JohnBriggs12

How can I say this tactfully? It's quite understandable that Gallardo would have sensitivity based on how this law and its effects has been characterized by many. After all he was born in Mexico and raised in Texas. If that never made you think twice, you aren't being honest. That being said, by next summer, assuming the courts don't stop the law from going into effect, it's true effect (instead of what alarmists with dubious motives have said about it) will be known and it will likely pass as an issue. That being said, I do have a problem with athletes being used for political purposes on either side of an issue and ASG boycott smacks of someone trying to use him. If the law itself was a threat to him personally, what about the 6 weeks he's in Arizona for spring training and the times the Brewers are there to face the D-Backs.

Thundercat32, I often take the opposite view of the moneyball types on here. I can't believe you gave up on the Rangers because they traded Justin Smoak. It's not like he was tearing up the AL and at 23 it's not like he's all that young. So it's not like if the Brewers traded Braun or Fielder when they were 23. Smoak is slugging .346 playing in Texas. He didn't even slug .400 in AAA. Do you know what Braun and Fielder slugged at age 23? (.634 and .618). You should be more unhappy that they dealt a very good reliever in Chris Ray for Bengie Molina. It's also not like the Rangers don't still have great young core. Chris Davis is more than an adequate replacement for Smoak. He actually may be an upgrade at least in the short term. You've got a great young SS in Andrus too and young pitching galore in Tommy Hunter, Derek Holland and others. Cliff Lee gives the Rangers a shot at progressing in the playoffs. As we Brewer fans know, you can't assume you'll get there again, you have to go for it when you have a shot. I like their chances a lot more with Lee at the head of the rotation.

What has trading off guys prior to FA done for the Cleveland Indians? For Sabathia and Lee, the Indians received 8 players: Michael Brantley (.568 major league OPS), Matt LaPorta (.735 major league OPS), Zach Jackson (sold to Toronto), Rob Bryson (still in A ball), Jason Knapp (injured missed all of 2010, never pitched above low A), Carlos Carrasco (0-4, 8.87 ERA in 5 ML starts), Jason Donald (.754 OPS as 25 year old rookie SS), and Lou Marson (.530 OPS). So lets sum this up. The Indians got an average SS in Donald, a below average 1B/OF in LaPorta, some arms that haven't yet done anything in the ML, and 2 busts so far in Brantley and Marson. None of these guys figure to lift this team to .500 in the future, much less be the core of a championship team. For this, they threw in the towel in 2008 and 2009 at mid season and sacrificed 4 high draft picks. Attanasio has a point that trading off core players is starting over and prematurely at that. It's extremely doubtful that any return for Fielder, Hart or Weeks will lead to more wins in 2011 than keeping all 3 would. By 2012, the arms and bats presently progressing in the system may have as much impact as the guys they'd get in trades, plus they'd add multiple high draft picks for 2012 to keep feeding the flow of talent.

Not so fast. This isn't 1991. That year Tom Treblehorn closed out his tenure as manager going 40-19 (.678) in his last 59 games to finish 83-79. But that wasn't enough to save his job. Why? Because Harry Dalton had hired Treblehorn and he wasn't Sal Bando's guy. Bando wanted his choice for manager no matter what. Melvin is already on his second hire as manager. Most GM's get 1 do-over. Failure by Macha is a huge check against Melvin as it will be the second manager he has chosen who failed. This season started badly because Melvin handcuffed Macha with a disjointed roster due in large part to questionable offseason signings (Davis, Hawkins, Vargas, Zaun, Hoffman), the retention of "dead man walking" Suppan, and a bench that lacked a right handed bat. Now by around June 1 (arguably too late to save the season), enough of the roster issues had sorted themselves out to allow this team to compete. If you throw out April and May the standings in the NL Central are: Milwaukee 19 19 Houston 19 19 Cincinnati 19 19 St. Louis 17 19 Chicago 15 22 Pittsburgh 9 27 You can look at this as an indictment of Macha that despite the fact that the Reds and Cards are combined 36-38 since June 1, that the Brewers failed to make up any ground. Or it could be looked at that since the Brewer roster was purged of much dead wood, they've been the equal of any team in the division. Either way, the Brewers missed a golden opportunity to get back in the race. Now should St. Louis and Cincinnati continue to muddle along at a .500 pace the rest of the season, the Brewers easily could get back in it, especially if Fielder turns back into the hitter he was in 2009, and Braun goes on a hot streak. If that happens, Macha will stay around next year. If not, he's certainly gone and Melvin is 50-50.

I'm okay with Bill. He tends to be repetive, but he and Brian have good chemistry and is knowledge of the game is sufficient. I really like that he's been subtly critical of Melvin this season. He often points out how Macha is hamstrung with no right handed bats on the bench. Yeah it's a glaring issue late in games, but he doesn't gloss over it. I've been watching baseball a long time, and so has Schroeder. It's very unusual for a team to have no right handed bench bats. He's also willing to point out when players aren't performing and he does it subtly. When Fielder walked last night, Anderson, as usual gushed about how he's maintained is OBP. Schroeder pointed out that the bigger need was runners being driven in. He didn't single out Fielder by name, but you knew what he was thinking, yeah the walks are great, but Fielder gets paid to drive in runs.

Another deal that's bad for baseball. Let's see they can run out 4 starters who are a combined 40-10. Is there any reason at all to watch postseason baseball?

I'm with X elllence. Why would anyone want them to draw well? All that would do would make the fans look like bigger saps in the owner's eyes. It's one thing to be just plain bad but making an effort, it's another to be playing well below your abilities. This team doesn't deserve support.

The White Sox wouldn't make that deal even before Peavy got hurt. Fielder made sense because they need a big lefthanded bat, and Konerko is a FA after this year. But now they need Hudson. If he performs well, he'll be very hard to get in the off-season. The Sox hate doing business with Boras too which makes Fielder less attractive to them.

Somehow a voucher to a future game after you've just witnessed that actually might be met with some additional negativity.

I'm 0-3 at Miller Park and 0-1 at Wrigley. Two of the 3 losses at MP were blowouts including a Sunday debacle every bit as bad as last nights against the Cubs in April. I haven't seen a win in person since May of 2009. As of now I have no plans to see another game live this season. Only thing that might change that would be simultaneous firing of Doug Melvin and Ken Macha. This is exactly the reason I would never buy a package. Now I can use that cash saved for football tickets and the PGA.

You jest, but his business could well be a distraction. This entire team seems distracted. Fielder's thinking about what Howard got. McGehee's got a new baby at home. Counsell and Edmonds are thinking about which contender they'll be with in a month. Gomez is wondering why he can't beat out a 40 year old. Escobar's probably wondering what that nut running his homeland will do next. Losing will cause guys to lose focus. This team right now is so fragile mentally it's ridiculous. When they swept the Twins and won the opener against Seattle, it looked like they would go on a role, but a loss here to Seattle and a couple to the Astros seemed to take the life right out of them.

Cecil would be an excellent target. Young, controllable, and good with some track record in MLB, albeit not a large sample. I would ask for Morrow as I believe he has turned the corner in his development and has the bigger arm. I'd do either straight up. I have somewhat of a hard time believing the Jays would give up either for Lawrie though, but you never know and if they actually have expressed interest in acquiring him I think you'd be follish not to explore the possibility. There's a difference though in saying you like a player being interested in acquiring a player. They would really have to like Lawrie a lot to part with a guy who's dominated the Yankees in both starts against them this year before turning 24. But Lawrie is 3 1/2 years younger and projects as an above average bat somewhere. Everyday players don't grow on trees either especially cheap ones that as the only Canadian franchise, you may be able to eventually entice into a very favorable long term deal, ala Braun. This would be an interesting deal from both sides. The Brewers would get immediate help where they need it, but in the long run, this deal could favor the Jays.

I think it's just another symptom of the incredible amount of tightness that has enveloped this team. They know they are better than this. Macha knows his job is slipping away. That's not a combination that makes for an atmosphere of peak performance. They need to put Macha out of his misery.

I believe this team as presently constituted could easily contend next year. Since June 1st, the pitching staff ERA is under 4. That was about the time that the dead wood was cleaned out and Hoffman returned to some form. They'll have to either re-sign Bush, or replace him somehow, but that shouldn't be too difficult. There are arms currently at AA that well could figure in the picture next year. Narveson is essentially still a rookie. He's got quality stuff. If he can learn to overcome his 1st inning issues, he can make a significant improvement. Offensively, one player has exceeded expectations this year. One. I won't count Inglett because he hasn't had enough at bats. A couple are about where they were expected: Weeks and McGehee. Most are well below their career norms, including Braun and Fielder. Is Fielder really going to hit .160 with RISP for a second straight year? Is Braun going to slug 100 points below his career norms next year too? Escobar and Gomez/Cain are certainly capable of improvement. Revamping the roster isn't going to assure anything. There's no guaranty that new names and faces will live up to expectations either. They do need some changes. I don't think Macha's a terrible manager but he's not well suited to this group. Melvin needs to better assess what he has and avoid loading up with older veteran mediocrity. Don Money deserves a shot at managing this team. Yeah, he's old for a rookie manager, but the guys he's had performed well for him in the minors. I think he'll get more out of this group.

I actually would prefer the Brewers focus on a Fielder to the White Sox for Daniel Hudson deal. Hudson's a couple years older than Bumgarner, and thus would be under control farther into his prime. He's also righthanded. Hart's still risky, but he doesn't have Boras as his agent which makes signing him more plausible. Either way, Hart for Bumgarner or Fielder for Hudson, I think it's going to take a Parra thrown in to get it done with another player back from the Giants or White Sox.

This would not be a PR move at all. The day he signed his first major league contract, Jeffress had stuff to get major league hitters out. The entire minor league experience is about gaining maturity, refining secondary pitches, and learning how to handle being a professional. At 23 which he will be soon and hopefully within a year of when he'll be ready to stay, he would benefit from absorbing the atmosphere at the major league level so when he's called up the next time he won't have as big of an adjustment.

Macha says: "so-so isn't good enough". If that's true why is Davis replacing anyone? So-so would be an improvement for him.

Two months of Hoffman costs a team about $2.5 million. The Brewers wouldn't get anything of value back for him (other than saving $2.5 million), but if he continues to string scoreless appearances, I could see a team like Detroit having interest. The $2.5 million isn't going to scare them away. Counsell and Edmonds are 2 more guys that teams will value for a couple months. I'd expect both to be gone if Brewers drop completely out of it. Bush too would have value to teams that need a 5th starter down the stretch.

"RBI is a terrible stat". I dunno. There are guys in Cooperstown who got there almost exclusively by driving in runs. Now you could say Tony Perez wasn't all that good, but in his day, you didn't want to face him with runners on and the game on the line. If driving in runs was so easy, why is Fielder having so much trouble getting runners in this year? It's not like he hasn't had opportunities. He's had 102 plate appearances with runners in scoring position, and he's hitting .165 and slugging .228 in those appearances. He's even worse with 2 outs and RISP, hitting .139 and slugging .167. Getting hits with men in scoring position wins games. It's not all that complicated. You can dismiss Casey McGehee if you want, but this is a guy that's won games with RBI's, including a 2 strike, 2 out hit off Carlos Marmol, one of the toughest pitchers in the game just to make contact against, much less get a hit in that situation.

Weeks has no shot unless both Martin Prado and Brandon Phillips get injured too.

While Zaun's injury led to Brewers discovering what they had in Lucroy sooner, it's unfortunate because he may have had some market value. Chris Ray looked awfully good against the Brewers. Now they may have to face him again.

It's not what you or I think Invader3K. It's what Attanasio and Melvin are thinking, and when you hear as I did last night listening to the Astro telecast that: "the Brewers see Hart as comparable to Jayson Werth as a guy who took a while to really blossom as a player", that stuff doesn't come out of thin air. It starts at the top. Frankly I don't see Hart repeating 2009 in 2011 which is his big contract year.

Aren't you guys listening to Attanasio? Hart's not going anywhere. Attanasio believes that even if they can't quite get there this year, that they have a team that will contend in 2011. That's not all that far fetched. Dumping Hart for two pitchers in A ball? Won't happen. Hart is starting to put up stats that could make him a type A, and if he does, then he'd bring 2 high picks after 2011 anyway.

Maybe so, but then why even bother with Capuano this season? Pitching-wise, he did everything far better than anyone would have expected this year, so why waste the resources simply to showcase him for someone else? He has been unlucky in the sense that as soon as he was ready to start, all of the Brewers' pitchers finally started pitching better. However, you would think that Macha would be able to find an inning here or there to pitch him. If he has to go out and throw now, I have concerns his arm would explode. I guess the "long man" is supposed to be an aging vet who is expendable, and Capuano probably fits that bill, but he was dominant in the minors this year, so we might be wasting talent by not pitching him occasionally. I'm still up for trading Bush. Other GM's know the numbers that YoungGeezy listed (or if they don't, Melvin can let them know). He's a perfect option to be traded to a playoff-hopeful team in need of a 4/5 starter. We need a rotation spot to open up and we aren't getting anything for Bush after this season. Might as well get something for him when Davis is ready. I think the Brewers honestly thought that Capuano would not exercise his opt out clause out of loyalty to the franchise that continued to employ him throughout his rehab process. It's my view that the Brewers were looking at Capuano as an option for late this season and 2011 and would much have preferred he pitch an entire season at AAA. A lot of organizations would have pulled the plug on a guy like Capuano long ago, but the Brewers tend to stick with guys. At the time his opt out clause would have kicked in though the Brewer staff was in a complete state of flux and disarray. Capuano (and more likely his agent) probably figured it was worth it to force the Brewers hand then especially after a couple nice AAA outings and the Brewers would have looked bad had he departed in May so they brought him up. But several things have happened. The Brewer rotation stabilized. Capuano was so-so in his lone start, showing the same tendency to not be able to get through an order more than twice that he showed the last year he was here. They've kept him around as long as possible but when your pitching staff is performing well, you aren't going to use the 13th guy very often. Also by shelving Capuano, they increased the likelihood of getting him through waivers. The reality is Capuano is a soon to be 32 year old pitcher who hasn't had success in the majors since the first half of 2007. He wasn't dominant in the minors this year either. He had one dominant start for Nashville, followed by 2 starts where he allowed 17 hits over 13 innings and finally a 4 inning stint of shutout ball. Given such a small sample, those numbers are not predictive of how he would do over the course of a major league season anyway. Besides we're not talking about a guy with overpowering stuff either. He's a soft tossing lefty with a changeup as his out pitch. It was not Macha that put him in this situation. Macha's job is to put the guy on the mound that gives them the best chance to win. It's not his job to focus in the rehab process of a pitcher making a comeback. Capuano put himself in this situation. He could have waived the opt out clause, continued to pitch in AAA and established that he's fully healthy and effective over longer than a month or 6 weeks. He opted to gamble. Maybe he thought he'd be exposed over a full season and wanted to strike while he was hot.. Who knows?

While Zambrano has always been a head case, he's now a head case with a fastball that is 4-5 miles per hour slower. He used to throw 94-95. Now he throws 89-90. If he comes to grips with this, he probably can be a back of the rotation type. But he sure hasn't yet. Someone on Chicago radio suggested the one guy they might be able to trade him for is Carlos Lee but that wouldn't happen because they already have Soriano in LF. Personally, if I'm the Cubs, I make that deal. Carlos Lee could replace soon to be FA Derrek Lee at 1B.