kramnoj

Farris is the stopgap apparent for Weeks. Some people are impressed with the career batting average of .296 in the minors and the 70 SB in 2009.

Invader said what I was going to say, but it should also be noted that Mueller is noted as being director of baseball research, as well as the video scouting. That could be a guy that replaces Ash somewhere down the road, so it's good to give him some experience where a failure might result in an extra cost of a couple hundred thousand, as opposed to a million or more in the future because he didn't have preparation for the job.

$12m buys 2.4-2.6 wins right now. And Weeks has hit that number in 2 out of 5 seasons. A weighted projection would indicate that Uggla's deal would be a good deal, but I wouldn't feel all that comfortable just looking at a projection and calling it a day when spending tens of millions of dollars.

because no matter if he won or lost his arby case, he's so damn sensitive that he'd pout all year about every minor point made by the Brewer's legal team Is there an example of Prince pouting all year? There was one example of Prince expressing his displeasure with being renewed, but he certainly didn't talk about it all year. Pretty much any report talked about Prince getting $15-$16M in arbitration. It didn't take Solomon to figure out a happy compromise.

Without a dissenting opinion there is no discussion. That's interesting. There was a fair amount of discussion about how bad Betancourt is, before anyone tried to dissent. In fact a separate thread had to be created to break off from the discussion that the Brewers acquired Greinke. Of course there can be discussion without a dissenting opinion. It may be boring for people who choose to find negatives, but that doesn't mean it can't happen. People are complaining. I don't know why anyone would try to deny that. Heck, one moderator said he was going to be cheesed if the Brewers got Greinke without an extension. There was preemptive complaining. But I don't know how many people are complaining, or just offering an opinion. I don't know if the majority of people here are happy, apprehensive, or upset. I would guess the people that are upset are in the minority, but just more vocal.

The whole Josh Lueke incident may have more to do with this than one awful season.

I saw this linked elsewhere, thought I might post it here. Someone went through all of Sickels current rankings and assigned dollar values based on the research of Victor Wang. Based on this, the Brewers are 29th in terms of the top 10 players in the system: http://www.minorleaguebal...els-farm-system-rankings Again, this only addresses the top 10 players ranked, so it won't take into account some of the younger players that the Brewers would be looking at in the middle part of this decade.

For example, from a cost standpoint I'll take Jeffress over Hawkins every single time, from a talent standpoint I'll take Jeffress over Hawkins every single time, from a longevity stand point I'll take Jeffress over Hawkins every time, from a health standpoint it would have been a wash. What kind of bizarre strawman is this? I don't even know how this enters the conversation. There was never an either/or situation with these two. Jeffress wasn't ready to contribute in 2010 to start the season, and they both could have been on the 2011 roster. If the Brewers were in a situation where they wanted to trade Hawkins going into 2011, they could have done so.

If Tampa hasn't done a good job building a *franchise* their fans want to come out to see, then their fans either don't understand what a good product on the field is, or don't (& will not) care about the Rays. Why did you put franchise in quotation marks? If a team isn't competitive for a long time, it is only natural that the fans aren't going to react quickly to one year success stories. ESPN ranked the Rays as the most affordable team of the 4 major pro sports in America in 2009, and last year they finished 3rd. All that means is that pro sports is relatively expensive. It doesn't mean that the team has done a good enough job capturing the market and has done a great job of maximizing ticket revenue. For 2011, they're offering seven different versions of season ticket packages. They offer family ticket discounts on Sundays. How many did they offer in the past? Is there something significant about them having 7 versions? The end result is the fans in the seats and how much money the fans spend when they get there. When you put a good product on the field, don't charge much, & your attendance is weak, I'm sorry but the finger has to be pointed more at the fans. They put together a pathetic product on the field for a decade. How much they charge is relative. Clearly, even if some believe that it isn't much, it's more than what their fans want to pay. As for pointing fingers at the fans, that just means there are three pointed back at the franchise and how they haven't done a good enough job of encouraging their fans to come to games. Let's compare this to the Twins. The Twins, when they won the WS in 1991 drew 2.3M that year and over 2.4M the next year. The attendance drops for the rest of the decade as the Twins lose the talent that brought them the WS and a 2nd 90 Win season. When they finally put together three 90+ Win seasons, they see an attendance increase, but they still aren't able to get to the heights of the early 90s in ticket sales. It was only after the team had put a winning product on the field for 5 consecutive seasons that they were able to get back to the 2.3Mish mark. But all this isn't really talking about the Brewers having the worst minor league system in baseball. If this discussion continues, it should probably be in a new topic.

I've said it a thousand times, I'm not a win now guy, I want an extremely healthy franchise that can build from within. That is an interesting choice of words. The Brewers franchise is worth more than the Rays. The Rays went 10 years without winning, their high is wins was 70 games. Then they put together a great season, fall back the next season to a merely good season, have another great season, and then they lose a franchise player to a division rival. Meanwhile, they haven't drawn 2 million in a season since the opening year. The Rays have done a magnificent job of building talent. They haven't done a good job of building a baseball franchise that their fans want to come out to see (and I know there are transportation issues, but a team that wants to bring fans to the park would find ways, with creative ticket packages, buses to the park, whatever it takes). Melvin has learned nothing and all he's done is gut the farm system and provide more temporary patches to the rotation to buy himself a contract extension I think this is unfair. I think Melvin makes this move if he has 3 years left on a contract. This off-season is about doing what the Brewers can to go to the World Series. I don't think there was enough talent in the minors to predict a roster as competitive as the 2011 Brewers will be. The Brewers are in a solid position to make a run for the playoffs the next 2 years. Melvin has temporarily lowered the ceiling of the 2013-2015 Brewers, but that ceiling didn't seem to be all that tall.

I had no idea that Punto has only started 228 games at SS in the majors. He's never started more than 60 games at SS in a season. He's been more of a 3B than a SS in his career. There's no denying that Punto is a better fielder than Betancourt, but with less than a season and a half at the position, he doesn't have a long history of success there.

He got to sit on the bench and rest between ABs. That is a tremendous advantage because of the physical toll that playing 154-162 games a year places on the body. Some major league hitters don't like being a DH. It's tough to sit around for 3 hours and then be able to focus for a minute or so 4-5 times a game. With hitting being an occupation where the best fail most of the time, it's tough to sit around and think about missed opportunities and come back up positive and focused. For players in the field, they can feel good about a play that they made. DHs have to be comfortable with failure and be able to thrive on it.

I get the impression you think people are worried Betancourt is going to be worth like -86 games. I don't know how you could get that impression. This discussion really isn't that dramatic. I guess that depends on the eye of the beholder. When I see people say things like Betancourt is as bad as a SS can be, Melvin should be fired if Betancourt is the SS, people saying there are easy 2 Win upgrades available (but not actually demonstrating how), those seem to be dramatic posts to me.

Nobody ever said Betancourt would derail the season. This is in response to worrying about how he'll singlehandedly derail the 2011 season Post #3 says The Brewers have a real chance to be very good, and he has a real chance to sabotage that. That certainly seems close to someone worrying about Betancourt derailing the season. And if others haven't explicitly said that, there certainly seems to be a lot of distressed posts about Betancourt and his effect on the 2011 season. If they didn't believe he could derail the season, there doesn't seem to be much of a reason for so much of a response.

You can add an extra expected win at the cost of less than $2m? It is certainly possible that Melvin may want to specifically do this. The Brewers could be waiting for the price to drop on Punto or another SS and be willing to sign them when they feel the price is right.

I'm really not sure why anyone would need to see it firsthand, since there is literally nothing backing up the assertion that Betancourt might be an asset at this point. This is an overstatement. Our new manager has seen Betancourt play a significant number of games. I'm going to hazard a guess he has seen more of him than the vast majority of people here. Roenicke's success is tied to the players he has on his roster. Now, of course Roenicke is going to say good things about a new acquisition. What will be really telling is what happens between now and Spring Training. If Roenicke privately requests that Melvin seek an upgrade, I'm all for it. If Roenicke has a conversation with Betancourt (a "come to Jesus" speech, if that's not too controversial to say) and believes that Betancourt has the ability to be the SS he was a few years ago and was just dogging it on a bad team with a guaranteed contract, and is satisfied that Betancourt can return to the previous form, than he could be just as good as any other SS is likely to be. As I read this discussion, the most forceful arguments in favor of giving Betancourt a shot boil down to (a) refusing to believe evidence because . . . well, just because There's a difference between believing evidence and deciding how to properly weigh it. (b) admitting you're just being contrary I personally haven't seen this, but maybe it happened. I have seen people try to play Devil's Advocate, in the attempt to understand Melvin's decision to acquire Betancourt. © isolating every spinnably good number over the course of his career and ignoring everything else; Some people may be ignoring everything else. I don't think that's pervasive. I think the answer to this is closer to the response provided to "a". and/or (d) pretending he hasn't aged This seems like a particularly odd statement, given that Betancourt is several years younger than a few of his experienced alternatives. Projections are awesome for coming up with numbers for 1500+ players that will appear in the major leagues in 2011. When it comes to the very specific decision of who will play SS for the Brewers, just a simple projection and ignoring everything else would be poor management.

When I looked at the available SS, I didn't remember one who I thought was a good bet to be a 2 Win player. A lot of the available SS are older, and have a higher chance of decline.

There's a good chance that a number of people involved in a Weeks extension might be on vacation, spending time with family and friends. There's no hurry to get this done right now when there are months to go before the season even starts.

Cap, I loved you on the Brewers, I was hoping you could come back, and I wish you success on any team that won't be competing with the Brewers. Loved listening to you on Bob and Brian, it was awesome listening to you, your insights and your experiences.

This is a great move. Couldn't have expected to get him for any less, and the Brewers do have a fairly young bullpen for the most part. Love that we get a Type A FA without having to give up anything. I like that we have some depth in AAA with options for the inevitable injuries that will happen.

I think it's better to have the 6th and 7th starter types be in AAA where they are stretched out and ready to be called up, rather than be a long man in the bullpen. Rogers is projected to about what a #5 starter can produce in 2011. Rivas and Peralta don't project for 2011 well, but they could come up and make some emergency starts. I'm disappointed that Cap won't be back, but it's an understandable decision.

Well, I just cut and pasted into my last post, so yes, I did read it. And yes, it does directly contradict what you just said. Just looking for clarification. Exaggerating one's deficiencies and pointing out stats in perspective don't contradict each other.

Huh....could have swore you were just called it "pathetic" to mention a players shortcomings when arguing for another player. Of course I have little doubt this too will devolve into an argument about semantics, but here you go; Below is what I wrote. Did you read that? The only thing that has bothered me is someone choosing the exaggerate the deficiency of McGehee's minor league stats. I feel it's best to be fair and honest, and I think trying to put someone else down to support my own argument is pathetic. Although I believe you just said that people have made that argument about Gamel, but not on this thread. So which is it? People in other threads have explicitly made the argument. The post I was referencing seemed to suggest it, so I tried to head it off when talking about the overall argument when discussing the benefits of Gamel vs McGehee.

Perhaps if you let me know when it WAS acceptable to mention a players shortcomings in conjunction with my beliefs about their future performance, we wouldn't run into all these problems and contradictions within your own set of rules. I believe I have. It's perfectly acceptable to talk about a player's shortcomings with perspective. If you can find an example where I have said anything different, please let me know. You can't read it as "He hasn't had a chance or the plate apperances to prove one way or another?" That seems like an inelegant way of making that point, so I didn't read it that way.

But either way, why throw that back out there when you even readily admit nobody's arguing that here? You should read post 67, where someone says "If you want to chastise posters for embellishment in attempts to diminish what players have done why not look at posters saying Gamel has done nothing at the MLB level." I can only read this as saying that what Gamel has done at the MLB level is worth considering. I provided examples of why the number of at bats that Gamel has in the majors isn't significant. But for god sakes, I'm done with the "poor" v "very poor" argument. You yourself said in 62, that you don't see that this discussion has any further course, but you are bringing it up again. I don't care if you think a .741 OPS for a corner IF'er with extended minor league at bats is "poor" or "very poor" the point is that this is a large part of the reason some of us don't expect Mcgehee to continue to have the success he's had and why we DO think Gamel will have success. If you didn't care, you wouldn't bring it up. As for how "pathetic" it is to "put a player down," that's an awfully high pulpit you're preaching from, especially on a board in which we talk about a profession in which failure is exceedingly common. Sure, failure is common. Pointing out a player's failures is certainly what we should do when talking about their value to the team. That doesn't mean there is any benefit from exaggerating one player's weakness in order to try to bolster the argument we have for our personal favorites.