JoeHova

I just came on here to mention that too. That can't be accurate, not even close. Teams have over 100 minor leaguers, no way are they spending half a billion dollars a year on player development. Maybe $5 million for the whole minor league system, that seems more likely, though that's still probably high.

wow, teams have really been reading Rany Jazyleri's study on the success rates of college 1st basemen. Also, I'd have to think LaPorta's success may have influenced this run on college 1st basemen. They're usually pretty rare in the 1st round.

no doubt, no doubt. It's just funny that the upside comps are so different.

I believe there are 70 games in each half in AA, though I could be mistaken. That would mean 10 games left.

That scouting report is funny when they list Lawrie's upside: Russell Martin (so far, so good) or Eric Byrnes (umm, not as good).

wait a minute, I just read the first page of this thread and people are saying the Brewers met Jemile's asking price. That's totally inaccurate according to Jemile himself. Apparently the Brewers came up $100,000- $150,000 short. It's not like they low-balled him, but they didn't meet his price. Here's the story: link: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=3281990

I like this pick, especially given the fact that they say his bat is not limited to catcher, which is good considering his d is apparently not his strong suit at this point. I like picking bats over pitchers in the 1st round, so like LaPorta, this pick makes me happy.

I will be there for sure (unless I'm dead or something) if Chicago gets the games. That would be really cool, despite the Illinois/Wisconsin rivalry. I've been hoping they can pull it off, it seems like they've got a bit of an underdog bid because of crappy infrastructure. Of course, they could probably fix that given 8 years, but that would cost a lot of money and from what I've read, the IOC is a little skeptical they can come up with enough of it.

For Maddux, I don't see why Gwynn alone wouldn't be enough. He was traded for someone worse two years ago. Maybe Izturis is a slightly better player because he's an atrocious hitting SS, while Gwynn is an atrocious hitting CF, but Gwynn is much cheaper, the son of the Padres franchise player, and under control for a long time. Plus, Gwynn at least has a little bit of upside. I think Gwynn unquestionably is more valuable than Izturis was when he was traded.

I see lcbj68c made his pick and also that TooLiveBrew ruined my surprise pick http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif . Anyway, without further ado: #9 NY Mets pick Micah Owings, SP/1B, Tulane University - Bats/Throws R/R This was a tough choice, it came down to Owings, Cameron Maybin, Matt Garza, and Alex Gordon. I also gave a hard look to Andrew McCutchen and Jed Lowrie, but those guys aren't quite on the level of the above guys, imo. I normally prefer hitters to pitchers because of injury concerns with pitchers, but with Owings, I was willing to make an exception. He looks like he should be a pretty good mid-rotation starter, despite his start in Milwaukee the other day, and has the potential to be more (as a pitcher). Gordon is still very intriguing, but the Mets have David Wright entrenched at 3rd, so 3rd base isn't a big need right now. Meanwhile, pitching is. Gordon may be the best player available, but he has not hit enough to prove that yet, imo. However, the real reason he got the nod is because of the possibility of him being 2 players in one. He has only 160 or so professional at-bats thus far, but he's been excellent in them and also hit well at Tulane and Georgia Tech. I think there is a chance that he is a legitimately good hitter. Carlos Delgado hasn't been doing much against lefties since he became a Met. I'm drafting Owings with the express purpose of starting him at first against most lefties, in addition to his normal pitching duties. I realize that Owings has done better against righties in his career, but we're only platooning him for now to see how he handles playing the field part of the time. If Delgado gets upset about being platooned with a pitcher, no big deal because he's been sucking and this is the last year of his contract. If Owings can handle playing the field 40-50 times a year and does ok, the long term plan would be to start him 3 games out of 5 at first and 1 out of every 5 at pitcher. If he doesn't hit quite enough for first, left field would be an option. Having a guy who can be a starting position player in addition to being a starting pitcher would be a huge advantage. It would give a team more flexibility in roster construction and allow a team to make good use of flawed players like Earl Weaver used to. Who wouldn't like to have an extra roster spot to use on a no-defense slugger like Jack Cust? Or a speed guy who could get you a guaranteed steal when you needed it late in the game or to take over in the field for the afore-mentioned slugger late in the game? Or, if you're Ned, a 15th pitcher http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif ? Ideally, I see Owings as a Javier Vazquez type of pitcher and a Richie Sexson type of bat. I realize that the odds of both those things happening are low (perhaps astronomically so), but the chance is worth the #9 pick. Even if he's just an innings eater, at least we got some value out of the pick. And if he gets hurt as a pitcher, maybe he can try to make it as strictly a hitter. The pick may look stupid in a few years, but I feel the chance of Owings becoming a unique player is something worth maybe reaching a couple picks for.

I think Brawndo's point (which I agree with 100%) is that it is smarter to gamble money on the draft than on scrap-heap vets because the pay-offs can be a lot bigger and because the actual money (say, $5 mill for a Boras guy vs. $3 mill for a non-Boras guy) you're talking about is something close to a pittance in pro sports terms. If even a few of your "gambles" pay off, you're ahead of the game, because an average player on the FA market tends to get somewhere from $6 mill to $12 mill per year. Thus, the first 3 cost controlled years of even an average player are worth far more to a team than that $2 million difference in bonus. I mean, look at the Pirates. Last year they went cheap and took a scrub reliever #4 overall (though he didn't look like a scrub at the time, he wasn't the best player left on the board by a long-shot). However, they then traded for Matt Morris and his $9 million 2008 salary. Wouldn't they have been better off biting the bullet and paying Matt Wieters the extra $3.5 million he was asking for and possibly getting their catcher of the future, rather than blowing that $3.5 million and much more on a washed up pitcher who had been on a downward slide for years?

you make good points about how good he looks back there, but what I'm saying is, what is the quantifiable difference? How many saved passed balls have there been? Last year, Estrada only had 5 and the pitchers had 57 wild pitches. This year, in a little over 1/3rd of the season, Kendall has 3 passed balls and the staff has 19 wild pitches. I'm not a "math magician" (to quote Luanne from King of the Hill), but those numbers are an almost identical pace compared to last season. I like that the pitchers seem to like Kendall, but I wouldn't be shocked if there were complimentary quotes from the pitchers about Johnny at the beginning of last season too. I mean, if Estrada was really so bad at calling games or working with pitchers that he sunk the team last year, why would Ned and Doug have stuck with him so long? They had Miller as the backup and Rivera and Rottino in AAA, plus any number of defense first scrubs could have been had for little return. Not having made a move would be inexplicable and grounds for firing both of them if the effect was as big as some people are saying it is. I mean, Kendall himself was available for a pittance. Wouldn't getting him have made a much bigger impact on the pitching than getting Linebrink to pitch 25 innings if Kendall's effect is as big as people are saying?

2 months is indeed a small sample and the staff is not exactly the same as it was last year, but my point is that if Kendall is so much better than Estrada, where is the proof? I have no doubt that Johnny was a D-bag, that seems clear (however, that was clear before last year too if you asked any AZ fan, so why did Doug trade for him in the first place if being a jerk is so deleterious?). But there is absolutely nothing like proof that supports the idea that a certain catcher has a large effect on the ERAs of pitchers he catches. I've been impressed with Jason's defense too, he's thrown out a great amount of guys and doesn't seem to have much trouble blocking balls. I just get the sense from what some of you guys are saying that you think the difference between him and Estrada is some huge amount. That's what I'm skeptical of. I guess I'm automatically skeptical whenever people start ascribing nearly superhuman abilities to any person without any proof, which is prevalent in sports (look at people claiming Derek Fisher is the MVP of the Lakers). Whatever effect Kendall is having is not immediately obvious, so that's why I'm curious how his greatness and importance has become such accepted wisdom. If the Brewers had a team ERA of 3.20 or something, I could better see why he has such a gigantic cult following, though that still wouldn't be proof that he was having a huge effect.

I think Angel was born in the Dominican. BP has him moving permanently to the US at age 12 (around the age Pujols moved to the US. Let's hope the similarities between them don't end there http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif ). I wonder which team he would rather play for if they asked him? If he did move to the US at 12, he lived longer in the DR, but has spent most of his his more memorable* (at least, I don't remember all that much till I was like 10) years in the US. *There's got to be a better word than memorable for that concept. Formative? But that might describe earlier years.

All I said was that I hope Escobar's defense is not being oversold. I didn't mean to get into a big thing. We all realize that prospect lists aren't perfect for many reasons and just because an analyst or fan missed on one player doesn't mean they will miss on every player. markedman5- I'm not sure where you get that I said Escobar was average. For all we know he could end up being great or poor. When you said we won't know "until he gets to the majors and proves otherwise", that was kind of my point. Like DHonks pointed out, AAA is littered with guys that were can't miss prospects and had great tools. We can make (educated) guesses as to who will become a great player, but there is uncertainty even in trying to project offensive ability, which we have much more reliable data for. When you realize that defensive numbers are much less advanced and defensive ability is much more subjective anyway, I think it's easy to see how mistakes can be made in trying to project a guy to the ML level. when I mentioned JJ's name, I merely was using him as an example of someone who had defensive scouting reports that he hasn't quite lived up to. My opinion is that he's further away from living up to those reports than most of you feel he is, but that's fine. As I said, defense is pretty subjective and the advanced stats often don't even agree with each other.

Yeah, I exaggerated to point out that no one was saying he was a statue out there, but that prospect people had no problem exaggerating in the other direction. How is that not playing nice?

I'd like to see LaPorta and either Gamel (if the US team needs another player) or Salome (if the World team is in need). I think there is some sort of limit to how many guys a team can have in the game, but I may be misremembering.

Nice condescension, but if Escobar is the best defender in the minors, BP said the same thing about JJ and his MLB play has not come close to matching that type of rep. If JJ has such great hands and such an accurate arm, why is his fielding percentage average? We all agree his range is poor, so it's not like he's getting to a ton more balls than the average guy, like a Jose Valentin or Rafael Furcal, but making a correspondingly higher amount of errors. and it wasn't just BF.net, every prospect rating place that I saw said JJ was a top echelon defender. It's not like I'm some ignorant guy who clings to one positive scouting report, I've been to plenty of minor league games and watched young players myself. In fact, I generally give little credence to amateur scouting reports such as yours because they so rarely match what we see when a player becomes a major leaguer. It's funny that you are criticizing me for listening too much to a scouting report when I'm the one who is showing skepticism about them. Also, way to cite "consensus" on Escobar when I just showed that the "consensus" on JJ wasn't accurate. Why would the "consensus" on Escobar be necessarily more accurate than the one on Hardy? also, if the "consensus" was that JJ was limited by a lack of quickness, why did BP say the exact opposite? These were just the quotes that I found in some books I had laying around and on this site. I'm sure if I looked around the web some I could find even more glowing praise.

Just to follow up on JJ, BP 2004 said he "might be the best defensive shortstop in the minors... he's unusually smooth at short with a great arm and mobility that makes everything look easy". BP 2005 said, "the Brewers remain enamored with his defense", 2006 said he had a "reputation for excellent glovework". Sickels 2004 said that Hardy is "very good defensively, though he lacks the pure range to be a gold glove." There is a hint of skepticism, saying he probably won't be a GG, but otherwise loves his D. Stats Inc. scouting notebook 2005 says his d is "good enough for the majors now", which isn't that surprising because people had been claiming that for years by that point. The comment for JJ in the very first Power 50 (January 2002) characterized his defense as "stunning" and didn't let up from there.

JJ's not good, I'd say he's average. That's fine, but I wouldn't say he's better than that. His range isn't as bad as Jeter's, that was an overstatement for effect, but it isn't very good. By range factor, he's Jeter-esque, but we all know there are problems with that stat. BP has him as basically exactly average, which matches my observations. He's fine, but nothing special, imo, when I was led to believe he was special. and what does "everyone" agreeing that Escobar is better mean when those same people said JJ was excellent? It seem to mean very little. I'm not trying to denigrate prospect mavens, I'm just saying that things seem to get lost in the translation between the minors and the majors. Whatever happened to Capellan's 100 MPH fastball that people said was in regular evidence in the minors? It wasn't even around by the time he got to Nashville, much less Milwaukee.

way to throw chum in the water. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

That cliche about catcher offense being "gravy" is foolish, imo. It's not gravy, it's necessary that a catcher hit at least a little bit. Having a guy hitting .200/.250/.300 like Moeller or Bennett kills your team unless you have great offense from the other 7 spots, which the Brewers don't. The thing about ML catchers is that there is already a selection bias built into the sample. If a guy doesn't work well with pitchers, he gets moved out from behind the plate or never makes the majors, with rare exceptions. Thus, all guys in the majors are pretty good at calling a game and working with pitchers. The spread from the best to the worst at "handling pitchers" is small, which is why there doesn't seem to be much, if any, long-term variance in cERA. For example, despite Estrada apparently being Hitler incarnate, the Brewers' ERA+ is exactly the same with the saintly Kendall doing most of the catching as it was last year with Satan, I mean Johnny, doing the bulk of the catching.

What happened to Munson this year? I've never been a fan but he really went in the tank. Small sample, but it's hard to have MLB pretensions when you're hitting .165 in the minor leagues.

But is Blanton a worthwhile guy to get considering what Beane would ask in return? Blanton is Suppan, but younger. That doesn't excite me much at all. He has some value, but not enough to give up any of the Brewers top 5-6 prospects for, imo. Also consider that he's about to get expensive thanks to his pretty good win totals. He's making almost $4 million in his first year of arby.

Prince isn't that vulnerable to lefties (career OPS of .815), so batting two lefties in a row at some point wouldn't be crippling, imo. Just to put that .815 in perspective, that OPS is better than the career OPSs of: Kendall Weeks Hardy Hall Branyan Cameron Kapler Counsell Dillon Rivera In other words, the only Brewers who have hit better for their careers overall than Prince has hit against lefties are Braun and Hart. I don't see how that's a big weakness.