danzig6767

As has been pointed out numerous times, with the changes to the CBA the rental player market doesn't exist as it had in the past. Therefore rental players have more value the longer the team acquiring them can use them, as such the players will carry more value today than they do tomorrow. If you want to maximize the return you simply cannot wait until the end of the July to make a trade and get any kind of meaningful prospects back, you have to strike when the iron is hot. There is a flip side to those CBA changes. Given that teams now won't get comp picks from a rental player gotten in a trade, it could make some teams choose to prefer waiting until mid-late July before making a move. Reason being that before trading some valuable prospects for a rental player which won't return comp picks, teams will want to be really sure that they have a good shot at the playoffs. Say a hypothetically a team currently playing well traded for Greinke right now, but then suffered some injuries and/or just started struggling a lot for whatever reasons and come mid-late July when everyone else is looking to make moves, their team now doesn't look so good and thus they are starting to regret trading those prospects for Greinke so early. Besides the fact that often there are few sellers before July, another reason i think few trades get made is many teams like to use that mid-late July time as a good evaluation point to try and judge just what level of team they think they have, if a playoff berth is a pretty realistic goal, and if so what at that point is their biggest need/needs. That can easily change from early June to instead in July given so many thing can happen over a month plus of time. With the extra Wild Card, we currently have so many teams feeling kind of in limbo about whether they are a legit contender for a playoff berth and thus not sure right now if they should end up being sellers or buyers. Come July though with that extra Wild Card, there likely should end up being a good amount of teams who start thinking ok, i like where were are for the most part and now maybe what can we try to add a piece to help make a run for the playoffs vs being less sure in early June.

What I don't get though is how can you call his fastball a plus plus pitch and also call it straight? If it does turn out to be a legit plus plus pitch, I've seen a lot of closers do really well with 1 great pitch and just a "show me" off speed offering. The vast majority of pitchers who throw a 90 plus MPH four seam fastball, that fastball is largely very straight. Just look say at some current and former Brewers four seam fastballs. Axford very straight. Greinke very straight. Sheets very straight. Gallardo very straight. What has made them successful pitchers off that four season fastball though is mainly just command of it. Controlling the count and not throwing it to often over the middle of the plate. Granted, Axford throws so hard that he can get away with more mistake fastballs than other pitchers, but even he has to command his fastball so that it's not regularly in easier spots to hit. If a big league hitter knows a fastball is coming and then that fastball also catches a lot of the plate, it'll often enough get hit hard, even if it's coming at 95 plus mph. Of course many pitchers also throw two seam fastballs which come in at a lesser velocity, but have movement.

Sounds like posturing to me, I'm not sure you can make any predictions about signability until we see the rest of the Pirates draft. I still think the whole "going to school" is unnecessary leverage needlessly given to players that have less than a 50% chance of making MLB in the first place. Make everyone declare for the draft and stop the madness... if you don't like the team that drafts you then fine, go play indy ball otherwise sign with the team and take the guaranteed scholarship if you don't make it in baseball. Players being able to opt back into college if they don't get their money drives me nuts. On this stuff I'd like it to be black and white, either you're in you're out, no dipping your toe in the water and then changing your mind. No other league lets draftees have so much juice being so far away from contributing. I'm not sure you can fix the credibility issues out of Latin America with player ages, money under the table, and so on, but you sure can solve many problems by simply taking leverage away from the draft eligible amateurs, then come up with some kind of similar system that will work for international signings. I agree Do like the NBA. Declare and hire an agent, you are in an can no longer back out.

I don't like HOF's in any sport putting consistently good, but never special players in.

The minor league system would look a lot better if we had gotten the comp picks we theoretically should have for Sabathia and Sheets, but that is not Melvins fault. Crew wants the Brewers to be run like the Rays, and it's not going to happen. I would say our long term future is much brighter than theirs anyway. It can't be forgotten either that Doug Melvin has a boss, he's not owner and GM like Jerry Jones with the Cowboys. We have no idea how much influence Attanasio has on the direction Doug takes from year to year. Listening to him in interviews, he clearly loves seeing 3 million fans each year and isn't shy about being aggressive to potentially win in the present from year to year. Granted, i don't get the sense that Attanasio is a really meddling type of sports owner as some are, but i don't think it's some Packers type of situation either where Ted Thompson pretty much doesn't have anyone from ownership asking about his plans from year to year.

Same here The Beasties came out when i was in high school and still was mainly just listening to stuff like Motley Crue and 60's/70's rock. Then i got turned on to bands like the Beasties, Public Enemy, Geto Boys, Chili Peppers, Bauhuas, Misfits, Bad Brains etc and it all combined to completely open my mind to all kinds of different music, including rap. While i loved all three of the Beastie Boys, MCA was always my favorite in how he rapped. So when my daughter called me the other day to tell me MCA was dead, it hit me harder than i would have expected. HBO re-aired the 2012 Rock and Roll HOF ceremonies last night, which included the Beastie Boys and it saddened me to see only Mike D and Ad-Rock up there accepting the honors.

I strongly disagree, but McGehee had a positive WAR last year so I'd actually take it~. He kind of lucked into that WAR with what was probably a flukey defensive performance but I'd still take it! I won't take it because i don't care what WAR stats said about Casey last year, he sucked and if Gamel plays at the same level, he should be benched much sooner than McGehee was and i'm a big supporter of Matt.

It's not just casual fans who won't stop ripping on Wolf and Melvin for signing him, regardless that Wolf has earned his money given the salary structure in baseball. Nearly all of the more than casual fans still feeling this way were also the ones who at the time of the signing proclaimed it would end up being Suppan part two and they won't back off their stance, actual production be damned. As for being able to sign Greinke to an extension, i think the ball is about 99% in his court. If he wants to maximize his financial value to the last dollar, Zach very likely won't be staying here beyond this season. If instead he likes it here enough that staying is pretty high on his priority list, thus he'll sign an extension that still makes him really wealthy vs socalled "testing the market" as Prince did, then i see it likely that Attanasio/Greinke will eventually find common ground on an extension.

Yea, my gut feeling is that if Gamel is given a chance to keep playing even if he initially struggles, he can be a non-washed up Overbay type of hitter. That said, my gut feeling also is that if he gets off to a slow start, Roenicke and Melvin will decide to start taking away regular at bats, especially if Braun is suspended and that very likely could end his career in Milwaukee. Gamel is going to have major pressure on him to not have a bad month of April because i see little chance that Roenicke/Melvin will give Matt the opportunity to work his way out of it, regardless if other guys also are struggling that will be afforded a vastly longer leash.

The Rangers were one stinkin strike away from the WS title. Twice I believe.If i was a Rangers fan, i still don't think i'd be over that loss yet. Hell, that loss would probably haunt me until the day i died. It would be akin to the Packers losing a Super Bowl on say a 30 yard TD pass with two seconds left in the game.

Glad Prince went to the AL and i'm happy for him, but it's just hard for me to believe that this offseason two players were given a 10 and 9 year contract worth over 200 million each. Man, both have a chance to become massive albatrosses for quite a few years, even with the DH available for Prince/Albert.

Given the current make up of the roster, especially signing Aramis, both Melvin and Attanasio have clearly decided that they intend to try and land a playoff berth next season. So the only chance i could see them moving K-Rod is at the deadline and then only if the team had played so poorly that a playoff berth was pretty much out of the equation.

Maybe I've watched too much Jose Valentin and Jose K in my day, but I really don't think Betancourt was that bad. He nearly always made the routine play (did he make a throwing error all season?), with a strong arm and was solid turning two. The only legitimate knock on Yuni at SS is a lack of range to his right, and for reasons I've argued elsewhere, I think that is getting overblown. As for Gonzalez, time will tell. I don't always trust scouting reports- generally guys north of 35 start to slip a little defensively anywhere... especially shortstop, how many elite defensive shortstops have we seen at his age? Not too many. Even making the assumption that these scouts are dead on, who is to say that these reports on Gonzalez will be accurate as he ages? What do you base on Betancourt only lacking range when going to his right? He also had below average range going up the middle, just to a slightly lesser degree than going to his right. We'll find out come next year if age will have started to catch up to Gonzalez defensively, but it would be nearly impossible for him to not be a pretty significant upgrade defensively. At the plate, their numbers are near images of each other, except that Gonzalez strikes out a lot more instead hitting numerous shallow fly balls into shallow right-center as Betancourt did.

Does anyone know how Aoki hits vs lefties? I ask because if Braun were to get suspended 50 games, with a lefty starter on the mound, Morgan has to be on the bench. If Aoki also struggles/struggled vs lefties, then who starts in LF with a lefthander starting? Not only that, Melvin in the radio interview did mention that they would consider playing Hart at firstbase for roughly 30 games if Gamel were to struggle vs lefties. So if hypothetically Gamel did start out poorly vs lefties and thus Roenicke/Melvin did decide to play Hart at first when a lefty was starting, that would leave Gomez as the only righthanded bat among the outfielders currently on the roster if Braun was gone. It would seem that Melvin would be wise to scour the unemployed righthanded outfielder market and at the very least try to get one or two on an non-roster invite to spring training deal. If not, could say Brenden Katin be an option for the first 50 games at least if Braun were to get suspended?

While i agree a certain percentage of fans will be bothered by K-Rod simply because of his salary, i think overall he'd be spared so long as he pitches really well. If though he isn't mostly lights out at protecting leads and instead is only decent, while making 10 million to do so, it will lead to some heat. More so i think directed at Melvin though.

I was wondering something about Montero. From what i've read, many people in baseball seriously question if he can stick at catcher in the big leagues, thus he's more likely to end up being a DH. Plus, the rigors of catching nearly everyday tends to hurt a player's offensive production over time. So if Montero becomes the upper tier hitter the Mariners hope and he doesn't have good defensive catching skills anyways, removing him from catcher could make logical sense. That said, is there any precedence in a situation like this to say making Montero a backup catcher/DH? Start him at catcher say 40-50 games a year to get some value out of him being a great hitting catcher, save wear and tear on his body, and negate some of his defensive shortcomings by Montero not catching 120 games a year instead? Of course though, whether he is only below average defensively or instead really poor defensively would have to be a big factor. Besides all of that, Montero may not like or adjust well going from being a position player to a DH where is only game action each day is 4-5 at bats, and getting him on the field 40-50 times a team could help his psyche? I just don't recall another team doing this with a great hitting prospect who has serious questions about his ability to be a starting catcher?

I doubt that Jack Z had some inside info about Pineda health wise, but maybe he just looked at the fact that pitchers as a whole are bigger injury risks than position players and that factored into the decision to make this trade? Either way, given the extremely high value of high quality young starters on the cheap, i just think Jack should have gotten more for Pineda, much less include Campos. Plus, the Yankees were desperate for starting pitching. My memory could be off here, but i thought i read during last season the Yankees offered Montero and Banuelos, plus maybe something else for King Felix. If true and i was Jack, i probably would have preferred making that deal over the Pineda trade given Felix is owed about 60 million dollars, Pineda will make basically nothing for years, and the Mariners likely won't contend for a playoff berth the next two years at least while they pay Hernandez 20 million per. For the Yankees given their starting pitching, this has to be a wet dream trade come true. Montero obviously is a great prospect, but it's not like the Yankees will struggle to score runs without him, they've show that they can acquire hitting when they need it, and Pineda not only fills a massive hole in their rotation, he's under team control for at least five more years, most of which he will get paid pocket change to not huge money. Barring an injury to the kid, odds are very low that the Yanks won't look upon this day with great joy.

Lawrie didn't blow up in the minors until after we traded him, Montero tore up the minors before he was traded. Lawrie was young in AA, but his stats were just good, not great. Had he gone to AAA for us and posted a 1.060 OPS as he did for Toronto, i really doubt that Melvin makes the Marcum trade. If there should be criticism of Melvin for that trade it's that Doug and his other talent evaluators didn't see coming what Lawrie would end up doing so soon after the trade.

Half of the reason that Hardy became such a fan favorite was 16-25ish year old girls who wanted either JJ to date them or just get in bed them. I wouldn't doubt if roughly 75 percent of JJ Hardy jersey sales came from females. As for this nonsense about fans hating Yuni because he was a Latin player, but it wouldn't have happened if he was white, did you lose the ability to read here when a white guy like Suppan was stinking up the joint? Forget to read the threads last year blasting McGehee and blasting Melvin for not replacing Casey? The hate thrown at Loe when he was blowing leads left and right? The hate most fans here had for signing Kotsay and Roenicke ever playing Kotsay in CF over the black Morgan or the Latin Gomez? In fact, it was you that continually ran to the defense of Doug signing Kotsay from the many people you claimed were unfair in their treatment of Kotsay. With the silly Barmes/Juan Gomez reference you made, did you forget to read the thread about Doug signing the Latin shortstop Alex Gonzalez instead of Barmes, where the vast majority preferred getting Gonzalez over Barmes? Come on, are you really that naive as to why there were so many Greinke jerseys bought? Forget the sea of Sabbathia jerseys bought after Doug traded for CC? Anytime a team trades for or signs a big name player, especially in a small market, fans will tend to rush out and buy their jerseys. I still remember the thread immediately after Greinke was acquired, many people here mentioned how they couldn't wait to get a Greinke jersey. Those same fans weren't in a rush though to buy a Marcum jersey after his trade and if you had a clue about the nature of many sports fans you would understand why. Greinke was a recent CY Young winner who waived a no-trade clause specifically to come to Milwaukee, that's always going to generate massive excitement. Had it been say Felix Hernandez instead of Greinke that Melvin had traded for, you'd have to be nuts to think that there wouldn't have been a similar rush by Brewers fans to go out and buy King Felix jerseys, just as fans bought tons of Sabbathia jerseys, not Ben Sheets or Dave Bush jerseys. All it came down to was that Betancourt sucked big time before Melvin foolishly acquired Yuni and he sucked for the Brewers. The anger was just as much at Melvin for being dumb enough to ignore all the stats, views of people in baseball media, and proclamations of people who were stuck watching Betancourt play for them. Yet, just because you chose to be one of the few people following baseball who thinks Yuni isn't terrible as a starting shortstop, it must be racial bias that caused the loathing of his place on the Brewers roster? Please. Go to a Royals forum and see how their fans felt about Betancourt while he was their starting SS and now that he's back. They wanted to throw a parade when Yuni was traded. Then again, in your mind, they must be clouded by racial bias also and don't like Latin players.

Zambrano obviously has had his share of blowups and thus it's clear why Theo moved him, but for an extremely emotional guy like him, the mix of him struggling last year, the team being dreadful, and Cubs fans getting on his case lead to him being a powder keg just waiting to explode. I wouldn't just assume though that Zambrano will be the same character problem for the Marlins this year. First of all, just getting out of Chicago should be a refreshing change on scenery for him. Besides that, the Marlins have a chance to be a pretty good team and also there will be the typical excitement of a first year in a new ballpark. Of course how he pitches next year will likely be a significant factor as to whether Zambrano can keep his emotions in check. If he bounces back and is at least solid in the 4.00 ERA range while the team plays well, he could avoid blowups. I see Ramirez being a bigger chance to cause problems and potentially clash with Ozzie. As a manager, Ozzie is not only outspoken, he clearly has shown to have more issues with any players who don't consistently play really hard, something Ramirez has been accused of not always doing. So if say Ramirez has some struggles at the plate and this leads him to not run out grounders or other forms of non-hustle, odds are high that Ozzie will call Hanley out. That pairing easily could become combustible, but Zambrano personality wise is more like Ozzie.

I still remember the shock through baseball when the Mets traded Kazmir for Víctor Zambrano, who never was any good because he was a walk machine. People in baseball saying Phillips had to have lost his mind and couldn't fathom why he did that. Mets fans were on suicide watch and wanted Phillips hung from the rafters of Shea Stadium. Looking back at the trade in retrospect, i still can't grasp at all what Phillips was thinking. Zambrano wasn't even having a surprise great year at the time, his ERA was 4.37 and his WHIP was 1.55, with a whopping 96 walks in only 128 innings. I forget if it was LeMar or Friedman who made that trade, but regardless of who it was, the guy had to be in near shock and pinching himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming once he hung up the phone to get a top lefthanded top 10 prospect at the time with a golden arm for pretty much a spare part pitcher like Víctor Zambrano.

Crew constantly talks about internet rumors involving young pitchers like Cain, Buchholz, and others like them, then extrapolates from those rumors that Melvin was stupid to have not acquired any of those young arms. Extremely valuable young high upside arms that no surprise ended up not being traded to any other team either. I certainly can understand that some Brewers fans preferring that Melvin built his teams in a different fashion, but i find it beyond silly when anyone tries using totally unsubstantiated rumors as a reason to rip any GM in any sports. Be it reporters, bloggers, or TV mouth-pieces all fighting for attention, they get fed socalled insider "information" all the time that can range from 100 percent bogus, agenda driven, and/or from "sources" who like feeling as if they are important. Yet, a very sizable percentage of real trades, not pretend ones do instead happen with no socalled sources predicting it would happen first except maybe some deadline deals. Plus, i see this whole Friedman is better than Melvin argument as being largely irrelevant. So what if Friedman is a better GM? Ted Thompson is arguably the best GM in the NFL, so does that mean that any other NFL GM who isn't as good as Ted must then be deemed to not be doing a quality job? Melvin should be judged on the results of the Brewers on the field and compared to other GM's as a whole, not just how he compares with Friedman. That alone would be ridiculous and doesn't factor in either that the two teams have different owners who can push their GM's to certain directions.

While in general i'd lean towards not trading Hart, the problem with threads like this is that besides Braun/Gallardo who are pretty much untouchable, whether any other player on the roster should be traded or not is all about who the Brewers would get back in return. Given that we as fans really don't really have a clue what other teams might truly offer for Corey, not what some blog could say as a rumor, it's nearly impossible to be strongly for or against the thought of trading Hart without knowing the exact details of what another team would offer Melvin.

I don't know about that. If the Brewers under Melvin had put mainly just a high scoring team on the field with no pitching that resulted in continued losing, no playoff berths, and no real contention for playoff berths, odds are attendance wouldn't have risen much. It was the 2007 season when Melvin acquired Sabathia, CC went on that amazing run, and the team ended up making the playoffs that really made attendance rise to levels never seen before in franchise history. Since that 2007 season in which attendance jumped from 2.3 to 2.9 million, the Brewers have had three straight year of 3 million plus come through the Miller Park gates. Next year will likely be a 4th straight year of over three million. So yea, baseball fans do enjoy seeing home runs fly out of the park, but above all else, it's winning and at least the legit potential to make the playoffs which really brings fans in. That's why foe baffling reasons when some people try to negatively analyze the Sabathia trade in retrospect, they often forget a very key benefit to the Brewers. Besides the fact that none of the players Cleveland received have amounted to much, i really believe that second half of the 2007 season truly revived the love for Brewers baseball again here in Milwaukee. Sabathia starts at Miller Park became must see events. The ballpark was electric when he pitched and as the team closed in on a playoff berth. Fans had a great time at the park and kept returning. The city as a whole was talking about Brewers baseball again, not just waiting for Packers football to start. None of that happens without the Sabathia trade.

A sizable reason that the Brewers have drawn the huge number of fans to Miller Park the last 3-4 years is that the team has made the playoffs twice and generally has had a quality product on the field to watch. Without the winning and two playoff berths, there wouldn't have been three million fans coming to the park which allowed for Attanasio to have a mid-market payroll. If instead the Brewers had finished 10 games below .500 the last four years as Oakland has except for one 81-81 season with no playoff berths, there wouldn't have been such a serge in attendance. Just look at how attendance numbers went down at Miller Park after the first two years because the team was back to losing all the time. It was the great run by Sabathia after the trade and making the playoffs that really energized baseball fans in Milwaukee again, bringing fans out in droves like has never been seen in this city before. Attendance had dropped all the way to 1,700,000 in 2003 and now it's been three straight years of 3 million plus fans, next year it should be a fourth straight year of three million plus. That didn't just happen because Milwaukee fans love baseball, it happened because the team has finally been winning and actually making the playoffs twice after going decades without a playoff berth. Melvin was a sizable factor in those two playoff berths which has energized the love again for baseball in this city. Yea, Melvin isn't as good of a baseball GM as Thompson is in pro football, but that's an unfair threshold to hold Doug to given that Ted is the best GM in the NFL. Same with Friedman. No Melvin isn't on that level either, but neither are about 28 other MLB general managers. Just because Doug isn't the best GM in the league doesn't come close to meaning that he hasn't done an overall quality job. Making the playoffs twice, winning 96 games, and making baseball relevant again in a market like Milwaukee isn't easy, just look at our history and other small market teams, yet Melvin helped get us there twice, regardless if he has made some mistakes along the way.