danzig6767

Speaking of the Nationals, if they ended up signing Prince, i think they easily could vault to playoff contender. Assuming that Strasburg stays healthy all year, their rotation could be pretty damn good. Then if Harper made the team out of spring training and Werth had a bounce back year, their lineup would be significantly better next year. I wouldn't guess on the batting order, but this lineup should make a sizable jump from bottom four in runs scored. Espinosa Harper Zimmerman Prince Morse Werth Desmond Romos

This paragraph sums up perfectly why many posters don't take seriously a lot of your criticisms. You read and then seem to take way to seriously "rumors" spread by people in the media or blogs who have jobs mainly just to spread rumors, even if in the vastly majority of cases, the rumors are based on little to no validity among the actual GM's who make the decisions. Hell, just take the Brewers and how often Melvin has to come out and shoot down "rumors" for having zero credibility to them at all. Yet, it doesn't stop countless sports fans in all sports from seriously running with countless "rumors" and then blaming their GM when he doesn't pull the trigger on acquiring said players in the "rumors", regardless of the fact if these fans have absolutely zero concrete knowledge if a "rumored" player was truly on the block. Had absolutely zero concrete knowledge of what the other GM would be asking in return for the "rumored" player, even if that GM would listen to offers for say their young valuable arm like Cain, Bucholz, or Niemann. I don't think anyone here would care that you don't like the overall way in which Melvin operates in building the team. You certainly wouldn't be alone in that belief. It's when you continually keep blaming Melvin though for not acquiring numerous certain young players, especially certain young pitchers based on "rumors" you read or heard somewhere which you have zero ability to know if the rumors actually had any validity to them. None. Zero ability to know if those players were actually on the block. And if any were actually on the block, you had zero ability to know if Melvin made some calls and if so, what the other GM actually asked for in return, not what some guy on ESPN or in a blog reported was asked for in return. So go ahead and prefer that Melvin had a different approach overall to building the Brewers, nothing wrong with that. Continually blaming him though for not pulling the trigger on media "rumors" that you chose to believe as truth, well, you're are then just going to end up finding many here not buying what you're trying to sell.

Health via age to multiple key cogs is the only big thing i'd worry about if i was a Cardinals fan.

Yep, like the Brewers used to be before the last 4-5 years. Make trades to acquire young talents that then would be traded a year or two before they would reach free agency. Rinse and repeat.

Hart's drop in speed last year seemed so drastic that it caught me off guard. There were times with Hart running the bases and especially in the outfield where say he was running in/back on a ball that i was near certain that he'd get to with fairly relative ease based on his past, yet he'd not get there and look kinda like he was running in mud while doing so. Not that long ago, Corey had great speed for a power hitting corner outfielder, so it just surprised me to see him lose so much of that speed in such a small time frame. That said, given the makeup of the current roster, i see no reason to trade him now. Depending on what happens with guys like Greinke and Marcum after this year though, then maybe next offseason it could make sense to shop him.

I was wondering if there were any restrictions on trading one of these Japanese players after winning the bid and signing the player.

Oh come on. Please. As usual, your analysis here is very smart, IMHO. But do you have to aggrandize yourself and broadly insult everybody else in this way?I didn't know what that meant and had to look it up, good word. I assure you that wasn't my intent, I tend to get blasted for being a Melvin hater or playing with revisionist history when my opinions haven't changed much since 2007. The posts in this thread about winning the payroll war and why should it matter what Melvin pays someone because it's not our money make it pretty clear that many people still haven't taken the time or don't care to understand the other side of these arguments.Well first of all, maybe if you didn't so often make false remarks as you did here again about fellow posters, you wouldn't get criticized. You start off by saying that you haven't read any of the thread, but then throw out a completely wrong and condescending remark about being a minority among others who supposedly were "raving" about what a genius Melvin is for this move. Yet, you aren't in the minority at all on that front given that not only hasn't anyone called Doug a genius, there was roughly a 50/50 split on the signing. As for your claim to regularly getting blasted by other posters, from threads where i remember seeing posters disagree with you, it's mainly always been for the same thing. You make largely the same long post that you've posted numerous other times, just worded a little differently. In those posts you'll almost always comment about how if Melvin wasn't such a bad GM, he'd have traded for Matt Cain and/or multiple other highly thought of young starters which you simply assumed were available to be traded for based on internet rumors, yet most to nearly all these pitchers you would mention were never traded to any other team, not just the Brewers. That would be 29 other GM's who didn't get those young/cheap starters either who likely weren't even really available anyways unless another team made a super great offer given that high potential young pre-arbitration starters with great arms are arguably the most valuable commodity in the game. A sizable amount of posters here get leery whenever Melvin trades any of our better prospects since Milwaukee is a small market. I certainly do and Melvin has made his share moves over the years i disagreed with. Few here that i've seen consider Doug to be some incredible genius level GM. When though you regularly bash him for not trading for certain young players/pitchers which you just assumed were available to be had and have no clue what would be the real price to acquire them even if the other team wouldn't just hang up immediately, it's hard to take that seriously.

Yeah, if A-Ram were 28 instead of 34 (or so), I don't think a single person would have a problem with a 3 year deal here. If he was 28 he would have been looking for a 5 or 6 year deal. Yep, that's why Ramirez just came off a contract that paid him 80 plus million dollars. The cost this time was around 36 million instead of 80 even though he is coming off a very fine year for the sole reason of his age. Obviously there are risks involved when signing any 33 year old baseball player for three years, but at least the season Aramis had last season wasn't something that looked more like an aberration. Instead, his numbers looked very similar to the ones he's been posting since 2004.

I'm sure the fans of every NL Central team are saying the same thing about Braun, as would many Brewers fans if say the exact same report came about about Pujols if he remained with the Cardinals. That's the real shame about this leaking out, if by some slim chance that Ryan actually did nothing wrong and he won the appeal. Some baseball fans out there simply will never believe Braun was innocent, regardless if the arbitration panel sided with him. As for the trade, hard to see how anyone would be against the move. We saved some needed salary. Veras looks to be a competent reliever at the very least. Lastly, with Casey gone, he won't be around for Roenicke to take at bats away from Gamel if Matt doesn't start out hot.

Ramirez hits righthanders basically at the same clip that he hits lefties. http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/players/6014/splits;_ylt=AgSq1tGrANlcjcpl3NFrVe.FCLcF?year=2011&type=Batting

Good post and sums up my thoughts exactly. At this point, i don't know what to think in regards to Braun truly being guilty of this or not, but it's completely unacceptable for this to have leaked out. While i didn't like the players union fighting drug testing in the past, one reason that they fought testing was exactly what has happened here. Not trusting that results would be kept confidential until all appeals were exhausted because the players understood that even if a player was later exonerated, tons of damage would have already been done to the player by the leaked initial result. If i was a big shot in the players union, i'd be all over Bud Selig, wanting answers for why/how this leaked out and what baseball intends to do so that it doesn't happen again. ESPN was just doing what any media outlet would do when given material from a source which could be verified. Yea, it's 2011 and there is so much media out there today, but Selig and baseball overall really needs to figure something out here so this doesn't become a regular occurrence any time a high profile player tests positive. That the results leak before a player has a chance to appeal the results.

You seem to have some knowledge of how testing works and i'm confused about something. In the Hardricourt blog this was in there. "But a source familiar with the situation told the Journal Sentinel that a second test requested by Braun was negative and was being used in the appeal process to overturn the first results." If true about the second test, i wonder just how strong that can be in his defense? How soon say after a initial test is a second one done? Another thing i don't get is, why couldn't a second test be run on the initial sample which was taken? Or does a second sample have to be taken to see if a potential mistake was made the first time? If the amount of potential PED's in an athletes system degrades with each day that goes by, any second sample not taken near immediately after the first would seem to benefit the athlete, thus making that second test less to much less relevant? So if say any athlete is flagged as a user, but truly felt he was innocent and wanted a second test, it would seem that the first test should be done soon enough so that a second test could be done before it's largely irrelevant. Basically, i'm wondering if a second test truly coming up negative would pretty much exonerate Braun or would there be multiple other factors involved?

Aside from innocent-until-proven-guilty, how is any of the 'blind mistrust' different from your blind faith in Braun? Sure is a lot easier to chastise someone without knowing any facts rather than showing loyalty to your team/players and being patient while waiting for the facts, hey? It should be easy to see why many Brewers fans are at the least somewhat skeptical of the denials by Braun given that pretty much everyone else who who has been caught for PED's denied it initially, and often forcefully denied the charges. Only until later on the denials proved to ring hollow.

He's Ryan Braun, he doesn't need an edge. He's the MVP. Maybe he took steroids in college, but there's no way he was continuing to use steroids in the last 5 years without being caught already. And how could anyone believe that they wouldn't get caught. It isn't 2005 anymore. Do you think anyone caught in the Victor Conte scandal thought they'd be caught either, even though they were regularly tested? Athletes in different sports still use various forms of PED's even though they get tested. They keep using them because they are convinced by someone that they'll get away with it. So if Braun was using PED's, odds are that he's been using them for not just a brief length of time and got away with it until now. It's not like most athletes who get caught took the PED's while just accepting that they'd get caught, they did so by thinking they'd get away with it.

Come on, athletes are always looking for an edge. If Braun did take PED's, it's because he was convinced by someone that what he was taking wouldn't be noticed by the testing. Look at the Victor Conte Balco scandal and all the high profile athletes who were involved in it, many of whom had to take drug tests. They still took the PED's for a simple reason, they were told that they wouldn't get caught.

That was an interesting read. Thanks for the link.

Either way, the damage has been done. And where there's smoke, there's usually fire. And all the other cliches you want to throw out http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gifYep. Even if he's completely exonerated he'll still be looked at as the guy who is probably on 'roids.Plus, if Bud Selig ended up being involved AT ALL in deciding whether Braun's suspension can be overturned, i just know that fans of all non-Brewers teams will think that he was just trying to do a favor for the Brewers.

If somehow Braun won an appeal, fans outside of Milwaukee wouldn't buy it anyways, they'd just say Bud Selig wanted to help the Brewers.

That makes sense.... I mean, 35% income tax + 10% Agent fee....Is it 10% in MLB? I'm pretty sure it was mandated to be 3% in the NFL (or the NBA) on the playing contract, and obviously a lot more for commercials, etc.That was my thought, 10% seems crazy high.

A .150 BA and .509 OPS will tend to do that. Granted, it was over 222 at bats, not 500, but it's not like Colvin raked in the minors either. He walks at a poor rate, doesn't have a lot of power, and doesn't move that great defensively in the outfield, not exactly a lot there to love and think he's an everyday player at a corner OF spot.

The Brewers would then have a ton of money and years going forward tied up into hoping that Braun and Prince stay both healthy and productive over the vast majority of their contracts. It also would seem to really decrease the odds of extending Greinke. I understand the appeal of keeping Prince and i won't be upset if it happens, but i just think that 6 years at that dollar amount is to risky, especially that he'd go from a defensive liability at firstbase to a massive liability that needed to be a DH. The only factor that i'm unsure about is exactly how much more money does the new cable deal with FSN bring in each year and thus will it lead to larger payrolls going forward so that Braun/Prince wouldn't be eating up roughly 40 percent of the payroll just by themselves?

Disagree with "total stud". 860 OPS in his 2nd year of AAA makes him solid but unspectacular. He's closer to Lyle Overbay. Yea, i don't get this talk like Alonso is some special prospect. His power numbers in the minors have been decent, but nothing great. He walks at a solid rate, but nothing eye popping.

I hear many say this and my only question is why? Is the main reason why being that they already have an award with the CY Young? If so, i can understand people holding that position, but from simply from a merit standpoint, i'd have no problem voting for a pitcher in certain situations like Verlander this year. I doubt though that i could ever give the MVP to a relief pitcher who throws so few innings.

Kind of risky giving Nathan two years, but being now about two years removed from elbow surgery, if he can get back to near his prior production, Nathan could end up being a bargain. His secondary numbers last year were better than his ERA, the main problem was the home run totals were up. If this contract had been given out by a non-contender like say Houston, Baltimore, Washington, etc, i think it would have been a foolish decision. Texas though should be a strong contender to reach the post season again and they have a lot of revenues coming in, so i understand why they rolled the dice on Nathan coming back to being a quality closer again.

I'm disappointed to see Barmes sign elsewhere, he was the guy i had really hoped Melvin could land at shortstop for a few reasons. 1. Not much better of a hitter than Yuni, but a pretty significant upgrade defensively 2. Two years isn't a long term commitment 3. Wouldn't cost the team any prospects or draft picks Given the dearth of other free agent shortstop options, Barmes struck me as the most ideal candidate for the Brewers and he signed for roughly what i had expected. I figured before free agency started that he'd get 2 years around 9-10 million.