danzig6767

A fair amount of decision Roenicke makes and some of his comments on why he does things will really leave me shaking my head in bewilderment. In watching how most other managers though handle their teams and make decisions, i think he in many ways just follows the managers handbook of today's baseball manager, especially when it comes to pigeon-holing certain relief pitchers in select roles regardless if it's based on logic. Overall, i don't think baseball managers compared to other managers will end up having a significant impact on their team's final record based, unless maybe a manager really abuses starting pitchers which leads to injury or if a team hates the manager so much that some players quit caring as much. So even though i find his decision making and reasons for it to be quite baffling at times, he at least has bought into and brought over the extensive defensive shifting which i think overall has definitely saved more hits than given up. I'd say somewhere around a C and i'd bump that up if he'd stop being so stubborn/stupid by keep trotting Betancourt out there nearly everyday.

Apparently that's what Melvin thought too because we gave up an avalanche of talent to acquire him, we paid much more for Greinke than we did for Sabathia and we aren't going to get nearly the same result. Sabathia was known the be only a three month rental, Greinke was acquired with two full years left on his contract. Huge difference and a significant factor in what a team can ask for in return. As for Greinke, i have no doubt at all that at some point he will stop giving up as many runs, i just don't know whether his eventual improvement will be a good amounts of great outings or just good outings? He's been so frustrating to watch so far, more so than any Brewers pitcher i can remember in recent history because he keeps doing stuff like have an inning where he leaves say three pitches to three hitters right over the middle of the plate that get tattooed, and then he'll look fabulous striking out the other three. It's not often that you'll see a pitcher with a 70/9 K/BB ratio and a 1.24 WHIP, who also has a 5.23 ERA. Generally in a situation like that you'd think the pitcher has just mainly had quite a bit of bad luck via many seeing eye singles coming around to score eventually. All of us watching the games though have seen the same thing, a to high percentage of the hits Greinke is giving up have been hit really hard after he left pitches to much over the plate. Plus, this is happening more times to often with runners on base than empty. Yea, this is a very small sample, but even before his bad start today vs the Cubs, batters have hit .405 so far with RISP and most of those have been hit hard, to the tune of a .733 SLG. Those numbers will go up after today. Hopefully Zack's climb back to being the highly productive pitcher he's been starts next time out, even if he never is the Cy Young level Geinke again.

Losses are team stats. It is because his groundballs happen to all be right at guys instead of through holes, there is no reason to think Hawkins won't completely implode into a 3.50+ ERA at some point going forward, he has shown nothing good so far. If there is any positive to Hawkins it is that his control has been good and that is generally a recipe for success but when you can't get the ball past any bats all the control in the world isn't going to really help that much long term. Yea Hawkins isn't getting a lot of strikeouts and a good percentage of grounders he's inducing are going close to infielders instead of finding holes, but batters for the most part aren't hitting the ball hard off him either, unlike Loe. Certainly the ground ball gods could change luck wise against Hawkins, but it's not as if batters are routinely hitting bullet grounders right at infielders or hitting bullets into the outfield that luckily found a glove. There was a liner tonight at Braun, but there haven't been a bunch of innings during this Hawkins scoreless streak where i went whew, thankfully we got lucky there to get out of the inning with no damage after all those hard hit balls found gloves. Obviously LaTroy won't keep up this sub-1.00 ERA pace, but i see no reason like you do that he's due to implode either. I'd feel that way if batters were hitting rockets like off Loe and finding gloves, that hasn't been the case.. With Loe though, in these outings where he's being scored on, it's largely been because of him throwing some really bad pitches. Sure he gets some seeing eye ground ball singles like everyone gets, but he's really been struggling with throwing belt high sinkers right down the heart of the plate that aren't sinking, and batters are tattooing those pitches. He's not getting killed mostly via some bad BABIP luck where lots of seeing eye grounders miss gloves, he's been throwing some big time meatballs and giving up runs because of it.

He's gone 21 games without a single extra base hit and out manager refuses to move Casey from the spot in the order with a constant flow of baserunners being on. It truly has become ridiculous.

Good luck with that. Roenicke has proven that he's a very stubborn guy when it comes to the likes of where he'll bat certain players in the order like McGehee and Betancourt.

I agree. If Lucroy bats even 7th, he gets a sac fly right there. Why? Because he actually knows how to hit.But that really isn't something you can assumeOne thing we can assume is that when Betancourt comes up in big spots with runners on base, he'll be an inning killer. He of that whopping .176 average and .472 OPS with RISP.

Even if McGehee is batting before Lucroy, there is zero logic at all in hitting Yuni before Lucroy. Hell, Betancourt should be on the damn bench. My loathing of that guy can't be overstated.

Yea, i'm no fan of the Yankees because of how they can pretty much buy a seat into the playoffs most years, but i have nothing but respect for Jeter. The guy has had a great career, doesn't come off as a jag to me, never gets in trouble off the field, and by all accounts has been a leader on many of those great Yankees teams. I can't hold it against him that writers have given Jeter Gold Gloves he didn't deserve, and he hasn't been the only undeserving Gold Glove winner either. It's a common occurrence.

I love it also. GOT has become my favorite show on TV right now.

No kidding It's been amazing over the last decade or so as the vast majority of manager have followed a sheep like mentality in how they use their bullpens. A few teams went to this pretty rigid defined roles for their pen and for awhile now, nearly every manager now does the exact same thing. LaRussa can certainly be a douchebag and it can drag games on as he continually changes pitchers later in games bases on matchups, but it would be extremely likely that in that situation, he'd have had Braddock already warmed up and ready to go once Pena was announced, and then he'd have put in Braddock. Unless his pen was on fumes, i can't imagine that he'd have let Pena face Loe given how Loe struggles more vs lefties and Pena struggles so badly vs lefties. Then Dillard could have been brought in to face Ramirez if Braddock vs him wasn't deemed a good matchup. It's not like the pen has been overused of late, everyone in that pen besides Loe/Axford was plenty rested. If that situation doesn't call for using Braddock, why even bother having a lefty in the pen.

He's fine in the 8th but he doesn't have to pitch every 8th inning. Nor does he have to only pitch in the 8th inning. He can pitch in the 7th and someone else can pitch the 8th. I also don't understand why Braddock wasn't warming up in case Pena came up in the situation that he did? Not only is Loe worse vs lefty hitters, Pena is batting a whopping .063 vs lefthanders this year and hit .179 vs lefthanders last year. Situations like that are why we have a lefthander in the pen. Yea, Braun mangled that fly ball, but it was another non-sinking sinker by Loe and that ball only stayed in the yard because the win was blowing in.

Braun should have caught that, but it was a terrible pitch and only the wind blowing in kept that ball in the park.

It wasn't even that close. It amazes me how often umps blow tag plays at any base or home plate.

For smaller market teams like the Brewers, not being able to sign guys like Prince often comes more down to years than per year dollar amounts. Corey Hart only has 2 years and about 20 million left on his deal while Boras will at least be trying to get Prince a 6 or 7 year type of deal at a sizable yearly amount and i can't blame Boras. Hell, Jason Werth was 32 years old and still was able to garner a 7/yr deal for 126 million dollars. Prince is only 27 years old. So my guess is that Prince will get at least a six year offer for someone and at a big yearly salary, that's risky stuff and even more risky for a small market team because if his production falls off in a manner that often happens with guys who have his body type/skill set, it would be pretty devastating to the Brewers. The only very slight chance i could envision where Prince stays a Brewer would be him wanting to stay so badly that he took a significant hometown discount and i just don't see that happening. How often have Boras clients done this?

Why would Baltimore trade Hardy for a meaningless package of nothing like you proposed? Yea, they have no realistic shot at a playoff berth, but come the trade deadline, the Brewers may not ending up being the only team looking for a shortstop who would have interest in Hardy, and it would take nothing to trump that pitiful offer you brought up. Plus, even if no other team made an offer for JJ, if i'm Baltimore, i'd just keep him the rest of the year and try to win as many games possible for my fans than accept a package of nothing like this, along with the fact that if Hardy has a nice year, he could bring some draft compensation.

Why does the #9 hitter on the little league team walk so much? He doesn't swing much, and pitchers can't throw strikes when he's up to bat. I will argue until the day that I die that unless you are talking about an elite hitter hitting in front of a non elite hitter (Prince for example), walks are mostly a product of the pitcher. You can't be serious Anyone who watches baseball long enough should be able to clearly see that there can be vast differences between hitters in their levels of plate discipline, thus this has a dramatic impact in why some hitters walk more than others, sometimes walking significantly more. Hell, one only needs to compare Betancourt and Counsell. Yuni swings at everything while Counsell rarely swings at a pitch outside of the strike zone. Yea, Counsell will also look at his share of pitches that end up being called strikes, but the by far biggest reason that Counsell has always walked at a high rate considering that he's never had power is that unlike many players in baseball, Craig not only has a good eye at the plate, he just won't swing at pitches out of the strike zone. That 1-1 fastball or slider two inches off the plate Counsell refuses to swing at to go 2-1, while less disciplined hitters will swing at it to go 1-2 or make an out. Plate discipline is a skill just like other aspects of the game are. Guys who have good plate discipline generally have had good plate discipline for a long time, through the minors and then through the big leagues, while free swinging hackers tend to also have been that way their whole time playing baseball, that's why the walk less. Pitchers have nothing to do with it over large sample sizes.

We are all guessing here, so my guess is it's mainly just a mental issue. I won't claim to know at all what it's like to play baseball on a professional level, but i played through high school and i know that whenever i went into slumps, it got into my head and it made me feel uncomfortable at the plate. My batting stance suddenly would feel awkward instead of normal. I'd even notice my hands on the bat, where as i wouldn't notice that when things were going well. This lead to me not just focusing on the pitch. There would just be an overall awkwardness feeling at the plate even though i had hit so many times in my life. I was a sports fanatic through my teens and played both baseball and basketball in high school, baseball though more so than other sports i found to be more mental, especially hitting. When i was up at the plate in a bad stretch and feeling uncomfortable, it really sucked and i'd feel near desperate for at least some good luck for a few balls i'd hit to find holes.

I noticed that also, but Carlos hasn't been showing any sulking whenever the cameras catch him in the dugout. Gomez just strikes me as a good guy and teammate who wants to contribute whenever he gets a chance. Plus, Gomez has flaws as a player, but one thing nobody can ever question is how hard he'll play, the guy is always going full bore no matter what the score is.

UZR doesn't take 1b scoops into account, something Prince is terrible at.Prince is brutal at scooping bad throws out of the dirt and he's short, so some high throws that pull him of the bag would simply be caught easily by a taller firstbaseman. He's obviously a fabulous hitter and his great offense trumps his many defensive shortcomings, but for anyone to think Prince is even close to being league average defensively, they'd have to be someone who ignores the stats and just started watching baseball a few days ago.

Braun looks a little quicker this year to me, maybe his offseason training had something to do with it. That play yesterday where Braun scored from second on the Fielder single, Ryan was absolutely flying down the thirdbase line. His mix of power and speed is pretty rare, what an athlete. A 40/40 season though seems pretty unlikely on both fronts, but 30/30 seems like a fairly safe bet given the way he's racking up steals.

Jungman has improved infinately more than Bradley. Jungman didn't give up less than half as many runs as Bradly last year, but this year he did. Jungman dominated college baseball this year, Bradley was simply pedestrian. They don't even compare. I didn't read up on this draft at all so i'm coming into this blind, but if Bradley has such pedestrian abilities, why did so many people and sites that follow the MLB draft closely predict Bradley to go in the top 10?

No way would i move Rickie that far down the order, but at least when a righthander is starting against the Brewers which puts Morgan in the lineup, i'd be fine with this Morgan Weeks Braun Fielder Hart McGehee Lucroy Betancourt I'd also be fine with flipping McGehee and Lucroy until Casey starts hitting, but flipping Weeks and Morgan vs righthanders would make some sense to me given the power Weeks has. So many of his homers end up being solo shots, so if Morgan hit before Rickie, it could turn some of those solo shots into 2-run homers, while still keeping Weeks high enough in the order to bat in front of Braun and Fielder.

Some team desperate for a veteran MI. He would be better at 2B than SS where his defense plays less of an impact role and in general 2B is even weaker than SS offensively. Big league GM's do things quite often that really makes me shake my head in bewilderment, so anything is possible, but i just can't envision a team next year giving Betancourt a starting gig at either shortstop or secondbase. That said, i could see a team signing him to be a utility infielder given in short time frames he wouldn't kill that team defensively at the two middle infield spots, and in a pinch he likely should be able to play a few innings or a game at third.

Apparently all that mumbo-jumbo > .427 OPS EDIT: .427 OPS!!! Last time i checked, Mike Rivera is a veteran who has caught a ton of games. Seems the type who'd go out of his way to mentor a young catcher, and while Rivera is far from a great hitting catcher, he isn't a bad hitting pitcher level at the plate. It's incredible how feeble Nieves is at the plate. He not only is an out machine that swings at everything like our other out machine Betancourt, Nieves never even hits a ball hard for an unlucky out. Almost nothing except weak grounders, poputs, and shallow fly balls. Who makes the call on all these bench hitting scrubs we've assembled? Is it all the choice of Melvin or is Roenicke having significant input on who is comprising the Brewers sad bench? On days that Morgan is starting in CF, this is our bench Gomez/Kotsay/Counsell/Wilson/Nieves If hypothetically each of those guys had to play a lot for a team with say 300 at bats or more, there is a pretty decent chance that none of the five could finish with at least a .650 OPS and multiple of the five would finish under a .600 OPS. It wouldn't be easy for another big league GM to assemble a worse hitting bench than those five.

I tend to agree. It was crazy some of the sliders that the Marlins were swinging at tonight, a few were started 6-10 inches off the plate and ended over a foot off the plate. That said, if if Dillard can become a very reliable Loogy basically, he can have value given more hitters are righthanded and with our rotation, we might be able to afford that luxury. He has to be lights out vs righties though.