igor67

I guess I disagree slightly with you Dr. until an injury trashes a tool I don't think of them as having an impact on ceiling. Likelihood of ever being useful certainly. Durability is such a fuzzy concept that I hate to see it put a guy into a box of potential. On the other hand aggreeing with you, It might be entertaining just to put together a list of lefties over the last 10-20 years that could throw with control a fastball over 93 mph. I'd venture to say that it is indeed a list you'd love to compare any prospect too.

And yet MLB will continue to be the second most tainted sport after cycling. I think most of the anti_bud rhetoric is sour grapes and personal dislike, but he has doen a very bad job of pointing out how much better and stricter the MLB testing regime is than any other non-Olympic sport.

Well since we're a rumor mongering site able to control the media perhaps we should make up more rumors. Particularly ones were we trade almost nothing for Yankee players as if we were entitled to whatever players on their roster we wanted.

Matt Morris may be his best in years, but with less than 4.5K's per 9 innings I don't see how he's worth anything without a ton of fly catchers and a spacious stadium.

I agree with tyguy. The ways in which the Brewers are being managed differently this year than previously is quite important, and careful use of prospects as supplements is only one of those. I hardly think it's lost of Melvin that the best pitcher in baseball pitched out of the pen even after he was done with his rule V year. In years past our rotation would have naturally stunk to the point that Villy, Gallardo, and Parra all would be in the rotation either because of performance or injury. If you factor in Parra's historic K and BB numbers with his stuff he is pretty much the ideal profile of a top of the rotation lefty, not a back end throw him out there type.

I'm just happy Graffy is way out of his funk because he actually hits pretty well for a middle IF and I think he tends to be a little underrated. As messed up as the arby thing turned out it wasn't the worst thing in the world especially know that we are trying to essentially fill in for Rickie.

I think perhaps a better way to quantify what your talking about Roco is to think of warm up itself as pitching a full inning. This meshes with what we see though with the innings totals relievers actually pitch 70+ is pretty high and the only guys who can touch 100 are frequently used long relievers who go multiple innings.

BY extension Peavey does that not makes us mainstream media and therefore passe?

I'm still skeptical that Gwynn has enough power to maintain his OBP, but considering the power output for the rest o the line-up he and Counsell actually have some real value. I wouldn't necessarily mind seeing their elevated OBP's in between Hart and Braun/Fielder.

I would like to emphasize Louis ELy's point about top prospects. I think unless you are trading for a perennial All-star there is no longer the expectation that you are going to be giving up a top 50 prospect. And once you get beyond that upper crust prospect ratings tend to vary a lot more on depend on when scouts see a guy and their preferences. I'd be somewhat worried that Morris ERA might be deflated quite a bit by home park, but he's certainly intriguing.

Just to point out that our stud Carlos Villeanueva has had games this season like his first one where he walked 3 guys or not even a week ago where he gave up 3 HRs. Let's not tar and feather the guy just yet.

Steven Tyler's dorky older brother

I'm really not that interested in WIllis his numbers are way up this year, and if you park adjust his current career ERA from Florida it starts to get close to 4. This year his got a 4.81 ERA his HR's are up and strikeouts way down. I think he debuted at a young enough age to qualify as being a phenom and those guys tend to age poorly and his throw well over 200 innings in each of the last two years (23 and 24 year seasons) and is on pace to do it again this year.

Projection updates. Just using what ESPN has for the rest of the year Braun would project to lead all Rookies in the 3 triple crown categories and steals, OPS, extra base hits. His final line is projected as 35 HR 96 RBIs and 20 SB. That's just nuts for a guy who missed almost two months

I haven't looked at the other games box scores but if you add up the walks and total bases from last night the Brewers should have won the game by a lot more than 1 run. More on the order of a 7-3 final score or so. I'm curious if the Brewers actually strand as many runners as we think they do. given that they are a high SLg relatively low OBP team they should strand fewer on a percentage basis you'd think.

I agree that does actually seem to be a reasonable deal. We basically trade the slumping Cappy for a non-slumping version of himself without sacrificing any years of control. We give up a decent prospect for this, but not the moon.

Some seemingly random thoughts: This may be the Brewers scouts best year on record considering how many exciting prospects there are and that La Porta and Jones aren't playing right now I don't believe we have any first rounders playing! That means that all these guys took some effort to sift and winnow through. AA has a fairly high number of very age advanced prospects which is huge Inman, Garrison, and Brantley. I'll say this I will be surprised if Brantley is not a regular MLB player. Salome still exciting, but he is an extreme put the ball in play guy. His K-rate is awesome, but the walk rate is even lower. I just hope he develops more like Hardy then Estrada. It's pretty sad when you can be almost batting .300 and still have a below average OBP. Of course Captain Lou is totally the opposite in approach watching pitches like crazy a very interesting contrast.

Well he also has a tendency to let starters try and get out of it, but has seemed to be a lot more on the ball since falling asleep at the wheel in Washington. I don't mind the benching assuming it doesn't last too long before he gets a shot at some regular playing time again. A week or so and then give him a couple of starts. Otherwise he really should get sent down and bring up Rottino or Crabbe for the bench.

I was thinking that it was more that Yost had been more proactive since hanging Cappy out to dry in Washington.

I was kind of surprised that Lee's OPS was still over .900 because his HR totals have taken a huge dropoff. He's still drawing walks and has that very good BA. Looking at it though he almost looks like he could be ready to take a big nose dive. His HR rate is lower than any other year of his career and that kind of dropoff would seem to beg for more pitchers to challenge him, and his BA is way above his career mark by 50 points. Maybe he's drastically changed his approach, but if those batting average points start to evaporate he could quickly become more of an albatross than an asset.

Subtle point I didn't properly make the first time. The problem with the aggressive pinch hitting Russ is that with those extreme splits the other manager can always comeback and get you at an extreme disadvantage the other way by subbing in again latter in the game.

I didn't see the TV stuff, but there was an SI article and I thought it was pretty straight forward. Torre's plays favorites. His favorites are the players that got him rings. As it happens there is a number of black players who helped Torre get rings and they tended to be treated well by Torre. The story strikes me as very keeping with human behavior and highly plausible. Similarly Sheff displays that quintessential characteristic of humans to not bother thinking about how others may be approaching the situation and assume that being treated differently couldn't possible have anything to do with his own behavior.

Mench 2/5 plate appearances I take some issue with your statement Rluz Jenkins track record is fairly long, but we've gotten the the stage of the game where his most recent performances is likely to tell us a lot more about the future then what he did 2 years ago. a Typical pattern is to weight the last season twice and the two years before once. At his age you should probably being doing more like 3-1-1. Combine that with a guy who's kind of at the margin to begin with and it's not difficult to change ones mind over the course of a few months. More importantly I think you over simplify the platoon issue. For a variety of reasons even in a platoon you are still going to have to bat at the disadvantage from time to time. This year about 1 out of every 6 of Jenkins PA has been against lefties. A fulltimer faces close to 1/3 or so. I have a hard time imagining that even a proactive manager can push that number to more than 1/7 or 1/8 which would only amount to 5-10 less plate appearances. I think where both Mench and Jenkins are costing the team is that they have such extreme splits. Jenkins hits like Kendall against lefties and only can manage a modest .834 OPS against righties? Mench is also hitting like Kendal against righties but is at least putting up a near .900 OPS against lefties. Essentially the team is forced to cede any ABs these guys have when the team gets outmaneuvered platoon wise, which will happen and tend to be in more high leverage situations. At a rough pass look at it like this. Every AB the team can get an advantage on with Jenkins net.s them about 30 OPS points over a hypothetical .800 OPS baseline. For Mench they gain .100. On the other hand they are giving up about 250 points when either player bat at a disadvantage. That I think is too much ground to make up in the long run and is moreso why I think platooning these guys is not the best solution for next year.

Anybody else notice Jenkins OPS has dipped under .800 and he's OBP has dropped under .320? You can't just blame it on seeing a couple of lefties the last week he's been cold for a couple of months getting platoon protection. I suppose he's still got time to go on one of those hot streaks, but our average left field OBP is now getting dangerously close to .300 along with our starting catcher. That's a only a few steps from a Dusty Baker special offense. I'm starting to change my mind on Jenkins being back next year as a result.

UW-Madison BS Biochemistry 2001 grad school UofM no degree Teaching Licensure Hamline University I did work study as an undergrad in labs which was great. I actually did have a second job at Fedex for awhile in grad school because of an extreme situation. You don't really want to do that it did not turn out well. While getting my teaching License I worked as a bill collector.