danzig6767

What a trainwreck he's been both at the plate and defensively

I agree with you, plenty of time to offer Segura a long term deal after the season if he's receptive to the idea. As others have pointed out, his fabulous defense has been the most pleasant thing to see given how some scouts questioned whether he could hack it long term at shortstop. I expected him to eventually hit at least decently for a shortstop, but certainly not to this degree so soon. Mix in his speed and Carlos Gomez like all out hustle on every play, hard not to get super excited about Melvin landing a talent like this at a position we had nothing really promising at in the minors.

Segura has been great defensively so far this year, but that wasn't a really tough play. A line drive pretty much right at him, he just had to time his jump correctly.

A relief pitcher was at the plate. Any manager would call for a bunt in that situation.

That's the kind of inning that happens when things are going your way as a team. Nice to see.

Yea, he's so frustrating to watch when he consistently is falling behind in the count 2-0/3-1 etc. It's one thing that makes Lohse refreshing to watch in comparison.

I was really scared that the team could potentially bury itself so far in April that it would take the fun out of the rest of the year. Who could have seen this long winning streak coming?

Man, to bad Hart isn't due back in early May as initially projected. Aoki Segura Braun Ramirez Hart Lucroy Weeks Gomez That lineup could score a lot of runs

Wow, that's almost hard to do with random luck of balls falling in as part of the equation. Then again, hard to get that luck with so many strikeouts.

Instead of looking at "is Gomez worth the contract," I looked at it more as a relative value between paying Gomez $9MM/year vs playing Schafer in CF for league minimum, or Aoki in CF with Davis/Roche/Gindl, etc in RF for league minimum. I figured that over the next few years, the difference between Gomez and Schafer wouldn't be worth $8.5MM/year. But, the contract is signed, so I'm glad to see Gomez playing well, and I hope he continues to play well. I like what i've seen of Schafer and by all accounts i've read, he can handle CF defensively. How he'd hit as an everyday player in the bigs i don't know. Aoki as an everyday CF though is a non-option to me, he'd be a serious liability on the defensive end. He not only is much slower than both Gomez and Schafer, he also has to play really deep because he struggles going back on balls. Aoki playing everyday in center would lead to lots more balls falling in front of him for hits that Gomez and Schafer would catch for outs.

Yes Throws lots of strikes. Generally keeps his 90-91mph four and two seam fastballs on the corners so hitters just don't square up on the ball all that often. Has a plus changeup. When i was watching Burgos pitch the other day, one thought which came to my mind was he reminded me somewhat of Lohse.

In my years reading various different sports forums, generally unless a team is projected to be really bad before a season starts and then ends up being that bad which causes major apathy, those forums are most active when a team is playing poorly. Basically, wanting to vent tends to bring out posters more than wanting to say good job. Same with stuff like sports and political talk radio. People wanting to vent about topics are often a great thing for hosts of those talk radio shows because when things are going well, callers are less inclined to pick up a phone and say hey it great to see things going well vs things going bad where callers are much quicker to call in and say the coach/manager are idiots, the GM clueless, and certain players need to go.

Rarely ever are you going to see a manager intentionally walk the bases loaded later in a game where you lead by two runs. That's no clear cut easy call for two reasons. 1. Braun hasn't exactly been hitting good either besides a few home runs. Even in that at bat, he wasn't looking good until Feldman served up as perfect of a hanging curve as possible. 2. For as bad as Weeks has been hitting, if Sveum intentionally walks Braun to load the bases, all it would take to tie the game is a lucky seeing eye grounder or some lucky flare by Weeks to fall in front of an outfielder. Now if it was 2nd and 3rd instead of 1st and 3rd, i'm nearly certain that Sveum would have called for walking Ryan.

You're looking at a pitcher that since the start of 2011 has a record of 30-11;3.09 ERA, 1.16 WHIP, as well as a 3.30 BB/K ratio. Clearly a guy who if not for the draft pick compensation would have easily eclipsed 3/33. In fact would have likely gotten 15 over 4-5 years. Lohse likely could have gotten more than 3/33 if not for the draft pick issue, but i think that's a stretch to say 4/60 or 5/75. Teams value their first round picks, but not to the tune of 30-40 million dollars. Maybe something like 3/40 or 4/50 million would have been possible without the draft pick issue, but don't see 60-75 million given his age and some skepticism which had to be out there as to whether Lohse could sustain high quality results over an extended number of seasons.

What's wrong with Weeks hair turbo? Aren't you still really into that 80's metal stuff where having long hair came with the job description?

That is changing with every worthless at bat that Gonzalez makes. He looks lost. Lost? That's being very generous. He looks so bad at the plate that if runners are on base, i find myself really wishing that Yuni Betancourt of all people was up instead. I never would have thought a day would come that i'd want Yuni moved up in a batting order.

And the idea that Axford's recent struggles are because because he can't handle the stress is laughable for the reason mentioned above. I don't think that would be laughable, all the while i'd also say that obviously i have no clue as to what runs through Axford's mind on the mound. Looking at his time with the Brewers, he had pretty much only success in his first two seasons. Never went through a stretch where he blew multiple games in a row and thus having a very rough stretch potentially get in his head. Again, i'm not Axford and only he knows if that brutal stretch he went through last year got in his head to the point that blowing so many games eventually caused him to either lose confidence on the mound or the stress say impacting his mechanics slightly. I heard Curt Schilling the other day talking about Roy Halladay and Schilling mentioned how much confidence impacted him on the mound. He said something to the effect that a battle he had to overcome before he finally put everything together was being able shut negative thoughts out of his head when he wasn't pitching well because when he was thinking to much on the mound he'd struggle to consistently repeat his mechanics. He said eventually he got to a point where all he thought about on the mound was his pre-game preparation about the hitters and the catchers glove, even if he was getting hit. Then that he had to go through this all over again when he lost some of his velocity on the fastball and batters were hitting balls hard that they used to swing and miss on.

And I sincerely hope you are still saying that on day 1,095 when the contract expires. Hey, there is risk in any signing not working out as hoped for, but that risk is more limited when talking about the years and dollars which Lohse got. Thus, if hypothetically Lohse struggles in year three, you've really only only lost out on about 10 million bucks. The signings who should really scare fans of their teams are guys like Pujols, Votto, Mauer, Hamilton, Fielder, Adrian Gonzalez, C. Crawford, Werth, etc and a number of good pitchers who have been signing 5-6 year extensions at huge dollars. All of those position players besides Hamilton signed deals ranging from 7-10 years long. Hell, Albert already looks in decline and has nine years left on his contract. The Cardinals sadly dodged a major bullet there. The Reds will be paying Votto 25 million per from 2018-2023. My money is on that ending up a disaster. Same with some of those recent signings of starting pitchers. Unless Lohse blows out his elbow next week or really surprises me by pitching more like Suppan from his next start on, his signing would be at worst frustrating, not the trainwreck many of these huge money signings will likely end up being.

When have Melvin/Attanasio signed the best free agents on the market? Sure they've signed some bigger name free agents compared to whatever the team signed under the Selig's, but none have been really expensive in the grand scheme of free agency where top tier guys get between 100-250 million dollar deals. Clearly, for the team to continue contending and/or making the playoffs, the farm system will need to produce the next wave of cheap and quality players, be it position players, pitchers, or both. That said, i see nothing wrong with spending money here and there on mid-tier free agents like Ramirez or Lohse, so long as the contracts don't exceed three years long. It's been shown that the franchise can sustain payrolls in that 85-100 million range, so a mid-tier free agent or two can be afforded, but obviously cheap talent from the farm system also has to be cycled in pretty regularly to offset the costs of guys getting paid well, especially once Braun starts getting his big money.

Sure Hall could have been traded but this was the rebuilding tons of holes in the roster Brewers. You would have been trading him just to trade him. JJ Hardy was traded because of Escobar so not sure what your point was here? Nobody thought Lawrie would stick at 2B so that one doesn't make much sense either. The fact he has been a plus defensive 3B is a shock to most scouts. Yeah the McGehee thing makes sense for sure but we traded Lawrie for a need and it was a need that McGehee probably wouldn't have fetched. Schafer is nothing more than a 4th OF so no we couldn't trade Gomez. Gomez also doesn't have much value after last year imo, last year of contract, only one good season etc. These are ok suggestions without taking into account reality but seriously other than McGehee none of these were really viable options. Some of your points are valid, but the Lawrie trade still bugs me and i wonder if a sizable factor in why it was made besides getting Marcum was the front office badly mis-evaluated just how good McGehee was as a long term option at thirdbase. Thus, they felt more willing to trade away Lawrie.

That's been my only issue when many of those who hated the Lohse signing would argue why, and often Suppan's name would get thrown in as Lohse was supposedly going to be Suppan 2.0. I was leery of the signing mainly because of the draft pick and the third year didn't involve some sort of team option/buyout or Lohse needing to meet certain types of criteria. Just because he doesn't throw mid to high 90's though and is over age 30, that doesn't automatically mean he's a Suppan clone given Suppan never had seasons like Lohse did the last two years. Lohse gave up fewer hits per inning in his last two years, issued fewer walks, and gave up fewer homers than in Suppan's prior two years before signing here.

Stupid FSN does a 5 minute long instructional segment, but then cuts the RR press conference short. Did anywhere hear the ump's explanation for not giving Prince home plate?

Do you honestly expect Lohse to end up having terrible season's like Suppan and Looper, because i don't? Granted, i wouldn't expect a sub-3 ERA again as he had last season, but watching him pitch it's not that hard to see why he had the back to back years he had for the Cardinals. I'm not saying Lohse will end up being as good as Sheets was, but Ben was the last Brewers starter i can recall having the type of command of his pitches by consistently hitting the corners and not allowing free baserunners via walks.

Watching Lohse pitch so far in his three starts, i can see why he had so much success the last two years with the Cardinals. He doesn't throw above 91-92, but his command really is fabulous. Almost every fastball/sinker is on the corners be it outside or inside, and he has a plus changeup which he also commands well. If Peralta had command like that, he'd win a CY Young award. The Giants didn't square up on any pitch tonight except for the early liner to Weeks and i don't recall a bunch of hard hit outs in his first two starts, something Suppan often needed to get passed say five innings without giving up four runs or more.

How can a call be missed that badly?