JimH5

It really is weird. He makes a two word response to a fan, and less than a day later, there's a minor social buzz about it and a t-shirt for sale commemorating it. That's the power of celebrity.

He's smart enough to have been admitted to Stanford, and now rich enough to not have to worry about money. I don't see him coming back. That might confuse and torque off football fans and insiders, but there's no glory in playing until he's fully spent. More and more players are deciding to walk away while they can. And that's fine.

The best decision he could ever make. I hope more guys get out before the physical and brain damage ruin their lives. Colts fans were booing him as he left the field. That's heartless after he suffered such serious injuries while providing them entertainment.

I don't have any evidence to support it--just too lazy to look it up--but I think there is something to a guy needing to move on and start fresh somewhere else. He's been with the organization since he was 16. And even though the Brewers have made changes since his 2011 debut, it's still a lot of the same people and same messages. Arcia might do better with a different team and a different approach. The Brewers could bring him back for one more try, but he's no longer a minimum salary guy, and his production says he probably should be. I'm tired of watching him, and I have to think the stat studying front office is, too.

The culture of drinking in Wisconsin is pretty perverse if a guy can get 3 DUI citations and still be defended as not having a drinking problem.

I don't like that the GM of my hometown team is open to signing guys with off-field criminal issues. They're not all going to be model citizens, but 3 DUIs is disqualifying to me. I don't know enough of the details of his sexual assault case, but if guilty, that's an even bigger thing. Boo on Stearns for this one.

I suspect that it's holdover guys from the Melvin regime who didn't/wouldn't/couldn't adapt to a new strategy. It would be interesting if they moved from some newer hires. I don't know any of the names in their scouting department. Hope they land on their feet.

I mean, I suppose it's possible to root for a team to lose while rooting for a player on said team to still do well. But I also think it's fair to question whether those interests inherently don't lineup real well. But I don't fault Lucroy for wanting to win, and I certainly don't think the Brewers did him ill in a way that should cause Lucroy or fans of him to want him to 'stick it to the organization' or anything like that either. I just think that in the aftermath of the Braun scandal, the organization leaned heavily on Lucroy as a marketing prop. Braun was the face of the franchise as the homegrown MVP superstar in the mold of Yount and Molitor. He was front and center the main attraction, a great player, a good guy who signed a long term deal to be the next Hall of Fame Brewer. And then he failed a drug test and all of that blew up and he became radioactive, and he left a void in their whole publicity campaign. Braun was suspended. He was off of billboards and stadium posters and program covers. He had an untradeable contract and was booed at home and on the road. And so they turned to Lucroy to be their next showpiece guy. He was great with the military. He was an overachiever. He worked his way from being an unknown to an All Star. He was quiet and stoic. He put in the hard work at the most demanding position and got beat up with foul tips and squatting. He was concussed. He was sort of the AntiBraun. And he never made more than $3 million with the team, while they still found money for Lohse ($11M per) and Garza ($12.5M per), and were still paying Braun his $20M seasons. And then when it came time to extend Lucroy, the guy who helped them rebound from the biggest scandal in the history of the team, they decide to cut bait. It's a business, for sure, and he did fine in making money in his post-Brewers career. And it was probably better for the Brewers, too, to not be tied up to a 30+ year old catcher during a rebuild. But the Brewers really, really got more than they paid for in Lucroy, both as an on field performer, and in a guy who brought them back from a low point in public perception. So I root for him, even though he is now a hated rival. To me, he represents every hardworking guy who was overlooked by his employer. Sometimes it's good to see them come out on top.

True, my fandom doesn't line up perfectly with yours, or within the parameters of what you deem acceptable. Isn't that something... The Brewers (aka "we" in your parlance) might need all the wins they can get, but they're not going to win them all. And the Cubs aren't going to lose them all, either. Recognizing that, would you rather the Brewers lose on a Schwarber walkoff, a Jason Heyward game saving catch, a(nother) Jose Quintana gem, or a Lucroy clutch hit? The Lucroy outcome would be bittersweet, while every other loss would just be bitter. He was a great Brewer. And my admiration for him didn't end when he left the team. How dare I wish good things happen to him.

He just wanted to get paid and to play for a contender. The same as any of us would want. At that point in the franchise, it wasn't clear when the team would be good. And being a baseball fan means accepting 60 or more losses per year. If one of those comes at the hand of a former star, so be it, and good for him. He should have some joy considering all he gave us.

BLASPHOMY! I know. I loathe the Cubs. But I really like Lucroy and it wouldn't hurt the Brewers front office to feel some heat now and then. We are a very polite fanbase compared to many and the edict to Trust Stearns could use a little rattling once in awhile. Plus it would be a great story of redemption, and Lucroy is worthy of that.

Seems like the right choice was made. I agree. But I'm still a Lucroy fan and wish him the best. He was a star who gave it his all for very little money. And he was the face of the franchise while Braun was lying to us about his PED use. Lucroy was a homegrown guy who carried us through that episode.

The Brewers had every chance to keep Lucroy, and several chances to reacquire him in the years since he left. He was everything that a team could have wanted as a leader, productive player and citizen. I wish him the very best--even with the Cubs. And I'd be a little gleeful if he had a big moment for them in Miller Park against the Brewers, just to stick it a little bit to the team that didn't want to keep him.

Curt Hogg pointed out on twitter last night that Anderson now has a better ERA+ as a Brewer (116) than Ben Sheets (115). That's not to set off the Sheets fanboys (maybe), but to show how good Anderson has been.

Per Jeff Passan:

Agreed on Dubon. He has shown nothing special and is already 25. Maybe he makes it as a minimum salary utility guy. Why do you believe Arcia can be a .750-.770 hitter? He's only reached that level in 4 months out of 18 in his career, and 2 out of the most recent 10.

Dubon has 17 BB in 422 PAs this year. In AAA, he's walking at less than half the rate that Arcia is in the majors. In 780 PAs in AAA, he has a .331 OBP. That doesn't seem like a leadoff hitter.

If some team sees value in Arcia, they're seeing something that I'm missing. He becomes eligible for arbitration next year, so he will become more expensive, while still among the least productive offensive players in MLB. I don't know if Dubon is any better. He's already 25 and is just cracking the majors, so it might be a matter of neither guy having a future as a productive regular SS.

http://wsca1975.com/home I have not been there this year, but their website says the next one is August 11 and they have a commitment through 2020.

Perfect post! And the reason why I'm not going to invest much time caring about anyone but the top 2 or 3 guys in the minors. Almost every player in the system (and everybody else's system) is destined to make virtually no impact in MLB.

It depends on what it is. eBay history should give you a decent idea on the value of items. If you find a dealer who is willing to buy your stuff, I'd assume he would offer about 50% of the value. I have bought a number of things over the years from Mears auctions in South Milwaukee. I think they're good guys who run fair auctions. I wouldn't want to deal with a Craigslist sale. Too inconvenient to have some random person who might or might not be legit. There is also a monthly show in West Allis (Gonzaga Hall). It might be worth stopping there some time and see if any of the dealers are interested.

Thanks for your report on this. I know you're not nearly the complainer that I am. Live baseball should be about the fan experience, and this is one of a few ways in which the experience is lacking.

It is stunning to look at 50 years of Brewers drafts and see the only first rounders to have made any impact at all as starting pitchers for the Brewers were Sheets, Cal Eldred and Jeff D'Amico. Odorizzi was a trade chip and Alex Fernandez didn't sign. And that's about it. From Butch Edge to Nathan Kirby, there's a lot of disappointment in between. Incidentally, Mark Rogers is still just 33 years old.

Of course it's debatable. They can't get people through the doors fast enough because they don't have resources committed to doing so. They could have double the screeners and screening machines. They could do a TSA precheck style of speedy walk through for designated people. They could send transport carts out to the parking lot and screen people there and then drive them in. But instead, they're using their leverage as a hot ticket in town to force fans to make alterations without exception. They run the stadium operations in a way that makes sense to them, and if we don't like it, too bad. They screwed up entrance to the Ed Sheeran concert last year, too. There have been times when it has taken more than an hour to get from my house in Brookfield to my seat inside the stadium, less than 8 miles away. You can give the company a pass and blame their customers if you want to. But I never thought being a fan of a team meant that I had to silently accept every inconvenience they impose on us. This isn't really true for the same reason people think if everyone follows traffic laws to a T there will never be jams. It's false, and they still happen regardless. The Brewers can resource all day and night but if half the capacity shows up in a 15-minute span beginning 5 minutes before first pitch there is going to be a log jam at the gate. It doesn't matter how many guys they have checking stuff. IMO they have plenty of staff and metal detectors per entrance. At a certain point your returns diminish on spending money for that kind of thing. It's not like they can just pack each entrance with 300 ticket attendants and then you'll breeze on through. I'm only saying this because I've seen you mention it a few times in this thread now and I don't really get it. They're still being more than reasonable with the fans here. What if a grocery store said that their lines were too long, and it was the customers fault, and so during their busy times, you had to limit what you could take through the checkout line? Wouldn't you suggest that they could add more cashiers? I recognize that I'm digging in my heels on this one, and it's not the most important thing in the world, but their solution to their problem seems to be the laziest one possible.

This seems like a great way to add $3 per ticket to the cost of attending a game. I'll admit the TSA precheck thing isn't a bad idea, but might be tough to enforce. Would be a nice perk for SSH. This seems like a great way to add $6 per ticket to the cost of attending a game...and is frankly just a silly suggestion. Stop acting like this is some ridiculous inconvenience. It's a mild inconvience at most, and much preferred to the alternatives you've suggested that would certainly increase the cost of attending games. And again...everybody continues to gloss over the improved security portion of reasoning for this policy My problem with this policy is that it comes in the form of an edict that paying customers must follow to solve the problem that could be solved by increased staffing by the team. To expedite the screening process, the Brewers are putting 100 percent of the onus on fans (mostly women and families) and 0 percent on themselves. They could fix it, but instead, we have to fix it. And there's no guarantee that it's going to work, either.