JohnBriggs12

Macha's job is to "win now". You stop trying to "win now" in mid June and you end up losing 100+ games. The problem is the guys Melvin gave him to "win now". They either are all hurt (Hawkins, Davis, Zaun, Coffey, Gerut), released due to ineffectiveness (Suppan, Vargas), aging (Edmonds, Hoffman, Counsell, Riske) or not living up to expectations (take your pick). It was a very poorly constructed roster especially considering the alternatives that were out there this past winter and the money spent. It's been made worse by simultaneous falloffs by veteran players, injuries, and unexpected poor performances by key guys, and the slow response to replace the worst offenders. Melvin deserves to take the fall.

This is easy. Game 2 of 1976 season. I was one of 10,871 fans that witnessed Don Money hit a walk off grand slam to beat the Yankees 10-9, only to have it nullified after Billy Martin argued for several minutes that time had been called by the first baseman. A. How many times does a guy hit a walk off grand slam to turn a 3 run deficit into a win? B How often does a first baseman call timeout, ever? C. How often do the umpires change a call after an argument and have to call players out of the clubhouse to resume a game? To me this incident was every bit as outrageous as the Brett pine tar incident, but because neither Money nor the Brewer manager went beserk, most people, even Brewer fans have either forgotten it or are not aware of it. It may be by far the most ignored moment in baseball history.

I think you're underestimating how much better Holliday is than Braun in the field. The Cardinals are a pretty average defensive club, while the Brewers are one of the worst in the majors. I viewed Suppan as a 5.5-5.75 ERA pitcher on the Brewers, and he may well be a 5.25-5.50 ERA pitcher on the Cardinals, although it will be lower when he no-hits the Brewers with 6 walks, 2 strikeouts and 3 home runs pulled back by Rasmus. I'll grant you Holliday is better, but unless he and Rasmus play 10 rows deep in the stands, he's not worth 0.25 runs per game. He's worth maybe 10-15 runs in a 162 game season over Braun. At best that's 1-2 runs per starting pitcher per season. That's a difference of less than .10 over 200 IP.

What exactly is a "realistic defense"? Cardinals defense isn't very good. Lopez is below average at SS. Schumaker is below average at 2B. Freese is average at best at 3B. Rasmus isn't better than Gomez in CF. Holliday's okay, but no gold glover. Ludwick is slightly above average in RF. The 2 places where the Cards have superior defenders are catcher and 1B and those aren't positions that will help Suppan much. Unless Duncan who specializes in helping pitchers get more sink can get some for Suppan, he'll be just as bad there.

This season is falling into the category of "everything that could go wrong is going wrong". It's the exact opposite of a team say coming out of nowhere and winning where "everything that could go right did". Rarely do either happen. Much of what has gone wrong was foreseeable at least individually though. Old players break down and skills diminish. That virtually all have done this in the first 2 months of the season is collectively to a great degree, bad luck. A few breakdowns couldn't be predicted. Who would have guessed that Fielder and Braun would combine for less than an RBI per game after 59 games despite both being healthy save 3 games. Lots didn't expect Wolf to put up the numbers he did in 2009, but nobody expected him to be this bad. The big question is can they recover from this and be a contender in 2011? On the positive side, they do clear a lot of salary off the books. At the same token, the same guy that built this mess, at this point is still in charge of finding the replacements. Also on the positive side is the failures have given some opportunities. I half seriously posted about a week into the season that Nashville might have a better bullpen than some major league teams. Little did I realize at the time, that one the bullpens it was better than was the Brewers. Now it is the Brewer bullpen. Many point to the solution being the trade of Fielder. Unless we know what they're offered for Fielder though, we don't really know if that's a help or a hindrance. No turnaround is likely either unless Wolf at least returns to being average. The obvious move that needs to be made (firing of Doug Melvin) isn't likely to happen. He's too close to the owner. So we can only hope that Melvin's luck turns around sharply.

Have to agree markedman5. The more Kottaras plays, the more he is exposed. He's got a good eye at the plate and some power. But he's also a career .239 AAA hitter and was waived at age 26 by Boston. If Lucroy isn't ready, they need to find a catcher somewhere. Here's where I pile on Melvin. Miguel Olivo was available in FA and I was advocating signing him instead of Zaun. Granted it's Colorado, but he's currently hitting .315/.389/.555, and he's thrown out 53% of base stealers.

I'm all for Capuano taking Wolf's turn for a couple starts and letting Wolf work on things in the bullpen.

As I noted in the transactions forum, Carlos Corporan was named PCL player of the week for the week ending June 6th. All "Mr. 1.000" has done in June is go 13 for 24, with 5 doubles, 1 triple, 2 HR, and 5 RBI.

It is becoming increasingly clear that although he's has some nice skills offensively, Kottaras is a defensive liability in that runners are stealing at will with him behind the plate. Lucroy has thrown out a decent percentage in the minors, but still could use a little work and isn't going to progress playing 1 or 2 times a week and it's obvious that Macha hasn't the confidence to play him more. Catching is such a hard position to fill that the same names of bad players keep resurfacing with major league jobs. Guys like Corky Miller, Chad Moeller etc, keep finding jobs. I'll throw a name out there of a guy who was Brewer property for 7 seasons, and was known more for his defense than his bat, but who's currently having a fine offensive season at AAA (.285/.318/.528) and was just named the Pacific Coast League player of the week. That's none other than Mr. 1,000 himself, Carlos Corporan. While Corporan's never been known for a potent bat, throughout his career, he's improved significantly each time he's repeated a level: low A: first year: .560 OPS, 2nd year: .680; high A: first year .672, 2nd year .975; AA: first year: .577, 2nd year: .777. In AAA, he slipped in his 2nd year but has rebounded now in his 3rd season at that level. He's still just 26. I can't imagine it would take much to get him back.

Capuano really doesn't bring any more to the table than Bush or Narveson stuff wise and in the case of Narveson, probably a little less. That he was able to use his smarts and know how as a 32 year old veteran to get out AAA hitters, doesn't make him a great starter at the major league level. I really think they want Bush to string together a few decent starts so he'll have some value at the deadline.

In both the Cardinal and the Twins series, they were blown out in the opener of each. The other 2 were tossup games that could have gone either way, so I think they got about what they deserved in each series. It's been more than the starting pitching though. The bullpen has had it's issues. Braun hasn't really hit since getting bopped in the elbow a month ago. Fielder hasn't had a hot streak all year. Weeks has had some really bad stretches. This offense can and should be doing more. Defensively, this team hasn't been very good either. Braun has become extremely timid in LF on balls in front of him. Hart seems to have lost about a step and a half in RF. Weeks still makes errors at critical times. Fielder hasn't been making plays that good defenders make. The catchers can't stop teams from stealing bases at will. This team is still very capable of a good stretch of 20-25 games. But they have to clean up the little things, get a little more consistent on the mound, and have the middle of the order start doing some damage.

While I agree it was another bad signing, Riske actually used to throw pretty hard and he's had spotty control issues from time to time. Who knows when Coffey returns, but basically it appears whenever he does, it will either be Riske or Smith that goes or both assuming at some point they will get back to 12 pitchers. Frankly I wouldn't want to see Riske in anything but mop up duty.

No chance the Giants will part with Bumgarner or Matt Cain either as I've seen suggested. The current 5th starter for the Giants is Todd Wellemeyer. At some point soon, they will replace him with Bumgarner. The Giants are getting decent production out of Aubrey Huff at 1B. I'm sure they would have interest in Fielder but unless the Brewers were willing to take the likes of Travis Ishikawa, Daryl Maday and one or two other prospects for Fielder I don't see a match.

Maybe Dillard? He's been more of a multiple inning guy and his ERA isn't all that impressive, but his peripherals are outstanding (WHIP of 1, K/BB rate of nearly 5, 2 HR allowed in 35 IP).

Yes I would, and probably Kameron Loe too though he is proving to be too valuable in the pen. Bush has fought his way to 6 quality starts in 11 tries this season. Granted he's occasionally putrid, but he will scratch and battle. Capuano looked to me like the same guy he was late in 2007. He can get through the order twice, but that's it. He might have value as a couple inning reliever but he's far from the guy that once won 18 games.

It's a huge stretch to consider Capuano one of your 5 best starters. What do you base that on? A few good starts at AAA? His last quality major league start was July 23, 2007. That's 9 starts and nearly 3 years ago. I don't have a problem with them mixing and matching some guys for a while longer to see if one emerges. Bush is a FA after this season and he probably has some minimal market value if he can string together 3 or 4 more decent starts. It behooves the Brewers to use him against teams with which he has favorable match-ups. In a perfect world, yes you keep guys on a normal schedule, but being on a normal schedule hasn't prevented these guys from occasionally being awful.

Vargas: released 6/4 Suppan: released 6/7 Hoffman: Davis: Hawkins: Still more work to do.

There's a perception out there by many fans, and some media types, that Yovanni Garrado II is out there and that the Brewers are clinging to Fielder rather than making a deal that would substantially improve the pitching. The truth is that if somebody offered Yovanni Gallardo II or an equivalent, Fielder would already have been traded. It generally takes established pitching to get young pitching and vice versa. Now they might be able to get a low level pitcher with a fairly high ceiling, but they aren't really lacking in those (see Heckathorn, Bucci, Odorizzi et al), but most likely the offers they get would be a decent fill in type bat and a mid level pitching prospect who's at AA or AAA. The problems the Brewers have are not going to be solved by trading Fielder. The GM whiffed on virtually all significant off season expenditures. Why that hasn't put his job in jeopardy is the real problem.

My gosh, there's been numerous players that have jumped from AA and lower to the big leagues. Robin Yount jumped from Rookie level NY/Penn league to the majors. Molitor jumped from single A Midwest League to Milwaukee. Some guys bypassed the minors all together, notably Al Kaline in the 50's and Bob Horner in the 70's.

Here's what everyone seems to be missing in all the discussion about trading Fielder. To get a veteran pitcher like Haren, you need to deal young pitching. An example is the Peavy trade last year. The Sox sent the Padres Clayton Richard, Adam Russell and another minor league pitcher to get Peavy. The key guy in the Halladay trade, was pitcher Kyle Drabek. Conversely, to get young pitching you need to deal veteran pitching. Fielder might get you a decent hitting prospect and a mid level pitching prospect, but nobody is going to deal a young high quality arm on the verge of major league success for a hitter. Take a look at what Oakland got for Matt Holliday: Two hitting prospects and 25 year old AAA pitcher with a career minor league ERA over 4. What makes anyone assume trading Fielder solves the pitching issues?

Braun's played 23 games since getting hit in the elbow. The stats are ugly: 102 plate appearances 98 at bats 9 runs scored 25 hits 7 doubles 2 HR 6 RBI 4 BB 15 K .255 BA; .284 OBP; .388 SP Whether it's because he's hurt or not is anyone's guess, but this is easily the worst slump of his career. 6 RBI in his last 98 AB, are you kidding me?

Certainly Loe is going to have moments where he's ineffective, but in watching his first few outings, you really have to wonder why it took a contract clause to get this guy to the major leagues. Is the Nashville coaching staff underselling these guys in their daily reports? Or is Brewer brass completely clueless when evaluating pitching? Think for a moment where this staff might be if Loe and Axford had made the team out of spring training instead of Suppan and Vargas. It's decision making like this that causes distrust of this regime. Remember, not only did Loe and Axford not make the team out of spring, it was a foregone conclusion that Villanueva wouldn't last beyond the first week and he's been the most effective reliever who's been there the entire way. Granted that's like being the tallest midget, but what was this braintrust seeing?

You have to wonder if there's a move in the works to bring in a veteran backup catcher. Not that Lucroy hasn't done well, but Kottaras has really grabbed the job, and Lucroy needs to be playing. Brewers might have had a better chance of getting Butler through waivers. Heether has value because he's got options left and therefore is a perfect guy to shuttle back and forth. I think once Gamel is eligible to come off the 60 day, they'll just put Zaun on it.

"How high is Gomez' upside. He's never been a high OBP guy and he's never hit for power" Sometimes stats don't give a true picture. You have to eyeball a player. From what I've seen, Gomez certainly possesses the bat speed to hit for power. He's also cut down his strikeout rate from 1 in every 4 AB's two years ago, to 1 in every 5 AB's. That's shows progress as a young hitter. As he starts hitting for more power, and I believe he has 20 per year HR potential, the walks will increase and the OBP will rise too.

Despite the high HR rate, he showed last year he can get major league hitters out. Opposing hitters hit just .232 with an OBP of only .317. Before closing last year with 3 rough outings, his ERA was sitting at a very respectable 3.07. There's absolutely no reason to think he couldn't do that again and compared to what we've seen out of the likes of Vargas, Hawkins, and Hoffman, that would be very welcome.