danzig6767

Who pitches the 10th if we don't score?

Relax there dude on the cutting guys over a brainfart

Should've kept Carroll. I think many of us were saying that all along, but Wilson must be a bit grittier. Then we could've had Hairston and Carroll in the lineup against tough lefties. Yea, with Hairston and Lopez on the team, we now have 4 guys who can play 2nd/SS/3rd, plenty redundant.

Throw the ball to where Lucroy doesn't have to even reach up at all. Really, its not a hard thing to do and something a MLB player should be able to do damn near every time he makes a throw Let's not forget about Hart either. He gets Pujols with ease at third if the throw is on the bag. Hart has always had a very inaccurate arm though.

His defense behind him killed Marcum way more than the strikezone

Make that 5 runs

Lefties are only hitting .216 off him, it's been righthanded batter who have destroyed him.

Yeah, anyone watching that game could see that the heat caught up to Carp - for those not watching, he literally had sweat dripping off his hat. Guy was just fatigued and didn't have it. I was half expecting some comments about heating/air conditioning today from Cards fans.......... I've never seen a baseball player sweating as bad as Carpenter was last night in that long 5th inning, that was crazy. It was running off the bill of his cap as if water was being poured on his head non-stop. His jersey top was pasted to his body by sweat. I can't see how it didn't impact his pitching.

General managers in all sports regularly make very poor decisions. Hell, John Hammond the Bucks GM pulled a mind bogglingly dumb decision to give Drew Gooden a 5yr deal worth nearly 35 million dollars. Well, i don't know who was the Seattle GM when Yuni was given a 4yr/14 million dollar deal, but he pretty quickly realized that it was a mistake, yet he found a taker in Kansas City who watched Betancourt play, and yet still traded for him. Then in another real head scratching move, Melvin regardless of if he had to take Yuni in the Greinke trade or if he chose to, Doug still was willing to go into this season with Betancourt as his everyday shortstop. Doug had to have the data available which has chronicled just how poorly the defensive metrics have said he's been defensively for years now. Lots of people who watched Yuni move more like a plow-horse than a thoroughbred at SS for their teams also said he had no range. There was no case of conflicting views where people watching Betancourt thought he had terrible range, but the metrics said differently. Well, Melvin simply chose to ignore both the defensive metrics which said Yuni was terrible and those who watched him play. The same thing happened in KC where Betancourt was stinking up the joint and still being thrown out there everyday. So to answer your question as to why Yuni Betancourt has managed to keep an everyday job this long at shortstop even though for years he's shown terrible range and yearly carried a sub-.300 OBP, my answer would simply be terrible decision making by those choosing to making him their everyday shortstop. Bad decisions happen all the time in baseball, even by those being paid a lot of money to do nothing, but study baseball and that have multiple scouts at their disposal.

I'd rather have Adams. Look at his numbers the last two years, flat out dominant.

I do. I don't think he's doing it consciously. I don't think DM or RR are very good at their jobs. That doesn't mean I don't think they are doing the best they can. I don't see how anyone can say that Melvin is a bad GM. If people want to see what a bad GM is, they don't need to look any further than the team the Brewers are now playing against, the Houston Astros run by Ed Wade. Now he's a bad GM. What i definitely think can be debated though is if Melvin is a good GM overall. I wouldn't put him in the category of say the top 10 GM's in baseball, but i don't think he's a bad GM either. I'd put him somewhere around the middle of the pack. One thing that makes it somewhat harder to evaluate baseball GM's compared to football GM's is the draft. When it comes to a football GM, we know that guy is the one pulling the trigger on draft choices. When it comes to baseball GM's, some may have a little input on say first round picks, but after that, it's almost always the scouting director making the rest of the picks by himself. Thus, if a scouting director does a poor or great job drafting, it's going to make things quite a bit easier or tougher on the GM, especially for smaller market teams who generally can't spend a lot in free agency as teams like NY, Boston, and other richer teams can. Take Melvin's tenure for example. The farm system overall during his time has done a great job producing hitters, albeit hitters who almost all came with defensive shortcomings besides Hardy. On the flip side, it's been pretty miserable at producing quality big league pitchers. So should a baseball GM deserve much credit or blame for what a farm system produces during their tenure, good, bad, or mediocre? That question never even needs to be considered with a football GM, they make pretty much every single player transaction except in cases of an overbearing owner like Daniel Snyder in Washington.

It's more likely a mix of everything. Being on a homestand you don't have to travel multiple times like on a road trip. You get to sleep in your own bed. You often are able to be with your family if you have one. Then you also get to play in your home park with your fans cheering for you. All things combine to make playing at home more likely to result in winning.

I know that Lopez was terrible in his 102 at bat stint with Tampa this year, but if Melvin refuses to call up Green and no trade gets made which leaves us with only Counsell, Wilson, and Farris as options at second, i'd rather roll the dice on Lopez than Farris. At least Lopez has some track record of being able to hit big league pitching, and as recently as 2009. Plus, it's not like he's 37-38 years old, so it wouldn't take some incredible leap in logic to hope that Lopez could hit pretty well while Weeks is out. The odds of that happening may not be high, but they seem higher than hoping either of Counsell, Wilson, or Farris could put up an OPS of just say .650. Mix in that if McGehee's decent hitting over the last seven games or so comes to a screeching halt and/or Betancourt sees his hot stretch end to where he goes back to being Yuni Betancourt, the lineup could get extra brutal with the incompetent trio of Counsell, Wilson, and Farris playing second everyday.

I will say in defense of Melvin here, i have no clue if Green would be a very below average defensive secondbaseman. That said, if Green isn't on the PTBNL list of the Mets, there is no defense for Green to not at least be on the big league roster as everything from a bench bat to a guy who plays third vs tough righthanded pitching. We aren't in the dark days where the Brewers are say 12 games back in the standings. If someone of the AAA team can help our big league roster, that guy should be called up. My guess is though that if Green actually isn't on the PTBNL list, Melvin/Roenicke saw McGehee get a few hits to right field recently, so that has them believing Casey is back to being himself, regardless of the fact that we've been hearing this each time McGehee gets a hit to right field over his 75 game stretch of utter futility. Given how bad of hitters Counsell, Wilson, and Farris are though, Green would have to be a trainwreck at second to not provide more overall positive impact.

What? I haven't seen people on here wanting us to trade for Rios, given our pressing needs on the infield instead. I simply was stating that you weren't correct in saying that the hypothetical trade would involve the Brewers taking on Rios contract as it. If though we were without Morgan, and thus did have a huge need in CF and Chicago really would pay of most of Rios contract, i'd listen if i was Melvin given that Rios has had multiple really good years, including just last season and he's only 30 years old. We obviously do have Morgan though, and with Weeks injury, now have three big holes on the infield. That all said, very little about this rumor strikes me as plausible from either side.

While this rumor is very likely bogus, the guy who posted it said that Chicago would pay most of the money owed to Rios over the life of his contract. I wouldn't. Dunn is pretty much strictly just a DH now, while Rios is a quality defensive CF. When Rios is hitting well as he did last year and as he has in previous seasons, he's one of the better overall CF's in the game. When Dunn isn't mashing, he's not just worthless as a player, he's a big liability if he's in the NL where he can't be a DH. Trading for Rios makes no sense given our huge needs on the infield instead, but Dunn wouldn't address those either and he can't even play a semi-decent firstbase. At least while Rios struggles at the plate, he is useful defensively and has speed on the bases.

I just have a hard time fathoming the White Sox paying off most of Rios deal. It's not like he only has one more year left on the contract. 11:$12M, 12:$12M, 13:$12.5M, 14:$12.5M, 15:$13.5M club option ($1M buyout) That's a boatload of cash to largely pay off for any team just to dump a guy, even the Yankees. The Blue Jays didn't even pay off near that much in dumping the ultra hideous contract for Vernon Wells which had 4/yrs and 86 million still left on the deal. Plus, my guess is the Brewers would want Chicago to pay some of Thorton's contract also given he's owed 5.5 million in each of the next two seasons, along with a one million dollar buyout for 2014. We'd be talking about the White Sox sending over something in the 40-45 million dollars range if there actually is something to this "rumor." Yea, Rios has been dreadful this season, but just last year he had a very good season given his numbers for being a CF and a solid defensive one. Plus, it's not like last year was his first really good year. If i'm the White Sox, i'd hope that Rios rebounds next year and in future seasons than basically lighting 30-35 million dollars on fire assuming they'd have to throw in that much, just to get Matt Gamel.

Haudricourt Tom @ @BrandonHurls Taylor Green would not be the 2B summoned if Weeks goes on DL. I'm pretty sure it would be Eric Farris. Great defender. 6 minutes ago

he rolled onto the outside of his ankle really really hard as well. it could really be anything, most of which are not very good. Well then it sounds much more like a severe ankle sprain. Hopefully it isn't worse, he'll at least be back sometime this year if that's it. I'll be happy if it's just a severe ankle sprain, even if it kept Weeks out around a month.

That happens at times, but given his high strikeout rate, it's hard to say he struggles to finish off hitters.

I give Meals credit for actually calling Lugo safe after thinking the tag was missed, even though the tag didn't miss. I question how many ups would be willing to make a safe call there even if they thought the tag was missed given how much sooner the ball arrived before the baserunner.

I'm really impressed with the job Alex Anthopoulos has been doing in Toronto that last two years.

If we didn't have Wilson on the roster with the ability to play any of SS, 2nd, and 3rd, i could see keeping Counsell around simply for his defensive abilities. In a close playoff race though where a guy pinch hitting well could contribute to winning an extra game, it really is hard to justify keeping Craig on the roster. This 35 at bat hit-less stretch isn't exactly a bunch of at bats, but the more troubling thing for me is how he's looked in the vast majority of those 35 at bats. Very few hard hit balls, if any. If at least he had some rocket line drives mixed in which just found a glove, i might think he still was worth keeping around. Instead, it's been pretty much 35 at bats of softly hit balls and strikeouts.

Even if Green is on the list which i fear more and more, the Mets have no reason to make a decision before the deadline of September 1st. In fact, it makes perfect sense to wait until the day they are required to make a decision. What is gained by deciding now instead of a month from now where their scouts get more time to watch all five players?

This is exactly why players are never as good or as bad as people on here make them out to be. They use the same stats to bang on a player but decide the stats are no good when they don't support the argument. Yuni is nowhere near as bad as people say he is and Casey has struggled both with the bat and in the field, but is still somewhat serviceable. Not saying I would not take an upgrade for either but I would still make a trade for a lefty out of the bullpen first. Yes Betancourt is that bad and it's not like only Brewers fans have come to that conclusion. As for McGehee, it certainly is possible that he could start hitting decent again and become serviceable. For nearly three straight months though, he hasn't just "struggled" a little and been somewhat serviceable, he's literally been one of the least productive everyday players in all of baseball during this very long roughly 75 game stretch. Given that Melvin has been pretty clear in stating that McGehee has a near infinite leash to turn things around this year, and neither Gamel/Green will be called up before September regardless if Casey kept hitting like a backup catcher, we obviously need him to start hitting again like a third-baseman instead of Will Nieves. He had a nice game tonight and hopefully it's something he can repeat more often than once every 10 games or so, but i'm going to be skeptical until it actually happens because over the last few months almost without fail, each time Casey has had a quality game, the media starts talking about how maybe he's turning things around. Then he'll go the next 10 games with something like 8-40 at the plate with zero extra base hits. After about 75 games of McGehee being the definition of a black hole in the lineup, it simply is going to take much more than one double in tonight's game for me to be reasonably convinced that he's on his way back to being at least somewhat serviceable.