Ennder

I thought about not replying because it is pretty obvious you have formed an opinion and you don't want actual stats to back it up, it is just some random thought that you cling to. However in his career Cameron has an .836 OPS with RISP and only a .773 without. If you are the type that only cares about 'this season' he has an .896 OPS in wins and a .729 in losses so he isn't just showing up in losses. He has a .797 with RISP and .811 without which is about as even as you can get. He has an .815 in high leverage situations and a .816 overall. Your thoughts on OPS are so strange that I can't really comment on them, if anything OPS underrates walks as it underrates OBP and overrates slugging. Cameron's overall ability isn't really driven by walks though, it is driven by extra base hits and defense so seems like an odd angle to take in general. I can agree with you on that but lets be realistic. Unless we make a couple trades for AAA quality pitching we aren't going to compete next year regardless. Suppan, Bush, Gallardo, Parra is mostly like 4 of 5 starters and we aren't signing an ace given our payroll. Best we can hope for is signing a #3 type guy and if we have that rotation and no depth to fill in for bad seasons and injuries we just aren't going anywhere. The first step is trading Hart or Hardy for AAA good upside guys(we aren't getting great upside for either of them). If we can pull off those trades then yeah I can see spending the cash on a good SP and seeing what we can do.

I'd rather go into 2010 with Gerut as our starting CF than Patterson so I sure hope we don't go with Patterson(I don't really want to go with Gerut either btw).

I don't think they assumed Parra would be a top of the rotation lefty, I think they just ran out of affordable options. As for the Overbay trade, we got a league average SP for a league average 1B, even without looking at the other players I'm confused how this can be a bad thing. Overbay was not some hot commodity that should have returned a great player.

Loopers xFIP has pretty much been stable for 5 years now, only difference this year is a few extra balls went over the fence and in his 'good' year a few less than normal did. Burns is in the same general range with his ERA spiking because of LOB% which sometimes isn't just bad luck, hard to tell with so few innings.

Danks and Floyd were both traded for when they were not established though which is exactly my point. In 2008 people looked at the White Sox rotation and counted them out because they just didn't have enough and then these two gave them a real staff. I am not saying we can't trade for some soon to maybe be good SP, I just don't think there is any chance we walk into next season with what you would call a stable rotation. You need to either trade for unproven guys and hope they hold up or develop your own guys. They may technically be an exception but they still illustrate the point. If people think we will walk into 2010 with a rotation that screams 'this is a playoff team' they are going to be disappointed. That just is not going to happen and not because Melvin is the GM but because it just isn't realistic.

The Brewers had one of the best payroll vs wins of any team in baseball last year. This season has pretty much been a complete bust with a large portion of the team underproducing in general. You average the two out and we are probably pretty average in what we are getting for our investment.

Ahh sorry, I thought Jurrrjens was home grown. Their #6 is also Medlen who is home grown. Jurrjens was traded before he was a household name though which speaks to my point. It is rare a team has a rotation that looks like a playoff calibre one on paper unless they have brought up 2-3 guys out of their own farm system and broken them in at the major league level. It just isn't that likely that we are going to trade for a rotation that looks great on paper. If that is what people expect they will likely be disappointed. Jurrjens is exactly the type of guy I'd target with the Hardy trade though. Someone you can break in for 2010 and hopefully rely on in 2011. Gallardo, 'the next jurrjens' and one of our own up and comers can form the start of a decent rotation that you can build around with FA/trades pretty easily. You just need to have 2-3 younger guys to build around and we don't really have that unless Parra does a 180 next year.

Melvin can not like his staff, try to get pitching and still not get any though. That is what happened this past off season as well. Look at the teams in the playoff race. Yankees/Boston - combination of young home grown guys and expensive vets that the Brewers couldn't afford Tampa - mostly home grown Detroit - 3 of 5 starters home grown Angles - almost all home grown Phillies - Happ/Hamels home grown, Lee rental Braves - homegrowns+vazquez Cardinals - don't know how this rotation is any good but they are defying the odds. Dodgers - studs are home grown Rockies - studs are home grown Giants - studs are home grown Very few teams can build a good rotation without at least 2 top end home grown starters and many have 3. You have to develop pitching, you can't just sign guys or trade for them in most cases. Sometimes you luck into something like the Cardinals have but in general you have to develop at least 2 solid guys and then sign/trade for a 3rd. We have developed 2 starting pitchers in the past 7 years(Sheets/Gallardo), that isn't going to cut it. The best he can really hope for is that we trade a Hardy for a AA guy who grows into something in our system. I think people are expecting too much if they think we will walk into next season with a rotation that looks like a playoff one on paper.

BPro did project them to be in the playoff race though even though most 'experts' still had them in last place. Baseball is a highly random sport so you will never be able to predict wins or stats accurately but predicting it 'better' is a good start.

I tend to not watch much baseball in August. It is sort of the lull in the season for me and it is always a very busy month for me anyway. So I havent' been watching the games at all to see how brutal it has been!

There is pretty much no chance that we carry that many IF and I would doubt Cameron is back. I'm guessing we keep Hart another year but Hardy is traded for either a high upside A/AA pitcher or a medium upside AAA pitcher. The key to the team going on is the AAA pitching imo. I don't care what they do with the rotation, if there aren't some guys that we can go to when someone is hurt or ineffective we will have exactly the same problem we had this season. If we had Sabathia instead of Looper this team would still be scuffling because we had below replacement level pitchers once Suppan/Bush got hurt.

Bill Hall has been one of the worst players in baseball for 3 years straight, nothing Melvin did this season was going to change his value.

Probably trade him after 2010 if it seems to make sense. Just way too hard to know what things will look like after another season though.

We haven't been able to follow the twins/a's model until this season since we had no valuable commodities. Unfortunately this year went very poorly. Weeks getting hurt kills any value he has, Hardy having an off year really lowers his value and Hart's value isn't as high as it used to be either.

Hall's value is negative so any savings he got is a victory.

Only the largest market teams can build a rotation by signing free agents and you generally have to overpay them when you do sign them. It takes trading one of your best players to get any young pitching, Hardy this past offseason was probably our only real shot for it. I think we are just going to be kind of stuck until they trade Fielder or our next wave of young arms becomes major league ready. If Parra can somehow figure out his issues we might be passable next year but I just don't expect to field a good rotation in 2010 and I don't think Melvin really can do much about it.

The problem with that post TheCrew07 is you have absolutely no clue what Melvin asked for, you might not like that 'excuse' but it is certainly the truth. How do you know he wasn't targetting Marcum and settled for Bush/Jackson(I don't honestly think they would have traded Marcum for Overbay since he was a much higher regarded prospect than Jackson). There is just absolutely no way to know those type of things. Maybe he offered up Hardy or Hart for Jackson and got turned down. The guy they eventually traded him for has just as much upside, is younger, has more service time left and was a Tampa native. The end of your post seems to contradict the beginning. You grow young pitching, that is the key to success for everyone but the large market teams. We have failed to grow our pitching and that is ultimately the problem. Sure maybe we could have traded for some young guys and hoped but when we traded Sexson and Overbay the target was more just fielding a competitive team and grow the fan base more than anything else. We had gaping holes at every position when we made those trades.

It would certainly be nice for us to sell some vets for some minor league pitching depth but I just don't see us doing it. As for Kendall vs Pudge, I think I'd take some guy off the street and give him league minimum. Probably get about the same production and save some cash.

It was more than just those two. Their injury chart at baseballprospectus had a ton of red. Marmol's usage was a concern, Gregg has had multiple injuries. Zambrano was very likely to be hurt, Soriano has been breaking down physically, Aramis has a pretty long history of injuries. Soto coming off of his first full major league season, D.Lee with his wrist issues etc. The Cubs were an extremely risky team going into the season.

There really was no talent to shuffle until around 2005. The early Melvin years this organization was probably the worst in baseball form an overall talent standpoint. You could argue that they should have moved Hall after his big year since he actually created our first surplus at a position that we'd had in years but you could also argue his hands were a bit tied since both Weeks and Hardy got hurt that year so were questionable somewhat for the next season. The next surplus we had in any way was Hardy and Escobar this season and they have looked to move Hardy. Hardy having the terrible season has made this a lot harder. Melvin's first year as GM here is the team he got handed. Paul Bako Richie Sexson - wisely traded for prospects Eric Young Jose Hernandez Tyler Houston Geoff Jenkins Alex Sanchez Jeffrey Hammonds Ron Belliard Glendon Rusch Ben Sheets Ruben Quevedo Jamey Wright Nick Neugebaur Mike DeJean Jose Cabrera Luis Vizcaino Ray King Valero De Los Santos We have slowly built up a respectable team but there was absolutely nothing to work with until the last few seasons and even then very little depth anywhere. We added some quality hitters at most positions from within but the only real pitchers of note that we developed over that entire stretch are Gallardo and Parra. When that is all you develop over a 7 year period your pitching is going to be a problem no matter who your GM is, especially when you have no depth at all to trade from. The next wave of prospects are going to be incredibly important to the future of the franchise and us using money more wisely than we did with Suppan because one terrible contract like that can easily cripple a team like ours.

I just don't think you are being realistic with this comment. Kolb was not exactly a hot commodity when we traded him for Capellan. De La Rosa was part of a big deal and not the major part. Jackson again was a throw in type player. These are not noteworthy prospects, they are guys that we really gave up nothing to get. Could have as in you have absolutely no clue if he could have or not. Joyce is probably comperable to Hart only younger, with more service time and from Tampa. I'm not so sure they would have taken Hart after his miserable finish to last season, the fact they didn't need a full time starter just yet and that he would be getting expensive and gone too early. So Melvin has nothing to do with the hitters we drafted but it his fault the pitchers didn't work out? While Melvin has input you have to blame Jack Z for the drafting more than anyone else. We did trade for Capuano and Bush who both had success at the major league level. He picked up Davis who had success.

Unless you watch every SS play every day I think going with anything but fielding metrics is going to be a bad idea and just going by reputation can be pretty bad. If I had to make a list I'd probably take a long hard look at tango's fan scouting reports at http://www.tangotiger.net/scouting/ and then look at fielding values from the past few seasons. Having done all that I wouldn't be comfortable rating Escobar yet and I'm willing to bet Hardy would make my top 10 but not top 5. Fans tend to dwell on flashy too much when a strong arm, good positioning and consistency are every bit as important.

To be fair he isn't anywhere near as good as he has pitched this year either though. That is not an ace skillset at all and I'd be much more surprised by a sub 3.50 ERA next year than by a 4+ ERA.

You can blame him for Suppan and that is about it. Looper was a case of just not having any money so having to go with some cheap guy. I'd rather have Looper than a guy like say Garland who got more money and isn't really any better. In 2007 we actually had plenty of pitching depth so didn't need anyone. 2004/2005/2006 we traded for Bush/Capuano/Ohka and signed Davis which were all fine moves. 2008 we traded for Sabathia. The big issue in this entire time frame is the lack of internal options to add depth. We have had depth to add from the minors in only 1 year out of the past 5. When you aren't a big market team and you rarely have any pitchers come up from your own system you are just in a world of hurt in general. When you add a bad contract for a guy like Suppan and Sheets/Gallardo getting hurt for such long stretches it just makes things worse.

WAR says Pujols just barely edges out Mauer who barely edges out Hanley. 4th is surprisingly Zimmerman.