danzig6767

Neither would be claimed, both would elect free agency, we would pay their salaries, and get nothing in return. A bit early to just dump them and swallow their salary. Between them they are a combined -1.6 WAR so far. I realize they are holding out hope that a sudden surge by either would allow them to move them (hence the post in blue), but really nothing in return is better than a negative return on their salaries. Somebody would pick them up and you can save the major league minimum. Brewers tried that with Wolf in 2012. Maybe should have let him go earlier and looked at the young guys. Waiving them might make more sense if the team had any young players worth putting in their spots, especially in the case of Ramirez at third. We have squat as thirdbase prospects in the upper level of the minors. Crravy can be called back up once the rotation needs a 5th starter again.

Yes, you absolutely can. Because the comparison is all about what the two organizations feel is acceptable. No you can't. The Packers can compete financially with every other team in the NFL. They don't ever have to trade good players away because they can't afford them. Packers management decides completely on who they want to keep based just on the cap. The exact same cap number that every other team in the NFL is up against, including the biggest markets while Green Bay is the smallest market in all of pro sports. No other pro sport is like the NFL with ideal levels of revenue sharing and a hard cap which combined pretty much allows all teams to keep whatever good players they want within the framework of the league cap number. Plus, the NFL is a lot like the NBA in how one single great player can completely turn around a franchise and keep a team good for a decade or longer. It's no surprise that the Packers have been good to great for over two decades now at the same time they've had first ballot HOF quarterbacks in Favre and Rodgers, while at the same time multiple other teams who have lacked a top tier QB, they've mostly languished in mediocrity. Elite quarterbacks cover for tons of warts on teams they play for. Hell, the Packers went 15-1 a few years ago even though their defense set a NFL record for most yards given up, but Rodgers greatness overcame that bad defense. The Colts went from a 10-6 playoff team to a 2-14 worst team in the league with Manning out for the year. They get lucky and land Luck though in the draft, and immediately go back to a 11-5 team. No single great player or even say two great players in baseball can make a team good each year by themselves as a top QB does in football or a superstar can in the NBA. I'm totally on the clean house train for the Brewers. We need fresh voices in the front office and if/when Attanasio hires a new GM, Mark needs to stop being a quasi GM owner who treats the Brewers as his own fantasy team. That said, the Brewers situation is nothing like the Packers for a variety of reasons. We do have a sizable financial disadvantage compared to a number of other markets, the Packers don't. We also won't turn this team around for the next decade simply by landing one great player as NFL teams can do by landing a top quarterback as the Packers have done twice in a row which is nearly unprecedented in NFL history except for the 49ers with Montana and Young. Aaron Rodgers alone in the QB driven NFL is more valuable than say a baseball team having Trout, Stanton, Kershaw, and Kluber. Rodgers alone is a go to the playoffs free card every season he is healthy.

KRod has arguably been our best player this season...why are you scared? 1.42 ERA 0.89 WHIP, he's on his way to his best career season as of the moment. It's pretty amazing how well he's been able remake himself after a loss in velocity from a power fastball/slider guy to now a more finesse changeup master.

Mets aren't going to even consider trading Syndergaard.

I can't ever totally walk away from watching the Brewers in a season even if they are bad simply because i love watching baseball to much, specifically Brewers baseball. The main difference for me in a season like this is i DVR most games and fast forward through stretches of the games. I'll watch say Nelson pitch, but fast forward through innings with Garza or Lohse on the mound. Watch any new guys who are called up. Without a DVR though, i'd very likely watch much less. For example, wouldn't watch the Brewers game with Game 7 of the Rangers/Lightning game that was on tonight or when the NBA Finals start. As for attending games, i'll still go now that summer and warm weather has arrived. I've always attended games as much or more for hanging out with friends and tailgating on a hot summer day/night than caring if the team wins the game i'm at.

Colorado Springs may be even worse than Coors Field. The city is about 1000 feet higher than Denver. Not to get totally off topic but isn't the issue in those places the huge outfields (deep fences) leading to lots of extra base hits and not so much the amount of homeruns? If that's the case, I don't think it should make a difference for hitters. It's not like they're going up there just trying to put the ball in the air and hope it goes out like right handed hitters in Houston. I haven't followed the move to Colorado Springs much to where i know about the ballpark, but i always thought when watching games at Coors Field that the very vast ground to cover in the outfield lead to more runs than homers flying out of the park. Outfielders had to play deep and thus so many shallow balls would fall in for singles. The gaps were so large, it lead to many doubles/triples. So innings were prolonged by would be outs in other parks falling in for hits. Mix in the home runs and pitches like curves and sliders not breaking as much was a nightmare. I sure hop the team isn't stuck there long term.

If you had a choice between say Broxton, Cotts, or Kintzler, you may as well just flip a coin and cross your fingers because all three suck. Using K-Rod would make sense if say Goldschmidt was due up in the 8th, but he wasn't. The odd thing with Broxton is his velocity is up to the highest since we traded for him and right up there with his days with the Dodgers. Just goes to show how important command is. Throwing 96 doesn't matter if a hitter knows that is coming because a pitcher can't command his secondary stuff.

I'm not trying to defend Counsell, but besides Jeffress, Blazek, and K-Rod, there aren't exactly a bunch of reliable options. Blazek needed rest. Jeffress already pitched. Cotts has been terrible. I'm trying to figure out how Kintzler is still collecting a big league check. I guess Smith could have been used. Either way, when a bullpen sucks as this one does, there simply are going to be a lot of games where the manager has to decide between what best of bad options should i choose from right now.

No doubt. I was no big Roenicke fan, but the team won 95 games and was two games away from the World Series with him as the manager. Two years later the team last year was unexpectedly in first place most of the year, then that was followed by an epic collapse. Now he's gone and the team is as bad as it was with Roenicke, which is no surprise given the pitching staff blows. Many Kansas City fans had pitchforks out wanting to can Yost and had Lester not gagged away an 8th inning lead, Yost is likely canned. Instead, his players rallied, KC makes the World Series, Yost gets an extension, and today they sit with a 29-18 record. In 2011 before the Cardinals made a furious rally in September to make the playoffs and then a title, aided by Atlanta collapsing, i remember reading a Cardinals forum. One post after another by fans saying LaRussa's time should be over. That he no longer knew what he was doing. Fast forward to a year or two later, i read their forum after the Axford trade. One post after another saying that Matheny was not only a terrible manager, there was a long thread questioning if Matheny might be the worst manager in baseball history. I'm not making that up either. Go to nearly any baseball forum and there will be many to the vast majority of fans ripping on the manager, even pretty often when a team is winning, saying that team is winning in spite of the idiot manager. Hell, i've been on this forum a long time and can't think of a single Brewers manager who wasn't constantly ripped on, regardless of how much it may have been deserved. Lopes was the worst. Overall, good players make managers look smart and bad players make them look dumb. Their importance in the record of a team in a given season is so overrated by lots of baseball fans, except in rare exceptions where say most players on a team either hate their manager and/or have tuned him out.

I was totally fine with canning Roenicke, but the team is just as bad with a different manager. Counsell has the same crappy bullpen options to choose from as Running Ron did and the same mediocre at best positional player options to choose from. By the way, the proper nomenclature for Broxton is Broxy. Both Roenicke and Counsell do the whole adding a Y/ie to the last name of players. It must be a requirement for becoming a manager of the Milwaukee Brewers given Yost, Macha, Roenicke, and now Counsell does it. My memory is to bad though to remember if Lopes also did it.

Glenn Braggs Had great stats in the minors and looked like this when he came up, during a time where players building up their bodies wasn't very common. Thought he'd be a mashing beast. http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1805791/BraggsGlenn90.JPG

In retrospect, i think it's fair to say that the worst decision of Melvin's tenure was hiring Seid to replace Zduriencik. Jack Z also sucked at drafting pitching, but at least he hit on a bunch of positional prospects. All small and mid-market teams need to be able to both draft well and scout well on the young international market to keep a steady influx of quality young and cheap talent flowing through the team. If that quality cheap young talent pipeline from the minors dries up, it's nearly impossible for lower revenue teams to be consistently good. Just look for example at how St. Louis has drafted compared to the Brewers when it comes to pitching. Hopefully Attanasio cleans house on the front office this offseason, but if he does, the new GM will rightfully so get all of the headlines. Who that guy hires though as his amateur scouting director will only get a small blurb in the paper, but that guy will not be far behind the GM in importance as to well how the team ends up doing under that new GM. Those amateur scouting directors running drafts across baseball are IMO easily the most underrated people in the game and most fans don't have any idea who they are.

I have a hard time believing that Melvin has the authority to make major trades involving guys like Gomez, Lucroy, and Segura without Attanasio first telling Melvin to do so. Melvin is in the final year of his contract and Attanasio has played a major role in the signing of every major free agent from Suppan, Lohse, Ramirez, KRod, and Garza. To think he could just blow up the team without Attanasio first giving the green light strikes me as unrealistic. Clearly those two talk a lot so it likely would have to be some sort of joint decision, but unless Attanasio himself is ok with trading guys like Gomez and/or Lucroy, i just can't see it happening. Attanasio was interviewed a few games after Counsell was hired and he said that for now he was mainly just focused on seeing if the team could start winning again. Granted, most people in that situation weren't going to say in public that hey, we are going to put up a for sale sign for every player on the roster if the price is right. Given how Attanasio has operated overall though for years now, it can be hard to envision him telling Melvin to shop anyone and pull the trigger if good offers come in. I guess we'll find out sometime in July assuming the team is still buried in the standings. If say only guys like Lohse and K-Rod are traded, we'll know that Attanasio simply can't stomach the idea of a serious rebuilding plan.

Yea, pretty dumb to have the stuff glistening right on the middle of his forearm.

Just look at the team ERA stats in baseball so far. Cardinals 1st Mets 2nd Royals 3rd Dodgers 5th Rays 6th Giants 7th Astros 8th Angels 9th Tigers 10th Then go look at the records of those teams and their place in the standings. Only the Pirates are a top 10 pitching staff, ranking 4th and still under .500 so far. Hard to envision any way this Brewers pitching staff can pitch to that level over the rest of the season.

Hard for any manager to look smart when he has a bad bullpen with few reliable options besides the closer. Jeffress has been pretty good and Blazek decent outside of to many walks, but that's about it along with KRod. This is yet another example of just how miserable the Brewers have been at drafting/developing their own pitching. Year after year we can't even grab any arms from the farm system to fill holes in the pen because the franchise can't figure out how to draft pitching. Pretty much every relief pitcher over a long stretch of time has had to come via free agency or trades except for Wooten and Kintzler type scrubs. Granted, a sizable percentage of guys in bullpens across the league have bounced around from various teams, but most teams have had at least some of their quality relief pitchers come out of their farm systems, unlike the Brewers. Think about it. Take roughly the last 10-15 years and all of the countless pitchers the Brewers have drafted over that time. It almost should defy the statistical odds that so few of those pitchers could have panned out good enough to be at least quality relief pitchers for a couple of years or longer.

If that means kick him in the nuts and send him packing, I'm all for it :-) I totally get removing Broxton from the 8th inning spot and this may sound odd given the results, but i've seen some potentially promising signs of late from Broxton. When he came over from the Reds last year, if my memory is correct, his velocity was down to more in that 91-93ish range. Same early in this season. In his last few outings though, his fastball has been sitting consistently in the 95-98 range. The best velocity in can remember since he got here and the same velocity as in his days with the Dodgers. The main problem though is a lack of command of his slider, so hitters mainly are just sitting on his fastball. If Broxton can keep throwing 95-98, i wanna think he'll eventually get command back of his slider and in turn see better results, regardless of what inning he's pitching in. If that were to happen, maybe we could trade him at the deadline so long as the team ate most or nearly all of his salary. I'd just be more concerned that he had no hope of turning things around if his velocity was declining while seeing bad results vs the velocity increasing as it has been.

I noticed that Counsell is now also adding a Y to the last name of many Brewers players. Why the hell does every manager the Brewers hire have to have this annoying habit?

Scooter has only drawn two walks in 65 at bats. In 718 at total big league bats so far, he only drew 34 walks. He should watch film of Counsell at the plate. Craig had zero power, but fabulous plate discipline.

It will be interesting to see what goes down at the trade deadline overall, not just the Brewers. We've seen less trades the last few years, especially sizable trades at the deadline. My guess for this is twofold 1. The rule change where teams no longer get a comp pick unless a player is with a team all season. In the past when teams traded for a quality player in the last year of his contract, one reason that they could stomach trading a good prospect or multiple prospects for a half year rental is that they knew they'd get at least a comp pick for that player if he signed with a different team as free agent. The Brewers for example knew they'd get a comp pick for Sabbathia. That trade incentive is now gone. 2. It seems like teams today value prospects more than ever before, even many bigger market teams. With player salaries exploding for good veteran players, having cost controlled guys for six years is so important to help counter balance the pricey veterans on a roster. Thus, a lot of teams just are more hesitant today to make major trades where they give up say a top 20-40ish player along with another lesser or prospect or two at the deadline. As for Lohse, if he keeps pitching well, i could see another team trading for him, but my guess is the return wouldn't be all that much given he'd only be a rental and not the type of starting pitcher to be a must start guy in the playoffs if a trading team were to make it.

His .609 OBP in 2004 just might be the most crazy stat of any baseball player. That almost doesn't seem possible.

Who gives a crap? When did Craig Counsell become some hot managing prospect? He's never done anything before to suggest he'd be a really good manager. Nobody knows for sure who will become a good manager until that person actually has the job. Plenty of guys who were either bench coaches or a manager in the minors before getting a MLB manager job, they end up failing while guys with less experience do well.

Wooten is a glaring example of just how poorly this franchise has been at drafting pitching. That our minor league system has drafted pitching so badly that Wooten was given multiple chances on the big league roster. The Brewers have not only been miserable at drafting/developing starting pitching, they've even struggled to just draft multiple guys to be quality relief pitchers.

He's having a frustrating year. The strikeout numbers continue to climb, as do his walks and home run numbers. He reminds me somewhat of Marco Estrada. Able to get strikeouts and look outstanding for stretches, but can't afford to allow many baserunners because when he misses location with that 88-90mph fastball, those basetunners come around to score.

Just keep in mind when saying that teams won't trade X prospect because he's such a huge talent, not long ago Jurickson Profar was considered arguably the best prospect in baseball. Fast forward two years and now Profar has a very questionable future. So while it is true that there are some prospects which teams likely won't even consider trading, Lucroy would be incredibly valuable on the trade market given he's in his prime, plays a position with few great players, and his contract is ridiculously team friendly over the next two and a half years. Lucroy is a proven MLB commodity, something no prospect is until they actually do it in the majors. If he really was put on the trade market before the deadline assuming he's healthy, he'll command elite minor league talent, especially given his contract status.