danzig6767

One of my favorite Hopper scenes

Not interested in the slightest Only once has his WHIP been at or under 1.83 in his career. He has a career .302BAA and he's a walk machine, thus the base paths are constantly full of baserunners when he's on the mound. Eveland can't even count on being tough on lefthanded hitters given they eat him alive just as badly as righthanded hitters.

Well, maybe he used to feel that way, but after Macha had to sit and watch the bevy of veteran pitchers get terrible results, i think he'll gladly now turn to anyone he can feel any trust to get outs like i think he already feels towards Axford. If then Braddock gets called up and is very productive, i could easily see Macha counting heavily on both Axford and Braddock. Macha may have an infinity towards veterans, but he has to be sweating his job security and when there are close games going forward, i just don't see Macha turning to vets like Vargas/Suppan in high leverage situations if other young options like Axford/Braddock are clearly getting better results. In fact, my guess is that he's thrilled to have an option like Axford to turn to now and would be just as thrilled when Braddock gets called up.

I just grabbed Sea of Cowards from The Dead Weather So far i like it pretty much, not sure yet though if i like it better than Horehound

I love Brandon, but you're exaggerating some things in this post. First of all, Stuckey and Rose should never be mentioned anywhere near the same sentence. As for Jennings always deferring, first to Bogut and then Salmons, i just ask were you actually watching the Bucks games? In the months before Salmons was acquired, Jennings shots per game were 15.5/19.2/16.4/15.0 That's not numbers of a guy unwilling to put up a lot of shots even as his shooting percentage was dropping off a cliff. After Salmons came on board, Jennings certainly did shoot less and deferred more by averaging about 12.5spg in that time frame. That said, he should have done that deferring given he shot around 36% from the field in the time Salmons was on the roster. As i said earlier, i love the way Jennings looked overall as a rookie PG for the Bucks. I'm very excited for his future. He will though need to really really improve his shooting percentage if Brandon ever wants to become a top tier NBA point guard, but all the intangibles seem to be there at least.

If the Twins are a model franchise, I want to use a different model. Their model has basically been competing in a very weak division. They have Liriano, and then their other starters are guys that don't have the velocity to consistently put guys away. Slowey (4.43 career ERA), Blackburn (4.19), Baker (4.32), & Pavano (4.43) really aren't anything special. The Twins' rotation is basically the equivalent of an injury-prone Gallardo + 4 pre-injury Dave Bushes. I don't see what's so admirable there. Solid for sure, but nothing that will guarantee any postseason appearances. On offense, the Twins really aren't much different from the Crew, either, in that they have their two premier bats & then a bunch of average to above-avg. type guys around them. The model franchise I want the Crew to emulate is Tampa Bay. I can understand liking better what Tampa is doing recently, but i think the tone of your post to harshly diminishes the fabulous success over that the Twins have had for around the last decade while operating on a small market budget. Even if the AL Central generally hasn't been the toughest division in baseball, the Twins have still presided in the AL which for awhile now not only has the DH, it's been the better league than the NL. I just took a quick trip to yahoo, in the standings section it goes back to 2002. 2002-- 94-67 won division 2003-- 90-72 won division 2004-- 92-70 won division 2005-- 83-79 2006-- 96-66 won division 2007-- 79-83 2008-- 88-75 lost division in a one game playoff 2009-- 87-76 won division 2010-- 24-16 Five division titles and barely missing a 6th in the last 8 years would have been pretty damn outstanding for me. You can differ on some of their philosophies for team building, but i can't see how anyone wouldn't heap huge praise on the Twins front office over the last decade or so. Given their payroll limitations, the bottom line results have been as good as anyone in the game IMO. If say there was a stat for the most amount of wins the last 10 years per dollar spent by each team, i'd have to assume Minnesota would rank at the top or right near it. Their beliefs on pitching and defense can't be diminished in helping contribute greatly to all that success. In that time frame, only once did the Twins not have a team ERA in the top half of the AL. Plus, it's not as if they could go out like Boston and buy expensive hard throwers like Schilling/Beckett or the Yanks go buy Sabbathia. They generally had to build pitching staffs largely on the cheaper side.

Instead of being demoralized as i previously was, i now sit and watch games just wondering when the pitching staff will implode in some combination of simply terrible pitching, bad defense, and/or seeing eye singles. It feels like a game killing inning is just inevitable at some point in the game. When they show Macha in the dugout lately, he usually has the look on his face like i feel. As if he's watching from the dugout just wondering when the point in the game will come, not if it will that he'll have to at the very least make one pitching decision where he's thinking, man i really don't want to have to go out there and make this move.

He probably should have removed Wolf sooner, but if Weeks is playing in the normal spot a second baseman is at, it's an inning end DP ball. The next hitter gets jammed and bloops one in. This isn't a good team, but they can't catch a break either. EDIT-- Another seeing eye grounder and now an error. Could end up being a 4-6 run inning on no hard it balls

It would be nice to not have an all lefthanded pinch hitting group most nights

The team is already 7 games under .500, i can't see how Macha could justify just waving the white flag in games two times a week by inserting Suppan for the rest of those games unless the score was already so far out of hand that any comeback hopes were remote at best. Doing what you propose is almost like forfeiting from the moment Macha will have chosen to put in Suppan for the rest of the game. Don't think the rest of the team wouldn't know this also. It's one thing to do that if say you're down 7-8-9 runs in the 6th or 7th inning, but another thing if the deficit is 5 runs or less.

I don't know if demoralized is the word i'd use for this year's team, but i will say that i don't hold any high hopes that the team has a dramatic turnaround in them to where by say the trade deadline they are reasonably close in the Wild Card race. It just feels like by around late July that the Brewers will be clearly out any playoff consideration.

I understand that who the pinch hitters are on a team are at the absolute bottom of importance compared to other areas of a team and i haven't been following the minors much, but wasn't there anyone who could have been called up instead of Stern who hits from the right side so that late in games we aren't constantly having to choose between 3-4 lefthanded pinch hitters when a lefty is on the mound?

I would take Tony Parker and Russell Westbrook over Rose fairly easily. Those six. I take Billups over him too. Jennings might be better by next year. Rose is more of a combo guard in my opinion. Those types of players don't do much for me. I don't think Rose is a combo guard at all, he's every bit a run the team type of PG as Jennings is, both just like to score along with run the team. That said, basketball isn't just about offense and Westbrook is a much better defender than Rose is. As for who i'd rather have between Jennings and Rose, i'd take Rose but not by a large margin. Rose has much better size and is vastly vastly superior finishing in the paint. Where i like Jennings better is i think he has superior intangibles in the leadership department and he's a much better three point shooter. They obvious key as to how good Brandon can become is just how much he improves at finishing in the paint and his midrange jumper. Jennings has the quickness to get in the lane against most opposing point guards, but he wasn't just poor at finishing in the paint, he was abysmal at it. Granted, he was a rookie and he needs to get stronger, but he has to both improve his shooting percentage big time and have much better shot selection. Until Brandon can start making those shots in the paint at a much higher percentage and/or drawing more fouls, he'll have to learn to dish better once opposing defenses collapse on him inside instead of him looking to shoot so often where the end result was usually a missed or rejected shot.

Niemi pissed me off. I not only hate any Chicago sports franchise, i put money on Philadelphia and San Jose. As for the playoffs, i don't like Cosby and was thrilled to seen him and Pittsburgh get bounced. I watch hockey because i like it. If the casual hockey fans stop tuning in because Crosby and/or Ovechkin aren't playing anymore, i don't care one bit.

Dumb manager?

I'd also guess that was a sizable motivation factor in signing Ben, but i'm still surprised that Beane gave him 10 million dollars. That's a lot of coin when his injury history and time out from pitching is factored in.

While Ben threw harder for us in his prime, his location ability on his fastball was one of his best assets by being able to pitch on the corners for the most part. I haven't watched any of his starts, but i'd assume he's also had poor command of his curve and if that is the case, hitters can sit on his fastball. For any two pitch starter, if they loose command of their second pitch, they are dead in the water unless their fastball is in the high 90's that finds the black a lot. Hell, just remember Turnbow. Once he couldn't throw his slider for a strike, hitters would rake his fastball even though it was often 95mph and up. For some reason, many fans mostly label productive soft tossers as command pitchers, but many guys who throw hard also are mainly successful because they have great command. We've all seen that the majority of big league hitters can hit hard any fastball if they know it's coming unless we are talking really high 90's heat, especially if those fastballs are catching a lot of the plate. Sheets ability in his prime and even just below his prime to throw his curve for a strike at any time is what added mph to his fastball because hitters had to wait back a bit to decipher what was coming.

Yep If we had a different GM for even just the last 2-3 years, i think it's pretty logical to deduce that we wouldn't have the same roster that we currently do have. Obviously that could mean the team would then would be worse than it is this year and maybe also the last year or two. It's also very possible that the team would be better, but it's not as if the only possible moves available would be he ones Doug made. That's why bottom line results matter to me most except if the Brewers had an excessive amount of injuries in relation to the rest of the league. I hate when some say that if fans want to criticize a professional GM that then those fans must first state what moves they'd have made instead. Well, fans aren't supposed to know more than a GM getting paid big money and that have a large staff of people to help make player evaluations. A GM also is able to call every other GM to try and barter deals, fans on a forum certainly don't have that option. So there would be all kinds of potential deals available to every GM that they then choose to make or pass on for other deals or nothing at all. These things all factor into what shape a baseball team ends up being in and thus why they are accountable for the results within reason given not all GM's have equal revenue streams to work with.

DB on RealGM posted this great read and i thought some here would enjoy it http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/joe_posnanski/04/19/tony.larussa/index.html?eref=sihp

Of course it will hurt if guys like Stephan and McDonagh leave with the others, but that last line scares me the most. Mark Osiecki i've read has been huge in getting all these talented young defenseman to choose to play hockey for UW. If he left i'm not trying to imply that recruiting would crash given Wisconsin has great tradition and facilities to sell to recruits going forward, but Osiecki leaving would get less attention than any players leaving even that his departure could have a much bigger impact long term.

I didn't like using Hawkins there and his command looked to be off, he did hit a batter. That said, i agree he caught zero luck that inning. Besides the hit batter, everything else was a seeing eye grounder hit/misplay by Prince.

Fair or not, people simply hate Suppan. The wolves will only back off if Suppan isn't a trainwreck on the mound. If he gets lit up on a regular basis, it's inevitable that large numbers of fans will be irate until Suppan is either let go or put into the garbage man role in the bullpen. Plus, i think some are skeptical as to whether a guy like Parra would be effective in the loogy role. Last year lefties hit .287 off Parra with a 1.75 WHIP, that might have something to do with his over the top motion and lack of great slider or curve that makes it very rough on left handed hitters. On the flip side, lefties hit .178 off Stetter last season.

BTW, i'm not really ripping to strongly on his past and don't think he's done a bad job or is a bad GM. Ed Wade is an example of what a bad GM is. I'm just starting to really question that if i was Attanasio, would i keep Doug if the team finished in the 74-80 win range this year? If that was the result this year, i'd definitely do an extensive search of potential GM candidates before just bringing back Melvin. Whether there is a high quality GM in the waiting candidate that would be available is something i don't claim to have an answer to. Plus, as i said earlier, i certainly do grasp that if Doug was replaced after the season, it's just as possible that his replacement could be a bust as it is he'd be an upgrade.

Yea the development of pitching in the organization has been terrible, but then sometimes a GM has to find other avenues to acquire pitching. Plus, a huge chunk of the reason for the Brewers success the last three years has been the incredible production at a cheap price of Braun and Fielder. Without those two in many ways carrying the offense, no way we win so many games since their arrival. So if Doug deserves the credit for bringing in those two franchise players, he certainly needs to be held at least fairly responsible for pitching short comings. I can't just give him credit for the guys who panned out and remove him from blame for failures elsewhere. To be fair to Melvin, running a team like ours is much tougher than say the Red Sox who could make mistakes financially to players like Suppan/Hall and not end up having 20 million in dead money eating up nearly a 1/4 of the payroll, but it is what it is. The margin of error is obviously slimmer. So he needs to hit home runs sometimes when trading a Sexson or Overbay instead of hitting a solid single or double. Don't whiff completely when trading Davis. Maybe strike gold when he traded Kolb as some teams do as say it looks like the Indians may have when they got Carlos Santana for Blake. In the seven years Melvin has been here, he's made many very nice moves that worked out well which helped bring the franchise back to being competitive. Outside of Lee for Podsednik though, has he made another in seven years that has been a wow what an amazing job move? Maybe he has and i'm just forgetting?

So 7 years isn't enough, GM's need 10 years to properly evaluate if they take over a team in bad shape? If we do finish under .500 again this year, odds are high that a big chunk of the reason will be decisions by Melvin this past offseason and prior ones that didn't work out. Moves like 20 plus million of dead money between Suppan/Hall. Moves he made in putting together the pitching staff. Maybe Gomez doesn't work out. This will be year three where Melvin has had Braun/Fielder forming one of the league's best 3-4 hitter duos at a very team friendly price tag that has allowed Melvin to use financial assets elsewhere. It's situations like that where a GM in a small market has to capitalize by putting a good team around them and Attanasio has given Melvin a fair chance financially to compete compared to many other small market teams. Doug hasn't had to try and win on 45-50 million dollar payrolls the last three years. We'll see how the year pans out before getting on Doug to much, it's obviously very very early. As i said, i by no means think he's been a bad GM. I just would strongly consider replacing him if we finish under .500 again because then while he'll have done a solid job here, solid is just that. Not bad, but nothing special either and sometimes in sports you have to roll the dice in hopes of landing a special talent as GM or head coach even if it means risking letting go a guy who has been solid and the possibility is always there that the new hire could be significantly worse.