igor67

Gatewood and Harrison are fairly prominent examples in my mind. Luckily Gatewood seems to be making some adjustments, I'm all for moving guys along, but putting guys really high when they don't have a lot of track record seems to be causing some issues, particularly with injuries (Harrison) or the difficulty of hitting in Brevard.

Given the problems the team has encountered the last few years in particular with aggressively promoting position players and watching them flounder, I'll happily take fewer reps at 3rd for the balance of the year for Gatewood vs. jumping Erceg straight to Brevard and watching him implode at the plate. Long term it's an issue if you can't get them at different levels, but this is a perfect example of the issue I had mentioned last week about having too many prospects at the lower levels and it potentially leading to a situation of diminishing returns as players eat into each others playing time.

No interest in an expanded playoff. There are ebbs and flows to a baseball season that are unique, in large part because of the exclusivity of the playoffs. I loathe that the NBA and NHL playoffs are almost as long as their regular seasons.

My concern is more on the development side. Certainly when it comes to the obvious talent (your #1 draft picks mostly) there is no practical world where you could ever have too many of those players. Mid to late round players on the other hand those are much more likely to be the guys who need a little extra time to figure things out, and having spotty playing time or maybe only a year to show us what you can do before we bring in another 30 mid to late round picks next year cuts into the chances of those players developing with us at some point. I don't know how to judge exactly when that would become an issue, but I'd feel somewhat comfortable asserting that if we end up dealing Braun, Lucroy and a reliever or two and the returns are dominated by A ball or lower players of high caliber we will probably be at the point that someone who could have developed gets lost in the shuffle.

I just looked up the Pirates recent finishes, 3 consecutive second place finishes and what seems like a likely 3rd place this year with no post season birth. Their pitching staff is doing nothing and their star player has looked terrible. So that's a 4 year span, the Brewers best five year span 07-11 started with 2 second place finishes, 2 3rd's and a 1st. And without diving deep into the archive, I'm pretty sure the calls for tear it all down were starting to beat already in 2010. One could parse those seasons a number of different ways to argue who has been more successful, but that is kind of the point (Pirates 3 playoff appearances vs. 2 for the Brewers, but the Brewers have 10 post season games compared to only 7 for the Pirates If one accepts the high level of real variation that exists in teams year to year as a reason for not trying to predict prospect waves (perfectly rational), then being overly critical about a management strategy that did in fact yield comparable results to a team lauded for doing it the right way seems a bit odd. This is not intended as an argument for going for it this year or anything like that, but there is a lot to be said for having a team with a reasonable chance of making the playoffs at the beginning of the year and keeping that going instead of hyperfocusing on 1 or 2 year windows and hoping all of your prospects develop and staff cheap at the same time. Getting a collection of prospects that develops enough together to be a threat could take as little as 2 years or it could take quite a bit longer (which is the risk of the rebuild you keep cycling through talent hoping to get a critical mass).

After a pretty bad start overall in terms of prospect growth, things certainly seem to be looking up with player performances, still plenty of guys who have work today, but if Ponce could keep up this and give us something to really get excited about that would help a lot.

Excited to see Troy Stokes continuing a mini hot streak, despite being his 3rd year he doesn't have a lot of ABs even this year, so he could still turn that stat line around fairly easily. Also worth noting that DeMuth is hitting for a little more isolated power this year in Brevard then he did last year in Wisconsin. And of course Gatewood with another walk even though he went hitless.

This starts to get into territory I used to mention, but haven't needed to worry about. Namely with so many younger prospects at what point do you have too many and start hurting your chances of developing higher risk or players who have a hiccup or two because you've packed the lower leagues?

The money is kind of secondary at this point with the payroll already so low, but struggling or not I'll take a 20 year in AA as a pretty solid return for Hill and Wilkins is exactly the kind of player we can afford to give some time to (especially after Jungman's implosion) see if he can be something.

Wow what a first inning for the Arizona club scoring 15 runs! On only 6 hits!

The Brewers are obviously not the richest team, but I continue to be surprised that more teams don't find ways to purchase minor league affiliates that they like. Surely in a year with the major league payroll down they could find some capital toward this investment.

Actually I'm in the camp that the extreme power sapping effect of Brevard seems just as bad as the artificial boosts from Colorado Springs. Particularly for the higher strikeout high power types. So much of their potential value is just taken away that its pretty easy to kill a guys career good teaching or not. Roache kind of made it through, Coulter has been abused by the park. And looking at some of the high risk reward types we were all excited about its the last place I would want to send Harrison or Gatewood next year. They've made strides after tough first years, but not a giant leap that they would need to be able to get through Brevard, and I just don't see them surviving another down year. OK is fine with the hope that if they can at least keep treading water and advancing the tools might really take over at some point, but Brevard makes me very nervous they won't end up looking like Coulter on a bad day.

So I'm kind of curious with all of the college draftees how placement is going to shakeout. There are a lot of position players who have been playing better after horrible starts, but only Allemand is doing well enough to really justify a promotion. On top of that there were a fair number of guys waiting to get started at Helena already, so it's not like you can dump all of the college guys there either. I'd hate to see us short guys who still have a chance on playing time.

Even moreso if you are drafting an OF, a pitcher or a middle infielder. In the first round the talent should be enough that you could easily move him or other top notch players to other positions in the middle IF or OF. And with pitchers if you are worried about playing time for a 6th starter because he is a number 1 or 2 type starter you'll be OK.

Why worry about salary at this point? The payroll is so much lower I'm not really sure it's that big of an issue vs. getting a better player. That said I'd rather see Orf get called up first. Arcia has been doing well in AAA, but not completely dominating and I would imagine once he is up he'll be up for good so I'd like to see him ready to do well right away. Orf is pretty interesting and could be a really great utility guy in my mind and maybe even at least an average regular, but he probably needs a good solid chunk of MLB ABs to let that happen, so why not now and then we can sort out our 2B, SS, 3B starters and bench guys a little more clearly for next year. It could even be a pretty big strength given the number of interesting players we have floating around those positions.

DeMuth has sure gotten hot a 6 game hit streak and 4 of the games have been multi hit nights. The season stats still aren't great, but its so hard to figure out how much to adjust for the FSL.

Walks are nice, but for some of these young high risk guys like Gatewood just getting some positive momentum they can build on is huge. It's a lot easier to try and work on patience when you aren't pressing at the plate because nothing is falling.

Hill with a chance tomorrow to hit HRs in 4 straight ABs

I peaked at number 1 as well, I agree very surprising. How about Griffey for another guess? And for a complete off the wall George Bell.

Frank Thomas, Sosa, Mcguire I would think are in there some place. The more I think about it with the league switch Big Mac is probably number 1.

Any thoughts on Johnny Davis this year? He's off to a pretty good start after losing almost all of last year, but he is also 26 in A+.

No, I have to do a double take every time and it doesn't help that a large portion of the AAA roster is new.

It's an interesting dynamic because if you are going to play young guys it is really important to give them a serious chance to show themselves. The slightly different issue in this case though is that Broxton isn't trying to hold off random journeyman player in his 30's there is another young guy who wants a shot. Normally I'd lean towards giving him at least a month, but if he can't get a hit soon you want to reward Reed and give him a chance to establish himself. There's nothing wrong with trying to win some games in a 'rebuilding' year.

Minor point, while straight up a comp pick is not as valuable as what we should get in trade the value under the new draft rules as you get more bonus pool money and the flexibility that comes with that enhances their value over what they would have been a few years ago. Not enough to not do a good deal, but worth understanding. Short of another major contender losing their catcher this is the near perfect scenario for maximizing Lucroy's value. He is hitting alright the team has a solid record and injury is forcing a loaded contender to make a choice... All early in the season,so it is still practically an offseason trade in terms of length of getting the player.

The temp might have kept the velocity down a bit.