danzig6767

FSN ran a piece about the Brewers academy in the Dominican Republic. One thing i wondered about after watching it was do the Brewers have exclusive or at least first chance signing rights to the players 45 players they are training? Watching the show, it looked like this can't be cheap given the academy is providing a place to live, three meals a day, teaching classes besides baseball, and the actual baseball instructors who need to be paid. So i'd assume the team should have a built in advantage over other teams in signing a kid who looks promising? Also, if say a team signs a kid out of an academy they run, does that money count the same in the international bonus pool allotment each team has per year or is their some break for the money spent on the academy?

Yea, he sounded like a punch drunk boxer. That was bizarre to watch.

Well, quite a bit is pretty vague. If that meant a top 5-7 prospect, i'd pass quickly, even though our farm system isn't exactly loaded.

The thing i have never been able to grasp is why some players who have bad to terrible plate discipline never really change, even though it hurts their earning power and sometimes even their ability to stay in the majors? I'm not saying that Segura is destined to be a hacker his whole career, some guys do eventually change to varying degrees. Gomez for example is at least a little more disciplined. That said, for players who do really end up hurting their career long term because of terrible plate discipline, why don't they just change their ways? I totally get some really young guys having bad habits at the plate, but if after awhile it's clear that excessive hacking is hurting their career and coaches continually remind these players to look for better pitches to hit, why do they simply refuse to do it? What am i missing?

I would assume pitchers have figured out he is not going to hit the ball out of the park and to walk him would just be stupid (other than IBB to get to pitcher). So he will not have as many opportunities to take a walk as K.Davis gets for example. I'm sure there is a stat somewhere regarding how often pitchers throw strikes vs balls to Segura vs everyone else or how many swings are to pitches out of the zone for Segura. Is he remarkably more than the average? I'm not trying to be a dick by asking this question, but do you watch most of the games? I lost count a long time ago at how often i've yelled at the TV saying why the hell are you swinging at that Jean? Sure he's not alone in doing that. Hell, Braun frustrates me often by the garbage he swings at, but he's so silly skilled that he can still be productive by having only mediocre plate discipline, Segura doesn't possess that hitting skill level. For as much as you could say that pitchers don't fear Segura, so they throw him an abnormal number of strikes, i'd bring up two other things. Pitchers and catchers watch tons of video. So just like they saw with say Yuni that they could throw him lots of pitches outside the strikezone and he'd still swing, it's the same with Jean. Besides that, look at someone like Craig Counsell. He had fly swatter power, yet he had a better walk rate over his career than Braun currently has. Pitchers don't consistently throw fat fastballs right over the plate to any hitters. Plate discipline is a skill and attitude. Segura has neither right now, he just loves to hack.

Why should Tampa be able to get quite a bit for Zobrist? 1. He's 33 years old 2. His stats have declined in back to back years 3. Tampa is terrible this year 4. I doubt they'd pick up his 7.5 million dollar option next year 5. Trading him would save penny pinching Tampa about 3 million this year and the 500K buyout for his option after the season. I'm pretty sure he'll get traded, but my guess is that Tampa won't get that much for him beyond saving over three million and at best a mid-level prospect unless he starts really raking soon. He's 33 years old and sporting a .712 OPS.

If he gets just one extra flair a week, just one. A gorp, he gets a ground ball, a ground ball with eyes. He gets a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week and he's back up to .294. You could say that about every hitter in baseball though. There is a reason why some guys are consistently productive and others aren't. It's not because of luck good or bad, it's simply because some are better hitters than others. I'd be less concerned about Jean if he hadn't also been horrific the second half of last year, but he was. If anything looks flukey, it was his great start to last year. At some point he has to start grasping that being more selective at the plate is much better for his long term desires to be an upper-level shortstop. He's just not good enough to let the pitcher dictate most of his at bats.

It would help for starters if he didn't have such atrocious plate discipline. Look at what happened with Khris Davis once he stopped hacking at nearly any garbage a pitcher threw him. Davis only drew a single walk in all of April, but has 14 since. I'm not saying that's the only issue hurting Segura, but often it's only really good to elite skilled hitters who can still be highly productive while having below average to bad plate discipline. It's not just the lack of walks which hurt poorly disciplined hitters, it's also harder to square up on pitches out of the strikezone and/or to hit well while being behind in the count a lot.

I am so unbelievably sick and tired of hearing about "that" team too. I am not a fan of "that" team, in fact, I have become an anti-fan. My allegiance is to a different NFL team, so that sheds a little light as to why I am not a fan of "that" team. The constant news and information gets so irritating. As a full fledged fan of MLB, I get increasingly annoyed with the coverage of the NFL every year as it seems to get worse and worse as the years pass by. I opened up my fantasy baseball page the other day (yahoo) and was horrified to see the lead stories being based on the NFL. This is the middle of fantasy baseball season, and they can't help themselves, the NFL fantasy season takes top bill, even in June. Really angered me at the time. I wait all off season for fantasy baseball, and still, football gets top bill. I digress....I am bitter. Whether it's yahoo, local sports talk/TV, or national sports stations, they are all a profit driven business and football is by far the king when it comes to sports in America. Just look at the ratings. You can even have two crappy teams matching up on say Monday Night Football and it will still draw better ratings than MLB playoff or World Series games. Locally, the Packers dominate sports fan interest in the state, mainly because even non-sports fans still follow the Packers. I know lots of people who watch every Packers game, but watch little to no other sports. Fantasy football is the clear king of fantasy sports. So what do you expect profit driven media outlets or fantasy sites like yahoo to do, ignore the evidence of football's incredible popularity to their own detriment? Trust me, if baseball was the clear king in popularity, things would be reversed. Football is simply a ratings and interest monster.

You gotta remember that in 2008, the team had been on a two decade run of mostly futility, so actually being good again and making the playoffs was a massive story, along with a big boost to baseball in Milwaukee. Then in 2011, being really good was still pretty new to the city and it was a 95 win team. So having a first place team again this year is no longer a shock to the senses as it once was. Hell, for as incredibly popular as the Packers still are in Wisconsin, nothing again will ever rival the level of hype and excitement as when they made the back to back Super Bowls in 96 and 97. They were often the lead news story just for regular season games. Now there is still plenty of hype for the Packers, but not to that level. Fresh success after tons of losing is always the sweetest for many sports fans.

Pirate fans have to despise the Brewers even more than normal. Their terrible record vs the Brewers are the main reason they are only .500 instead of first place.

The walks are killing him big time IMO. Marco has always been very homer prone, but it's been his ability to keep a low WHIP which kept many of those home runs solo shots or two run jacks. His normally very low walk rate has really spiked of late though and it's killing him, turning to many of those home runs into 2-3 run homers, even grand slams as we saw yesterday. He has to stay ahead in the count a lot and keep walks at a minimum. Looking at his stats, he's still below a hit per innings pitched and the K rate pretty good, but he's already allowed as many walks in 79 innings as he did in 128 innings last year and 138 innings the previous year.

I empathise with Sutton, I won't listen to a Brewers' broadcast on TV anymore, Rock's continual cliches drive me nuts, as does the lack of actual insight he provides. No doubt Rock is a cliche machine. One thing that he does which drives me nuts is anytime a guy is in a slump or hitting poorly in general, all he harps on is that supposedly that hitter is just trying to pull the ball with each at bat. He says this with Segura all of the time as to while Jean is hitting poorly, but rarely ever mentions the atrocious plate discipline. Yea, Segura probably does try pulling the ball to much, but to me the biggest issue is that he constantly helps getting himself out by swinging at garbage. He's either making contact to often with pitches out of the zone which are very difficult to square up on or he gets himself in bad hitter counts by swinging at balls, adding further to the odds he'll get poor pitches to square up on.

What happened? Well, they are last in the AL in runs scored and 10th in ERA. As crazy as this is to say, not a single everyday player has an OPS above .800 and nobody has more than 7 home runs. It's really hard to score a lot of runs with so little power. Baseball like all sports can be both predictable and very unpredictable from year to year for a variety of reasons. Here the Brewers sit with the 2nd best record in the NL and Tampa has the worst record in the league. Miami has a better record than Texas, even with Jose Fernandez out injured. Boston is 28-35, a slightly worse record than Houston. Stuff like this happens every year and it's the beauty of sports IMO. As each new season begins, fans can honestly hope to exceed national and local expectations, while other fans will have their hopes crushed early on by a terrible start, kinds like how that brutal May last year sunk the Brewers.

The non-multi year deal aspect would be appealing. While 7.5 for the rest of the year is pricey, i'd prefer that over trading any sort of quality prospect at the deadline for a firstbaseman.

The Brewer's have never risked drafting a player early that they weren't sure they could sign, in addition if they don't sign the player they lose all of the slot money from the pool as well. What is the logic behind this rule?

Here's a quick summation, all the websites are understandably slow right now, still efforting the exact verbage. Why did they change to rule that way, strikes me as a dumb change? I can't see the logic in that. As for Gatewood, in watching videos of him and reading stuff, would a good best case scenario comparison be something like Manny Machado of Baltimore?

I'm pretty poorly informed on this, but i think the Brewers then have to go cheaper on guys going forward in the draft? I have my own question. If a comp pick doesn't sign, do you get that pick back next year in the same draft slot or is that only on regular first round picks?

Yea, if it is true that Seid had Trout highest on his draft board, only to see him go one pick before and then end up taking Arnett, how do you ever get that out of your head? I remember reading a book by Ron Wolf. I forget the exact year, but he said that he had Ray Lewis already written on their draft card with the 27th pick and even were on the phone with him as Baltimore's time was running down to pick, only to hear Lewis say at the last second that he had another call. Baltimore stings Wolf by take Lewis and he said something to the effect that this was the first and only time as Packers GM that he seriously got rattled. He ends up picking John Michaels who was a bust and Lewis had a HOF career.

In general i agree with. For as many positives Marco has, he has enough negatives via home runs/ability to stay healthy that in the end, he very well could lack the skillset to bring enough in a trade for it to be worth trading him. That said, it's easy to see why he serves up so many home runs. His fastball has zero movement and is only around 88-89 mph, so when he leaves it right over the plate, it's a power hitters wet dream pitch. IMO it's all about him keeping his WHIP low so that when he does leave one of those meatballs right over the plate which ends up in the gap or over the fence, there aren't multiple baserunners on. Estrada reminds me a bit of better version of former Brewer Dave Bush. When going well they would limit baserunners, but the mediocre fastball always left them prone to a ball getting absolutely crushed. The main difference between the two was Marco had a better K rate.

I don't follow the draft much, so why was this pick considered a big reach?

4.5 is just an arbitrary figure. If you believe Nelson is better, does it really matter if he manages to hold is ERA at 4.3 as opposed to 4.5? And I just don't see why either Philly or SD would want Estrada. Philly plays in a sandbox and is 9 games under .500 in a tough division. There doesn't seem to be any match there. SD plays in a hitters park, but why would they want a 31 year old back of the rotation starting pitcher? I think you can get either the bench player OR the C prospect for Estrada, maybe a little more(C+ prospect) from a team like the Yankees who might need a guy for a month because of injuries. Marco in Yankee stadium would be a disaster with that short porch in right field. Now the Padres may have no interest in him, but at least Petco would be an ideal park for him to pitch in.

Marco has always given up a lot of home runs, it's his glaring weakness. That said, he's been able to be fairly effective because he doesn't give up a lot of hits, his walk rate has been really good, so has been his K rate, leading to impressive WHIP totals. This year though, his home runs allowed have gone from bad to horrific and for whatever reason his walk rate is up. When Marco keeps his WHIP at impressive levels like the last two years (1.142/1.078), that means fewer baserunners on base to score when he serves up a juicy fastball to get jacked out of the park or in the gap for a double. Solo homers are ok with Marco, but it's the 2-3 run homers which are a killer. He has to get his walk rate back to previous norms.

I hate any umpires with wallet sized strike zones

For as great of a hitter as Braun is, his one flaw is that he doesn't walk at the really high rate that some other elite hitters do. For whatever reason, he just swings at more pitches out of the strike zone than a guy of his skill level should given the fear he instills in many pitchers.