that Hardy is a consistent .800+ OPS bat at this point, but what his recent hot streak shows to some extent is that last April and May wasn't a complete fluke. Hardy is going to be a solid all around player. Given that Weeks has been such a complete mystery as a player, I wonder if the optimal strategy medium term wouldn't be to shift Hardy to second and have Escobar at SS. The range advantage is more important at SS and the steadiness is an asset at second.

Before I got too excited I'd like to see Fryer get some extended work behind the plate. We already have a scouting quote out there that when Gamel was drafted his D was ahead of his offense. To top that off there is always the specter of Catcher Offense Stagnation Syndrome. I'm becoming optimistic that Lucroy is working past that possibility, but low A is still early enough for that to set in when they get promoted.

There was always something that seemed a little bit fluky about Carlos' awesome run at the end of the year. That said I know he's way better than he was starting the beginning of this year. He could potentially eek out a Suppan like career. Which is rather valuable, but I like him in his current role. Ned could use him more aggressively, but right now he and Torres and their ability to go multiple innings are what is really holding the pen together. He's not quite the relief ace level, but is still really excelling in the role.

For what it's worth JJ nad Prince now have identical OPS totals with JJ having the OBP edge.

Looking strategically it would be a huge risk for the Brewers to give up either Escobar, Jeffress, Lucroy, or Green. Jeremy because at this point he's the only semi advanced pitching prospect with a high ceiling. We added a bunch of guys, but counting on pitchers who were just drafted is a fool errand. On a more fundamental level Escobar, Lucroy, and Green are the only hitters we've got that we can be confident that they can play average to better than average defense outside of the corner positions. You start trading those guys away and we end up with a complete glut of studs at the corners and nothing anywhere else. That is not a good plan for eventually having useful depth, or getting good value for those players in trade. Given the draft picks as compensation I do think it is reasonable to trade Laporta as the center point of a trade and add in some other parts. I don't mind going after the Indians, but I really would put a call into the Giants though because all things being equal they need a lot of talent and we could really afford to drop a number of bats on them for 1 starting pitcher. Something like Nelson, Gwynn, Laporta, and Salome for Lincecum. Maybe they don't bite for whatever reason.

While there was definitely some luck involved in Seth's performance there is something to be said for a guy with control issues maintaining enough focus to still throw strikes and bringing it back together to get through 5 innings. That is a sign of real positive development as a player. On another note it sure is nice to watch the other team be the ones to blunder into outs on the base paths and lose the game as a result.

Given the historical performance and the fact that one can legitimately point to injury as a past cause I like Brad better as well. Errecart is younger, but would have to go a ways on improving his contact rate to be a true force in the big leagues. I could see Nelson having a Matt Stairs like career very easily where he has a couple of big years seemingly out of now where because he finally gets his shot right in his prime years, and then can still hang around as an effective hitter.

I had thought about doing some projections with the Brewers having just reached the halfway point, but instead I wanted to take a look at what I think are some bad trends in the offensive performance. Stat number one is positive especially after the power outage to start the season, we are 3rd in HRs for the NL. We are only 9th however in runs. Those two statistics should necessarily track completely together. However they should be somewhat close (I would argue a range between 1st to 5th in runs would be reasonable). Well why the difference? I good candidate seems to be batting average where we rank only 12th. This is only compounded by a paltry rank of 11th in walks. Leading to an overall 12th rank in OBP. Most other things like stolen bases and doubles we rank middle of the pack, so I don't see them as any kind of concern, I choose to look more at components then the slash stats, because looking at the individual players we have some just plain wacky stat lines. Our lead-off hitter at this point has only one offensive skill- taking walks or getting HBP. His OBP is so mediocre at this point it makes his SB ability completely irrelevant. Hardy has actually worked himself up from a slow start to have one of the most balanced lines on the team. He doesn't do anything particularly well, but doesn't do anything poorly. The concern starts to build because Braun hitting 3rd is great except he is completely allergic to walk. His batting average is high enough that he isn't an OBP sink, but if you are Prince hitting 4th and none of the 3 hitters before you in the line up has an OBP over .340, what are you supposed to drive in? And Prince is one of the few players who actually draws walks. His power is down, but overall he's got enough average, and good power to still be a force. Moving onto Hart. A little appreciated fact is that Hart and Braun have the exact same number of walks 16. At this point they have very similar sorts of skills sets though Braun has way more power. It's not clear why Harts walk rate has dipped so much either, it was never huge, but he's generally been pretty close to the 1 BB/ 10 AB mark. At this point Branyan is doing everything when he's been in the lin-up, while Hall has unfortunately had such a weak performance in everything but HRs that it has not been pretty. Looking at the totals Cameron has also fallen prey to this batting average funk giving what would otherwise be very good secondary numbers a bad OBP. Finally there's Kendall who could legitimately merit some discussion of going higher in the order since he has maintained a solid batting average and shown continued ability to draw walks giving him the highest OBP for a regular not named Prince (3rd if you count Russell)! I see largely that we've got two different problems. One that we've had a number of players who have had freakishly low batting averages (Cameron, Weeks, Hall) Of those there's reason to think all of their averages must go up, but one does have to wonder about Weeks. Hall one wonders what his level is as well at this point since his plate discipline has always been somewhat sketchy. The other serious issue is that the line-up as constructed has a dearth of players who take walks. This one is less obviously fixable without new players. In a couple of prominent cases (Braun and Hart) you wouldn't dream of getting someone else anyways.

THe quote was will not give up two of the following, which if quoted correctly means that they might deal one of those guys in the right package.

Isn't this one where you just call it a groin injury and leave well enough alone?

I always thought the Twins were an interesting match-up. They DHed Mike Lamb and had him bat 9th yesterday.

Mota since he is still pitching in the majors might draw some mild interest I would think. I hadn't seen Rauch's name come up before and he is clearly the most intriguing player. Keeping in mind that we are dealing with Jim Bowden what would fair compensation look like?

Just a proposal. Hall gives them something to plug into the line-up and regain some value over the medium term. I was mostly just looking over their roster for parts that might be useful and that was about all I could find. I wouldn't take an issue with including another moderate prospect, since I think Rauch would be fairly significant for us.

Jon Rauch and Aaron Boone (as a platoon guy only) for Hall? Rauch has been pretty good as a reliever Aaron is just kind of filling in Hall's current role in an OK fashion (play OK D and with the platoon advantage he's been pretty solid on the OBP side). (more specific subject -TC)

I'm just pumped on Sunday I get to watch Sheets pitch. Maybe I can see another Prince inside the park HR http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

It's the batting average for Branyan that has me most intrigued. Intrigued because it has stayed high based on him hitting more over the fence instead of lucky singles. He has the physical tools that he could get into that ridiculous power hitting mode where he just sits back and waits for his pitch and then keeps smacking them over the fence. I don't think that's the case, but he has been hot long enough that one has to give it a moments thought.

The simplest way to get at the discrepancy is to realize that the correlation coefficient is using straight OBP, whereas the best run estimators have to adjust OBP's value to get the best fit. That's why you can have to seemingly contradictory pieces of information. Also keep in mind that the two statistics are not completely independent. And one thing that could be driving the higher correlation coefficient would be that very high OBP guys tend to also be all of your premier sluggers too. Whereas in the case of say Braun a high SLG doesn't always immediately pull up your OBP. That said and switching gears back to the original thread quote, I think looking at Vlad and even Sammy Sosa can be instructive for Braun career path. Most batters will learn to walk a little bit more as the age, in some cases it can be a very large difference if they are a very talented hitter. I would guess that at this point Braun would be seeing a lot fewer strikes if he wasn't in front of Prince already, but they will have to start throwing outside the zone more sooner or later.

Completely nuts, well it was definitely 9 innings of baseball worth watching.