danzig6767

Aramis has a 16 million dollar club option for next year with a 2 million dollar buyout. The Cubs almost assuredly will decline the option and buy him out for the 2 million next year if he's not traded. My guess is if the Cubs try to trade Ramirez, he'll try using his no-trade clause to tell the Cubs and any team interested that he'd waive that no-trade clause, but only if the interested team agreed to exercise his option for next year. That may not end up working, but i'd expect Ramirez to at least try it if the Cubs shop him.

With the Dodgers out of the race, Furcal struggling badly at the plate, his injury woes, and him being owed over 4 million for the rest of the season, i can't envision LA getting anything more than a fringe prospect in return given the money Rafael is owed. Furcal is sporting an abysmal .455 OPS so far this season in 98 at bats, but given he posted an .826 OPS just last year, there would be some reason to hope that he could turn things around at the plate. Plus, even if Furcal never fully turned things around at the plate, he at least wouldn't be a SS playing defense like the infield is mud like Yuni does.

I didn't like Doug signing Kotsay and am still skeptical about how he'll do going forward over the rest of the season, but i wouldn't say his numbers fell off a cliff 6 years ago as you say. First of all, even in his prime, Kotsay never had high enough numbers for them to have fallen off a cliff as you imply. In his prime, Kotsay in most years ranged from a .725-.800 OPS level hitter. 2006 he had a .719 OPS 2007 he was awful with a .575 OPS 2008 he had a poor .631 OPS in 84 at bats with Boston, but really rebounded with a .758 OPS in 318 at bats to finish the year after going to Atlanta. 2009 he was back in Boston struggling to a .615 OPS in 74 at bats, but rebounded again after going to Chicago by having a .783 OPS in 113 at bats with them. 2010 he had a .683 OPS in 327 at bats with Chicago This year with us he has a .676 OPS in 160 at bats to this point So yea, Kotsay did start showing decline in 2006 and it hasn't reversed itself. That said, when i think about a player's numbers falling off a cliff, i think of someone with a much steeper level of decline. An example being let's say Adam Dunn. He's consistently been a .850-.950 OPS hitter, .597 is what he's at this year. That simply could just be a bad slump so far by Dunn, but if say he instead is in real decline and the rest of his career, he struggles to be more than a .700.750 OPS hitter, that would be what i'd call falling off a cliff. Kotsay has more slid down the decline cliff from his prime years as a hitters.

Obviously you can't ever judge a GM over just one move, but it's hard for me to not seriously question the judgment of any GM who would choose to make Yuni his everyday shortstop in the same year that he gave up his top 5 prospects in hopes of getting a playoff berth, even with all the data out there about just how terrible Yuni is. I really can't remember the last time i despised a Brewers player more than Betancourt.

No argument from me. I didn't get the point of having both Wilson/Counsell on the roster when Wilson was picked up, and nothing since has changed my mind. Weeks never gets/needs a day off. Roenicke has shown that he's going to play Betancourt close to everyday. Counsell hits so so poorly that Roenicke for good reason doesn't want to play him at third much even with McGehee in that epic slump. Wilson never gets starts and is the last pinch hitting option for Roenicke. So why are both staying on the roster? Yea, if Betancourt suffered a serious injury, Counsell couldn't handle playing everyday at SS, so Wilson likely would have to be the guy kept. With that being the case, i just wonder if Melvin doesn't want to waive the hometown guy like Craig?

His K & BB rates are pretty close to Pedro's 2000 & 2001 seasons. Greinke's HR/9 & LOB% are the two stats that show where the ERA comes from. I still have faith he's going to get on a streak where he's just untouchable, & reel in the ERA. I hope so, but it's crazy how similar many of his starts have been. I know it's a relatively small sample, but he has a .680 OPS against with nobody on base. Besides all the home runs he's given up, what by far has killed him the most is that for whatever reason, his mistake pitches have tended to be with runners on base. So frustrating. He'll be looking great and then with say two outs in an inning, he allows a few runners on and then leaves a pitch over the plate that gets smoked, bam, in come multiple runs. Then the next inning he'll strikeout the side. I've never been more frustrated and confused by a Brewers pitcher. I'd like to believe that he'll go on some great stretch as you said, but i've been thinking that same thing for awhile now and it just never happens.

That's nice to read about Loe and lefthanders. It would be huge going forward if Saito stepped up and pitched like he has since entering MLB or at least near that level. Obviously starting pitchers will always be more important than setup guys and closers who throw so fewer innings, but come this point of the year for teams in playoffs chases, these late inning setup guys and closers can be huge in deciding which teams make the playofs and those who come up just short. Those 3-4 late inning guys generally are always the ones who come in very close games from the 7th through 9th innings. When some teams in that playoff chase blow a disproportionate number of those games compared to the ones also in the playoff race, it's really really hard to overcome that. As for Roenicke, given all the bashing i've done of him, he deserves props for taking out Prince and pinch running Gomez. Not every manager would risk doing that in case the game ended up tied after the 9th inning. Speaking of Gomez, the guy obviously has numerous flaws as a player, but wow is he incredibly fast. Watching the replay of him scoring on the Kotsay hit, the speed he showed in getting to home plate there just might be second to none in all of baseball. Once Carlos gets a head of steam going, he covers ground at an amazing level. What a shame that he's not a smarter player.

That's debatable. He was embarrassing himself earlier in the year. A good game or two doesn't really mean much because every pro athlete haas a good game from time to time, no matter how bad they are relative to their peers. I'll be the first to admit that i was one of those people who wanted Kotsay replaced and that he looked pretty washed up during that 0-18ish stretch. He has really surprised me though at the plate the last 6 games or so. He's not only getting hits and a few home runs, he's actually driven the ball hard on a couple of outs. I'm skeptical that he can keep this up, but given that it looked to be a lock that he was staying on the roster the rest of the year regardless if he had continued hitting terrible, it's encouraging that he may not be as completely washed up as he looked in that 0-18 stretch he had. Hopefully Kotsay can avoid looking brutal as he did for awhile and come up with some big hits going forward because all i care about is the Brewers winning games, i'll gladly eat some crow if he's at least reasonably productive going forward. We'll see.

Who cares as long he is not 5 or 10 minutes late ? Because it's much easier to sneak a mistake 95-96 MPH FB past a guy than a 90-91 MPH? Plus, Braddock throws more over the top than from a more side arm angle that generally the LOOGY guys do, so when he's not throwing really hard, he's not going to be super tough vs lefties. I know lefthanded batters were only hitting .160 off Braddock coming into the game, but if his velocity doesn't get back in that 94-95 range, i question if he can remain a matchup nightmare vs most lefthanded batters.

It's amazing how many shallow flies to right-center and RF that Yuni hits. What a scrub.

You're right that the two singles were routine type of groundballs that easily could have been outs instead and our infield defense does suck, but on those two hits, the balls just found perfect holes moreso than lack of range by our infielders.

Not sure, he's a rare pitcher that has 4 plus pitches, but he mostly sticks with 3, his slider is either great or it's a terrible hanger over the middle of the plate and his FB rarely hits the catcher in where he's setup. He's an enigma.Batters just sit on his fastball and if his location is off, they crush it. Maybe if Greinke used that changeup more, batters wouldn't be so comfortable at timing his fastball?

Why doesn't he throw that changeup more often?

Wow, thought that was gone and down 4-0

Watching so much baseball over the years, i'm actually surprised that this doesn't happen more often. The railings in quite a few parks aren't really that high, and thus when you have fans sometimes reaching so far over these railings, it just strikes me as a potential very serious injury waiting to happen. Mix in that sometimes fans reaching over railings are either buzzed to lit up, that can further increase chances of a disaster.

I credit Time Allen big time for not giving up even though he's blind. That said, i find him very hard to listen to as an analyst because pretty much all he does is spout off baseball cliches. In fact, things i've heard him say makes him sound quite a bit like Bill Schroeder when he calls games and that's not a compliment. As for Bill Michaels and 1250, i rarely ever listen to that station as it is. I like Rome at times when he's interviewing guests, but when his "clones" start calling in, that's immediate change the station time for me. Their Big Show trio of Ellerson, Sparky, and Josh is painfully bad to me. I gave them a try and it didn't take long at all for me to realize that i'd never listen again except in rare cases of podcasts with certain guests i was interested in. Bill Michaels isn't much better, so i won't tune in there either. I do wonder though who is running that station and how he still has a job? Talk radio in any format, be it political or sports, they are so reliant on their hosts to first attract listeners, and then keep them tuning in. Yet, how does the guy running 1250 listen to say their Big Show and think the hosts he hired aren't garbage, especially Ellerson? 540 ESPN radio certainly has their share of brutal on air "talent" like Steve Heywood and Bill Johnson who unfortunately makes the Jason Wilde Packers show nearly impossible to listen to. That said, IMO the D-List and Homer are solid enough shows that i'll tune in sometimes, and i regularly listen to their daily podcasts with Wilde and Haudricourt.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6746478/undervalued-sluggers I saw this posted on another forum and thought it was interesting enough to highjack it for Brewerfan. The article was reasonably well written, but like many in the national media who don't watch the Brewers near everyday, they've been slow to pick up on the defensive improvement by Weeks. At one time he was dreadful defensively, but to his credit he's improved greatly. He'll still has his brainfart moments and inexplicably sometimes drops throws or line drives that hit him right in his glove, but he'll also show fabulous range at times, he no longer boots tons of simple ground balls, and he has a great arm with much improved accuracy. Plus, while Melvin certainly deserves some of the blame for our poor team defense overall, especially since he personally added the two statues which play 3rd/SS, Braun, Prince, and Hart all came from the farm system with real defensive shortcomings, particularly Braun and Prince. Hart isn't as bad as those two, but he has issues sometimes reading balls off the bat and his arm is a mix of not being overly strong and inaccurate. So while i don't believe at all that it was some plan by Doug to build such a defensively challenged team, he certainly threw gas on the defensive fire by adding two statues on the left side of his infield to go along with already poor defenders on the roster from the farm system who hit to well to be replaced for defensive reasons. I'm trying to think if i can ever recall any MLB team who had a shortstop and third baseman duo which may have had less range than these two, and i'm at a loss to think of one offhand.

Because Yuni has such abysmal range is why In just the recent Twins series for example, twice he failed to get to balls hit that i'd guess about 90% of major league shortstops turn into outs. In both cases, it came with two outs that should have ended the inning, but the Twins ended up scoring a total of five runs after the innings stayed alive because Yuni moves like he has on 10 pound ankle weights. This happens a lot and his bad defensive stats back up my eyes. In the first inning of the second Arizona game, K.Johnson hits a ball barely to the right of Yuni, he whiffed yet again and the guy came around to score and kept the inning alive longer in which four runs scored. None of those three plays were scored as errors, but Betancourt's utter lack of range badly hurt the team by costing them runs.

I can and have analyzed pitch f/x data myself. That how I did things like this: http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a345/rluzinski/vel_0412.jpg The raw data is available to anyone and I just used Excel for everything. You can also just use this site to look at AB by AB: http://brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/pfx.php Here's Greinke's AB against Tosini, when he gave up the 3 run HR: http://www.brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/numlocation.php?pitchSel=425844&game=gid_2011_07_03_milmlb_minmlb_1/&batterX=35&innings=yyyyyyyyy&sp_type=1&s_type=3 That third pitch was a 93 MPH four seam fastball that that had good rise but was left up in the zone. I suspect that was not where he wanted it but I also bet that he gets away with it more often than not. Again, we need to compare it to some kind of baseline. It would be nice to feed velocity, movement an location into an algorithm to get a better sense of what our expectation is based only on that (I realize that there are other factors).Lucroy was set up inside on that pitch, i remember it clearly. Greinke just badly missed his target on that one.

If anyone should be fined for that it should be Melvin, he's the one who brought in those free swingers. Managers and batting coaches can try all they want to change very impatient hackers, but it rarely ever works. That's why it's up to the GM to avoid bringing impatient hackers.

I have a question about the roof. Why does the team so often close the roof way before any potential rain comes through? For example, i almost went to the game with my kid tonight and thankfully i didn't, but besides how bad the game went, the team had the roof closed all game long on a very hot/humid night even though it never rained. It looked to be stifling hot in there. Yea, a potential storm was reported, but it wasn't supposed to hit for awhile after the game started, if it even came at all. So if the roof only takes 10-15 minutes to close, why not wait until near the last minute to close the roof, especially on a very humid night like tonight? It's not as if a bit of rain got in before the roof fully closed, the game would need to be canceled.

More from Haudricourt: The pitching staff as a whole i do think is under-performing, especially Geinke and Gallardo to a much lesser degree, so while i've had numerous questions about how Roenicke handles the bullpen, i do think his impact overall on the pitching woes is fairly minor outside of his usage of Loe. Thus, i can understand Roenicke and management being somewhat confused by the pitching struggles. That said, i've heard Roenicke, Melvin, and Gord Ashe interviewed where the year long very inconsistent offense has been discussed, and all responded by saying they couldn't put their finger on why. Each time i'd hear this i'd want to scream hello and be so frustrated by those handling the interview because they never would bring up what seemed so obvious. In the vast majority games where Braun, Weeks, Prince, and Morgan to a lesser degree haven't hit well, we rarely score more than a run or two. Even when those guys are productive, if the pitching falters, we usually can't score the say 6-10 runs to still win because way to often there have been multiple black holes in the lineup which produce close to nothing. They don't take pitches to help wear out a starting pitcher. They kill situations with multiple runners on base. Nobody on the bench can hit except for Nyger when Gomez starts. I don't know what exact overall % of the total team at bats that Betancourt, Gomez, Kotsay, McGehee, Nieves, and Counsell have taken this season, but i'd be surprised if their combined OBP is over .270 and their combined OPS is over .600. It should be painfully obvious to both Roenicke and Melvin as to why the offense is so inconsistent, the same 3-4 players are being asked to carry almost the entire offense on most nights. Just imagine what our record would be if Prince, Braun, and Weeks haven't had such fabulous starts to the season?

Don't hold your breathe for any of those type of moves. Watching Melvin over his tenure as Brewers GM, i think he just has a weakness in general of overvaluing experience, except in the case of elite prospects. I have a feeling that the Brad Nelson situation changed Melvin and thus it explains his Kotsay signing, along with keeping Boggs in the minors even though he can switch hit and likely would produce better. Same with McGehee. Doug saw Casey have success on the big league level over the last year and a half, thus he's not willing to take the "risk" in his eyes of calling up Green who has never done anything in the majors. Melvin would rather hope/pray that McGehee through his experience can eventually turn things around, regardless of the fact that McGehee isn't in just some fairly common slump, he's been killing the team both offensively/defensively for almost 60 games and the vast majority of his ugly at bats show no sign of him snapping out of it. When Doug acquired Betancourt, i can't find the article, but i remember him saying that he considered Yuni an important part of the deal because he had so many years of experience playing shortstop, and Doug didn't want to hand that important defensive position to an unproven player. That and the well Yuni had 78 RBI's last year angle. When Melvin signed Nieves, he again mentioned the experience angle, that he wanted a backup catcher with experience handling a pitching staff. Some GM's are like Doug in that they have a very strong affinity for experience and thus, they'll almost always give the benefit of the doubt to guys who have played in the majors, especially to bench or role player jobs. Other GM's are more willing to make moves quicker and/or call up a kid to replace a veteran not getting the job done, especially in a playoff race where each game can be so huge.

Yuni move around like he has on ankle weights

X cellent point. It's worth noting that Boggs, although 2 years older than Jay, has had a much better minor league career. The difference is in organizational attitude.This is how you end up in a game with Josh Wilson starting in LF.