danzig6767

You can't just view the contract that way. It also has to be factored in that the team got Ramirez at a 6 million dollar bargain this season and if he produces well again next year, he'll have out-performed his 10 million dollar salary. So sure it would suck if Aramis declines noticeably in 2014 while getting 16 million, but it can't be ignored how he performed in 2012/2013 in relation to his salary. The signing should be viewed based on the totality of how Ramirez performed over all three seasons in relation to his overall compensation.

I don't want Aoki as an everyday CF. He practically plays on the warning track each play in RF, doing that in CF would results in plenty of extra balls falling in for hits. Gomez is a vastly superior defender than Aoki. Morgan likely won't be back. As for Schafer, i want him on the roster, but i don't see Melvin just handing the everyday job to Logan. Ideally, Gomez would start most of the games in CF with Schafer getting say 30-35 starts against righthanders. Then hand Schafer the job in 2014. Of course if another team made an offer in the offseason for Gomez that simply was way to good to turn down, sure then i could see pulling the trigger. Barring that, i'd just keep Carlos and let him walk after the season.

Appreciate the reply. Honestly, the main thing I realized in reading through your posts on Greinke & Hamilton (in that order) was that I really don't want to see the Brewers spend big FA money on any player. Obviously the Braun and Luc/Weeks/Gallardo type contracts are good ideas, but imo in free agency Melvin's better off sticking to guys on relatively low contracts. Finding production like Ramirez's on affordable contracts is what any GM in Milwaukee will have to be adept at doing to 'win' in FA. I love the idea of adding a bat like Hamilton's to the lineup, but I don't think he's worth what he'll likely command on the FA market. Yea, Melvin got flack from some on this forum when he signed Ramirez, but the only risk IMO was mainly in Aramis declining to where year three of the deal has him being overpaid. In the end though, even if that comes to fruition, it's not some franchise crippling situation. Handing out 100 plus million to a player though and that not working out well would be pretty devastating to any franchise with fairly limited funds. Contracts of that size need to be handed out with extreme caution by franchises who can't just print money as some big markets can.

Yea, even with as bad as the pen was for so long, if they just could have blown say 3-4 less games. Think back to that series in Philadelphia. The Brewers easily could have swept that three game series instead of being swept if not for the bullpen. That not only would have us tied for the Wild Card, it would have the surging Phillies three games behind the Brewers. I still remember mostly laughing at the time of those blown games in Philadelphia because i assumed the Brewers were dead in the water anyways, plus it would force Melvin to trade Greinke. How times have changed and that Phillies series debacle now really hurts in retrospect.

And who then plays CF for the Brewers next year? Like most here, i'd be very leery of giving Gomez a sizable extension during the offseason and Boras likely would advise Carlos to not sign one unless the money simply was to much to turn down. That said, the Brewers have a chance to be a good team next year and thus there is nothing wrong with just bringing back Gomez to be the CF next year, letting him walk after the season, and taking the comp pick. He also could be traded at the deadline if the team is really struggling for whatever reason, but Gomez is playing well. The only way i'd trade him in the offseason is if some team made such a good offer that i couldn't say no.

While some of that is just luck, the rest is almost entirely bullpen related. The Brewers pen has blown to many very winnable games and Baltimore has been great in the bullpen. http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/teams/bal/stats?stat_category=mlb.stat_category.2&sort=mlb.stat_type.103 Look at all of those guys in their pen with an ERA under-3

It's pretty amazing how consistent his numbers have been across the board for about a decade now.

Hart signing an extension that small would be fabulous for the Brewers and way under his market value in today's economic climate. An extension like that would not only be good value for the team if he stayed for all three years, it would increase his trade value if Melvin ever decided to trade Hart. Plenty of teams would love to have a productive player like Corey on a contract which isn't excessive in salary and doesn't run 4-5-6 years.

Morris is a nice prospect, but he does need to keep working on his walk rate. In 2011 he walked at an atrocious rate, taking only 18 free passes over 548 at bats. He improved that amount to 39 walks in 562 trips to the plate last year, so i hope that's an upward trend which continues next season.

Most athletes are lying when they say it's mainly not just about the money for them when it comes to a new contract. That said, most isn't all professional athletes. For a certain number of athletes though, especially those one who are married with kids, staying in a place they are very comfortable with does trump money so long as the money would still leave them ridiculously wealthy. I don't claim to know Corey Hart, but i do know that he has a wife and i believe three kids. Maybe as a family unit they'd really prefer to stay in Milwaukee so long as they feel the Brewers were to give Hart a reasonable extension. So while most athletes do end up just taking the most money out there, i do also think there is a certain number of athletes who will take less to simply stay in a place that they and their family feels very comfortable being. TJ Lang of the Packers just signed an extension even though he was due to be a free agent after the season. When interviewed about the new contract, he stated clearly that staying in Green Bay was priority number one because he was so comfortable playing there and that even if he may have gotten more cash in free agency, it wasn't worth the unknown of potentially not being as happy in a location and on a team he wasn't familiar with.

This nails a lot about Marcum that scares me. I don't think anyone can question his effectiveness when healthy. But sinking money into him at this point is a risk. If he looks okay at the end of the year, I'm okay with a reasonable one-year deal - $6-8 million. Maybe even an option if he's open to it. But I wouldn't do more than that. I really doubt Marcum would take a one year deal below the QO, but if he did, it likely would have to be loaded with incentives to pay him significantly more if he stayed healthy all year and maybe a vesting option he controls for a second season.

If i was Melvin, my stance on Hart would be that if he truly would be accepting of signing a 2-3 year extension, i'd negotiate numbers with him on that this offseason. Maybe i'd go a 4th year based on Corey meeting certain metrics which vested that 4th year. If though he wanted 4 or 5 years fully guaranteed at around say 13-14 million per, i'd pass and then decide whether to trade him before the season based entirely on what the offers were. If the offers were only really mediocre, i'd just keep him and see how the season panned out prior to the trade deadline.

The most baffling aspect to this trade for me is why the Dodgers added three pretty good to decent prospects in the trade? Was Boston really going to pass on dumping those three contracts, especially Crawford without getting the prospects included? I have a hard time believing that.

Ransom has impressed me quite a bit defensively in how well he does at all three infield spots. Offensively, he's a typical utility infielder in that he's not a good hitter. That's why utility infielders aren't starters instead. As for the strikeout numbers, i don't care much. An out is an out and his power is a decent tradeoff.

I'm mainly happy to see that Rogers is throwing strikes instead of piling up walks. While health has clearly been the biggest problem for him in his pro career, his inability to consistently throw strikes has been a pretty close second.

Once Axford walked that leadoff hitter, it should have been clear to anyone watching that at best, the game was going to end up tied. Can't wait to hear Ronny explain this one.

That is what I too would like to see. Yep, that's also what i'd do. Unless some team in the offseason made an offer for Gomez which i just couldn't turn down, i'd bring him back next year as the main starter in CF, while giving Schafer around 2 starts a week. Of course if either of the two played so well or poorly, that start ratio could be modified. Then Carlos walk and hopefully Schafer showed enough to take over in 2014. Speaking of Gomez, i can't remember the last Brewers player where i went from as strongly disliking to now him being one of my favorite players on the team. His lack of plate discipline is still frustrating, but other than that he's such a fun guy to watch play, he always plays really hard, and his personality is fabulous.

This isn't the thread to debate it, but the Brewers will not compete next year. Not with the rotation they're going to roll out. You can only have so many xfactors. 2013 Brewers are the 2010 Brewers. Seriously. The odds are against the Brewers being a playoff contender next year, but your absolute nature in this thread is silly for two reasons. 1. You have no idea at all right now as to what the roster will be once the season starts next year. None. All you can do is guess, that's it and you could end up being wrong about a sizable percentage of what the roster ends up looking like. 2. A bunch of baseball fans thought the Pirates were stupid to acquire Burnett and i'm 100 percent certain you didn't have them pegged to be 62-47 at this point. I highly doubt you pegged the White Sox to be in first place this late in the year. The Dodgers to be only a game out. Washington to have the best record in baseball. The Phillies 17 games back in the East. Oakland and Baltimore being 59-51, each a game back in the Wild Card chase. Baseball is both predictable is some aspects and quite unpredictable in other ways. Hell, just look at our bullpen these last two years. So there would be nothing wrong with saying it looks like the Brewers will face some tall odds to put together a new rotation and pen next year which can be productive enough to compete for a playoff berth, but your instead absolute certain attitude that the team can't end up being good next season is simply ignoring baseball history. Not only don't you know who exactly will be on the roster come next year, every season multiple teams are either quite a bit better than expected or quite a bit worse.

I think you are ignoring a big factor in what direction the Brewers take from year to year, and that's the owner. Sure, Melvin seems like a GM would would rather try to win now in any given year unless that is very unrealistic, but Attanasio also seems the same way. I doubt that Melvin would be allowed to go younger/cheaper if he even wanted to unless Attanasio first said that was ok. Mark clearly loves seeing 3 million fans in Miller Park each year and he also strikes me as a highly competitive guy. So in the vast majority of seasons, he's going to want Melvin to try and put a team on the field with at least a chance to compete for a playoff berth and in kind, keep fans pouring into Miller Park. For example, i don't see any chance that he was talking to Doug and saying the team should look really hard into the trade value of Hart and/or Ramirez at the deadline. Attanasio just doesn't seem to have in his DNA a let's punt next year in hopes of winning in 2014 attitude and thus will want Melvin to try and put a good team on the field next season, even if it costs money and maybe a prospect or two.

I don't think that is true. The distribution of player talent in any sport is something like a bell curve, with the distribution of talent in MLB on the extreme end of one tail. You end up with a kind of pyramid shaped distribution. If what you are suggesting is true, there would be a glut of above average (but not elite) MLB players being consistently underpaid and/or overpaid. That would represent a major market inefficiency that could be exploited by other clubs. The pretty stunning thing to me is the length of these monster contracts being given out the last few years. Votto is a great hitter, but the Reds have guaranteed him an insane 12 years. From 2018-2023 they'll owe him 25 million a year. Think about that. He easily could be in clear decline and/or breaking down physically by the time 2018 starts, yet the Reds will still owe him 125 million dollars. Cole Hamels and Cain were given 6 years at huge money even though pitchers health is the ultimate injury risk in baseball. Pujols contract is also way to long and at some point his contract will end up being the Angels version of A-Rod to the Yankees. Fielder got 9 years. Werth 7 years. I get that a lot of baseball is swimming in money due to teams signing big new cable deals or soon to be signing a new cable deal, but the odds are extremely high that most to all of these really long huge money contracts will end up being varying degrees of albatrosses.

I was honestly thinking exactly what you posted here. The Rangers have zero reason to have Olt up right now. What? The Rangers are currently in first place, trying to get back into the playoffs again, and this time win a title after back to back World Series losses. Their primary DH Michael Young is currently sporting a miserable .297 OBP and .643 OPS, Olt likely will get at bats there, especially if Young continues stinking up the joint. Yea, they have a 5 game lead in the division right now, but there are still two months left and the division could end up coming down to a game or two. If they do make the playoffs and Olt produces over the next two months, he could end up getting at bats in those playoffs. Seeing how Daniels operates as a GM, i see no chance that he'd call up Olt mainly as some sort of socalled "damage control" because he didn't land say Greinke or Josh Johnson. Daniels team is in first place and fighting to win the AL West at the very least. He also has a DH that is hitting like crap, while Olt was mashing in the minors. If the Brewers were Texas, i'd have zero problem with Melvin calling up Olt given the overall circumstances. I'd worry a lot about service time if my team was under .500 and/or not likely a legit playoff contender, but not if my team was in first place with only two months left in the season.

While i do think the closer role can be underrated by some, at least on legit playoff contenders, they are just one piece of the bullpen. Take the Brewers this year. Even if Axford hadn't blown so many games as the closer, the team would still be out of playoff contention because the 7th and 8th innings guys have also been so terrible. Given how all of baseball now has followed a similar blueprint for how to use a bullpen, especially in close games and/or when having say a 1-4 run lead after six innings, it's become pretty much essential to have a quality back end of the bullpen if a team wants to make the playoffs. Just like you need a good rotation and lineup. If your team just has a good closer though, but not reliable 7th and 8th inning pitchers, they'll blow a lot of games before it even gets to the closer. If your team has a 1-3 run lead after six, those setup guys in the 7th/8th inning can blow the lead just as a closer can. For example, in the majority to vast majority of games a closer enters into a save situation, the 8th inning setup guy also had to get the same three outs to protect that lead, and about half of the time having to face a tougher part of the batting order. He doesn't get a save for it though, but those three outs were just as important.

It's pretty amazing how often smaller market/bad teams sign random relief pitchers to a cheap contract during the offseason, that guy has a good first half of the season, and then that team is able to ship the reliever off at the deadline for prospects.

That i believe needs to be factored in, not just the bullpen ERA. This hasn't been one of those type of years some teams have where the starters struggle badly to eat up innings, thus the bullpen not only gets super worn out, the long reliever and more garbage time guys in the pen have to pitch a lot. That inflating the overall bullpen ERA. Instead with the Brewers this year, tons of the bad bullpen production has come from the 7th inning on and in close games or games we were winning. It's pretty rare from my recollection for a team to have every single one of their supposed better "late inning guys" all struggle.

I agree but the problem is, he's going to project to have less power next year but the same OBP. .300/.410 is a more reasonable projection for him next year. Even with elite defense, not sure that justifies him being an everyday starter at any price. Why and who projects Gomez to hit for less power next year? Someone in the thread brought up less bunting as an explanation for his increased power this year. What i see as the main reasons are, he hasn't been going up to the plate and looking helpless vs righthanders, along with Carlos looking to have completely abandoned swinging mainly to make contact. Instead, he's going up there practically twisting himself into the dirt on every swing. With his natural power, when he makes good contact swinging for the fences, he can hit a ball really hard. These home runs he's been hitting have been mostly bombs, not Aoki like wallscrapers.