danzig6767

Of all of Seid's drafts, the Jungmann and Bradley debacle stings most. That was a huge chance for the Brewers to potentially land an impact player and instead both look more like busts.

Odds are against the Brewers making the playoffs this year, but i wouldn't say that with certainty. Every year there tends to be teams who do quite a bit better than projected and teams who do quite a bit worse than projected. Take the last two years. Last season. Pretty much nobody had the Indians winning 92 games after winning only 68 the year before or the Pirates winning 94. On the flip side, Toronto had high expectations and only won 74. Washington finished 10 games back. San Fran was 76-86. The year prior nobody had Baltimore winning 93 games. So while i understand the skepticism of the Brewers being a serious playoff contender this coming season, a variety of factors can happen to each team which only after a season end helps explain why they did better or worse than expected. Everything from injury amounts, certain players having a better or worse year than expected, having a good or bad year in say one run games, etc. The same happens in other pro sports. It's fun for fans trying to predict how exactly sports teams will do before a season starts or to read computer simulations of how a season will play out, but thankfully games are played on the field/court/ice and there are always surprises. This Brewers roster has enough talent to be one of those surprises, even if the odds are against them making the playoffs.

I didn't start the thread so much complaining about how Attanasio runs the team, it was mainly pure curiosity as to how big of role he has in the bigger free agent signings and trades. Overall, i like him and am happy he was the one to buy the Brewers from Bud. Here and there we get snippets in the media about Attanasio being directly involved in negotiations with agents after free agent players have been signed, but i'm curious if he's sometimes taking the lead in getting players signed, even if say Melvin isn't as enthused or if they reach a mutual agreement before all major moves are made? Some professional sports teams are run like the Packers where the GM has complete authority with very little to zero interference. There are the Dallas Cowboys where the owner is the GM. Then there is a wide gap in between where most teams are run with owners who have varying degrees of influence. This dynamic i find interesting.

Hard to not like this Garza deal so long as he checked out medically, but with Attanasio mentioning the signing, i'd love to be able to listen in on discussions each year between Mark and Doug when it comes to both deciding on a direction for each season and especially on the free agents signings/trades the team has made over the last 5 years or so. 1. Does Melvin bring up signing or trading for X player/players and mostly just ask Attanasio for a yes or no? 2. Instead does Attanasio suggest that Melvin be aggressive in pursuing the players they've signed/traded for over the last roughly 5 years? 3. Has Melvin ever disagreed with say a free agent that Attanasio wanted to pursue, but Doug was basically overruled? After many of the bigger named free agents the team has signed under Attanasio, it's often been reported in the media the he was pretty involved in the negotiations. A prime example i wonder about was the Loshe signing. For a few months Doug was asked if he was interested in signing Lohse, but he kept saying that he had no desire at all in losing a first round pick to sign the guy. Then out of nowhere it comes out that the team signed Loshe and media reports said that Attanasio was negotiating directly with Boras. So i wondered at that point if both Doug/Mark were in total agreement on the signing or if instead it was more Attanasio simply taking the initiative on his own to sign Lohse, even if Melvin had fairly strong reservations about losing a first rounder to get the signing done? It's clear that Attanasio isn't one of those mainly just sit in the background type of owners who sets a budget and that pretty much ends his involvement. To what exact degree though that he is involved in roster decisions, especially bigger decisions is something which is hard to know for me at least. So does anyone here have any inside knowledge of how the whole Melvin and Attanasio dynamic works when it comes to everything from deciding what overall direction to take each year and/or the major signings/trades involving guys like Suppan, Greinke, Wolf, Ramirez, Lohse, Garza, etc. because the media has never really delved much into that dynamic from what i can recall?

Unless i'm mistaken, Garza has only had one arm injury, that to his elbow. The time he missed last year was a strained muscle on his left side which made him miss the first seven weeks of the season, but he didn't miss a start after that. Besides maybe the elbow becoming a problem in the future, what exactly makes him a very high candidate for a catastrophic injury as you put it? I'm not a doctor so i have no idea what level of risk for the future typically comes from a pitcher having a screw in his elbow, but he had made 30 plus starts over four straight seasons, so it's not like he's been chronically hurt or had dreaded shoulder issues. FWIW, i'm not trying to dismiss injury concerns for Garza, but i just wonder if that's a sizable exaggeration to say he's already a very high candidate for a catastrophic injury unless you are a doctor and know exactly about what's going on with his elbow, and what level of concern it is for the future.

I'd rather we burn the pick by signing a player that has proven he can play in MLB than burn it by allowing Bruce Seid to make the selection. Unless guys in the last two drafts or so finally start producing some higher end prospects, i've said it before that the biggest mistake of Melvin's tenure will have been first hiring Seid to run the drafts and then keeping Seid in place to long. No small market team can thrive long term without a prosperous farm system that produces both some impact players here and there, along with some solid contributors who play for cheap. We'll see how guys like Davis, Nelson, and Thorburg do when given prominent roles, but overall Seid has been a disappointment and that's probably being kind.

I get where you are going with this, it's not the first time I've seen the idea floated around, and I think it could work for large market teams, but unfortunately not for the Brewers... not if we're talking about trying to win a championship. If the bar is set at a Wild Card appearance, then maybe. You can win a ton of games with mediocre pitching and a top tier offense, but no one has won a World Series with that kind of setup. Boston lead the league in runs scored last year, but were 15th in ERA, just two spots above the Brewers. They won the title. In 2011, the Cardinals were 8th in the NL in ERA and 1st in runs scored. In the playoffs, numerous times their starters besides Carpenter were so bad that LaRussa had to pull starters even before the 5th inning. They won a ring though mainly because their offense was fabulous throughout the playoffs, scoring a whopping 100 runs and their bullpen was lights out. Clearly pitching is generally vital to success in baseball, but your statement above simply isn't true. Those are two recent examples just off the top of my head and i'm sure their are others. The playoffs and World Series in baseball can often be a crapshoot given the number of Wild Card and lower seeded teams to win it all. Hell, in that 2011 World Series the Cardinals won, Texas was twice one strike away from winning it instead. I forget which Giants title it was, they were very close to being eliminated in the first round. The first Boston title almost never happened and instead they'd have been swept by the Yankees if a Bernie Williams line drive lands two inches to the left in fair territory instead of foul. There are so many examples of both playoff series and World Series games being largely decided by a few inches, a bad call, an error, one bad pitch, a key hit by mediocre hitter, a baserunning blunder, etc etc.

That's the surprising thing to me. With all of the new money in baseball, salary inflation has risen dramatically and thus 13 million per today is a lot different than 13 million per only just a few years ago. Granted, Garza comes with some health concerns, but i sure expected him to get paid more than he got, especially since draft pick compensation wasn't attached to signing him.

Fondy, i've heard nothing about Davis being platooned and nor should he be. The only positions where a potential platoon seems logical is first and secondbase.

Hey, if the Brewers end up trading Weeks before the season starts, then play Gennett everyday. If that doesn't happen though, i'd platoon them. You and others wouldn't. We clearly don't agree on that and i don't see opinions being changed, so a dead end has been reached. FWIW, my view on this isn't just about maximizing the available talent on a roster. Many will disagree with me on this, but i do think it can benefit some young players/rookies to not put them in positions to potentially fail early in their MLB careers. Scooter killed righthanded pitchers after being called up last year, but odds are very high that he won't hit them that well this season. So lets say hypothetically that Weeks was traded before the season and Gennett is given the everyday job. He not only gets dominated by lefties, he doesn't hit righthanders nearly as good as last year. His confidence gets shaken, but now there is nobody else credible on the roster to give him a week or two off to clear his head or at least hit vs lefties. There is a reason that a lot of teams try easing in some rookies into roles that maximize their chances to succeed, be it a pitcher or position player, especially among guys who aren't a can't miss prospect. Having Weeks on the roster could not only give better production vs lefties, it could allow Roenicke to avoid having to play Scooter vs say a stretch of good lefthanders who could easily end up dominating him and it getting in his head, especially if he's also in a rut vs righthanded pitchers. On the flip side, if the team looks like it's going nowhere after a few months and in at bats vs lefties Scooter isn't looking totally overmatched, then he could be given the everyday job and Weeks either released or traded away with us paying nearly the vast majority of the money owed to him so as to find a taker if he wasn't playing well.

1. Why go out of your way to "hide" a hitter from pitchers who throw lefthanded when there is a clearly better solution sitting right there on the bench? Lots of teams do this with certain players. I just can't grasp your thinking here, it sounds like something Ned Yost would try rationalizing away because it made no sense to everyone else. 2. The Brewers aren't going to keep Weeks on the roster simply to have a platoon partner for Gennett. They are going to keep Rickie because he makes over 10 million dollars next year and they hope he rebounds with better production to either help the team and/or potentially make him attractive enough to be traded at the deadline. For as bad as he was last year, only a season prior he carried a .387 OBP vs lefties. That wouldn't need to be hidden. If the team was using an extra roster spot to bring in another righthanded secondbaseman just to platoon with Gennett, then i might be more on your side. That isn't the case though. Weeks was/is going to be on the the roster regardless of if Roenicke chooses to use a platoon at secondbase. So then it just comes down to only two situations. Roenicke can either start Scooter vs lefthanders and leave Weeks on the bench even though Rickie gives the team better odds of scoring more runs in those given games or he can put Weeks in the lineup and increase the odds of scoring more runs. Watching Roenicke though, it wouldn't surprise me if he chose the route of playing the inferior option, even if lefties end up dominating Gennett.

Not that i want Young signed, but he's 37 and coming off back to back seasons showing decline. If he gets stubborn and demands to be an everyday player with any team interested in signing him, well he could then find himself out of a job entirely. There are a limited number of everyday jobs still available around the league and a 37 year old player with eroding skills can quickly find himself with few options if his demands are larger than his playing abilities.

Maybe I should have used the word "expect". Yes, I'm sure Doug and Mark "hope" to content but if either of them "expect" to contend they are delusional. How many prognosticators pegged the Pirates and Indians for winning 90 plus games before last season started, winning 20 more games than the Giants and Phillies? How many pegged Baltimore and Oakland winning 93/94 games the year prior? No question the odds are against the Brewers being a very serious contender for the playoffs next season, but like in most sports, unpredictable things happen every year whether it's multiple teams ending up being better than expected and/or multiple teams being worse than expected. That's a big reason for the appeal of sports to many fans, the volatility from year to year which is caused by a myriad of factors like health, players performing better than expected, or worse than expected. Thankfully, that's how sports are instead of a computer being able to just crunch a bunch of numbers and spit out who wins and loses, and that decides it.

Just because leaving Gennett in to flail around miserably vs lefties wouldn't technically kill the offense by himself, that doesn't also mean it makes sense to have him be a powerless out machine vs lefties when a significantly better solution is sitting right there on the bench. It's simply maximizing the available talent on your roster, as other teams around the league do. This isn't some radical new idea i'm proposing here. By your logic, it would make sense to let a LOOGY reliever pitch as much against righthanded batters as lefties, even though righthanded hitters crush that guy because that alone won't cause a team to lose a bunch more games.

I have no problem with platooning some players early in their big league careers if they struggle very badly vs pitchers from one side of the plate. Doing so in say a rookie season can both help the team and player by not setting up that player to fail really badly at something they currently struggle big time at, to where it can get in their head. Instead, gradually let them face lefties or righties. Teams do this all of the time with rookies who struggle terribly vs pitchers who throw lefthanded or righthanded, and it doesn't ruin that hitter's chances to improve down the road. Plus, Gomez IMO is a bad example to use in trying to make your point. Using him how they did eventually lead to Carlos becoming a better than competent hitter. That along with giving up on trying to make him be a type of hitter which he simply couldn't be as a ground ball hitting slap hitter given his speed. Swinging as hard as he can ended up being the only way Gomez can be productive. Plus, he hits righthanded and most starters are righthanded. So starting Carlos only in games vs lefthanded pitchers severely limited his chance to be out there 100 plus games. Gennett on the other handed bats from the left side, so even in a pretty strict platoon, he would start around 100 games or more. That's playing a lot of games for a rookie who is far from being some can't miss type of elite prospect and if Weeks isn't productive in his role of the platoon and/or the team ends up being bad, Rickie could be removed and Gennett allowed to play everyday.

It's true that most lefthanded batters hit worse vs lefthanded pitchers, but there is a difference between being just worse vs lefties and being flat out horrible vs lefties as Gennett is. These are his numbers vs lefties in AA and AAA. 2013 vs lefties-- .262 OBP/.592 OPS 2012 VS lefties--.271 OBP/.607 OPS That's not just struggling a bit vs lefties in AA/AAA, that's Yuni Betancourt like without the flashes of power by Yuni. Scooter was even worse than that in 39 big league at bats vs lefties where he only had 6 singles and not a single walk for a dreadful .175 OBP and .329 OPS. Granted, that's a very small sample, but when considered with how brutal Gennett hit lefties in AA/AAA, it's hard to not project that big league lefties will very likely eat him alive again this coming season, turning Scooter into a powerless out machine. So since the team isn't in some full blown rebuild mode and ready to punt on the season before it even starts, it makes no sense to me to start the season with Weeks on the bench when a lefty is on the mound given the odds are microscopic that Rickie wouldn't be significantly more productive than Gennett vs those lefties.

That wasn't exactly a convincing article 1. He fails to include that not only was Gennett terrible vs lefties in limited big league at bats, Scooter was also terrible vs lefties in his last two years in minors once he had to face more advanced pitching in both AA and AAA. 2. For some strange reason the writer seems to have forgotten that Weeks is and likely will remain on the roster next year. So his point about having to waste/carry an extra roster spot dedicated to being Gennett's platoon partner isn't really relevant given that unless Weeks suffers a significant injury in spring training, he's going to be on the team. The Brewers aren't going to just waive Rickie and trading him would be very difficult. That's why it makes no sense to me at all to not platoon Gennett and Weeks. Gennett has shown over the last two years as he's faced more advanced pitching that lefties turn him into a powerless out machine and on the flip side that Weeks even at his worst the last two years is still significantly more productive vs lefties. This seems so obvious to me that i can't fathom how anyone could seriously be against platooning the two guys?

Seems more like a PR move than anything for Texas. Wilson in two years as a 21/22 year old playing A ball showed not a whole lot. Now he's three years removed from playing baseball and instead is one of the better quarterbacks in the NFL, leading an 11-2 team, and soon enough will be getting a 100 plus million dollar contract from the Seahawks. I can't believe that Seattle would think to kindly of making Wilson super rich and in the offseason, instead of doing a mix of resting his body and football related training, he's out there in spring training with the Rangers. For Russell, if he got hurt while doing baseball activities, it could get in the way of signing that monster NFL contract. So i'd be very surprised if he ever set foot in a Rangers spring training. I sure wouldn't if i was him given that huge payday is not far away.

Weeks was so bad last year that to me it makes sense to try a platoon this season between him and Gennett and see how it works out. Plus, even if Scooter ends up being only decent defensively, that's an upgrade over Rickie who was nearly as bad defensively as he was at the plate. That way if Gennett hits pretty well vs righthanders and Weeks vs lefties, there is a chance to get at least league average production or maybe slightly above that from the position because just playing either guy everyday doesn't strike me as having the same odds of reaching at least league average production.

Why is KC shopping Butler? They were 11th in runs scored in the AL and if he's not their best hitter, he's close to being that. Given moves they've been making, they are in a win now mode, so shopping him for a prospect or two likely wouldn't be their objective. Trading Butler for pitching would be strange since they lead the AL in ERA, but were 11th in runs scored and 12th in SLG%. So if he's really being shopped, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me unless the Royals are trying to package him with something else to acquire an even bigger bat.

If the Brewers could be lucky enough to simply get the Yankees to take on most or all of Weeks contract, i don't think Melvin would care at all what he got in return. It could be an A ball pitcher drafted in the 40th round who only throws 83mph and if i'm Melvin, i'd say yes quicker than it takes for Rickie to look at a first pitch fastball which splits the center of the plate.

I'd rather have Davis so long as we don't have to give up anyone overly important. Neither guy can hit lefties at all, but at least Davis has some history of crushing righthanders.

Given how poorly Gennett has hit vs lefties through his minor league career, it would be pretty hard for Weeks to do worse. Did you not see Weeks play last year? Oh yes, it could be worse, it could be a lot worse, and the thought of watching another season like Rickie had last year, even in a platoon situatuion, sickens me... Well, as crazy bad as Weeks was overall last year, he still managed to hit significantly better vs major league lefties than Gennett did vs AAA lefties. These are the facts Gennett in AAA/AA 2013 vs lefties-- .262 OBP/.592 OPS 2012 vs lefties-- .271 OBP/.607 OPS Weeks 2013 vs lefties-- .328 OBP/.705 OPS 2012 vs lefties-- .387 OBP/.740 OPS The numbers aren't even really close. Weeks at his absolute worst can still hit major lefties better than Gennett has hit AA/AAA lefties. So the obvious solution is to platoon them. Facts trump perceptions. Gennett would get the majority of at bats given there are many more righthanded pitchers and the team wouldn't be putting him in the position of having to do something which he does quite badly, hit vs lefthanders.

My bad. I'd like to see him get a shot as a platoon partner with Davis if a trade does end up going down. Not to keep repeating myself, but i do have a bad feeling that if Davis is acquired, he'll play pretty much everyday even though his horrific splits are common knowledge. For whatever reason, Roenicke really likes and is willing to use defensive positioning metrics for nearly every batter who steps to the plate, but then also says he isn't a big fan of using platoons, even if the numbers flat out scream to do it. I just have a hard time wrapping my brain around reasoning like that.

I wouldn't give Loney three years either and it seems like Melvin doesn't want to also given reports that trying to acquire Davis is a higher priority. I'm also with you in not being ready yet to just give up on Morris. When it comes to Rogers though, what reason is there to believe that he's still a legitimate prospect? Besides his constant array of injuries, he's never really improved much as a pitcher in all of his years in the minors. The guy has been a walk machine at pretty much every stop, with only decent, but not great strikeout numbers. He's now 27 and no longer throws in the high 90's. So if he hadn't been a former first round pick, what are the odds that he wouldn't have been released years ago? I'll be near shocked if Rogers ever sticks in the majors, even just as a mediocre relief pitcher.