kramnoj

Should players then be told to take less money since they can just make it up in endorsement deals or autograph shows after they retire? Do you really think this is the same thing? Players get what their contracts say they get. Owners don't have a contract that guarantees they will get money from their business every year. With zero owner profits and lower player salaries tickets would be cheaper. Tickets are based on supply and demand, not player salaries.

Thats what everyone else does, but Melvin can't because he insists on a proven veteran bullpen filled with guys with multi-year contracts and no options. That's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it would be to realize that the Brewers really haven't had good pitching sitting in the minors before, and the Brewers have had plenty of low cost talent on the field, so Melvin has spent money in the bullpen in order to improve the team. Now you can blame Melvin for not having better pitching to call up, and you can blame Melvin for the decisions he made, but there really isn't a reason to assume that Melvin will repeat a pattern if he is working with better talent available to him.

But to say he's not good offensively is ridiculous. No, it's an accurate description of how he's done so far in his major league career. Per ESPN there are 36 catchers with 200 PA or more. Lucroy's OPS is 21st (for full disclosure, the catcher ranked 20th has and OPS 1 point higher). So of those catchers, he's middle of the pack. Around average. Average being less than good. That doesn't mean that's what he's going to be in his career. His minor league career indicates he will walk more. He doesn't look to have prodigious power, but he should be ok. I'll be optimistic and believe that the Brewers are set at catcher for the next 6 years and Kotteras should be a nice backup for a couple of years as well.

The point is that his service time was scarcely relevant because he barely made it 6 useful years as a player Yes, some players won't provide 6 good years. But a GM has to consider all options. And if Braddock turns out being good and healthy in 2016, the Brewers will be better off by having control of him that year instead of starting him off 2010 with the Brewers and having to compete for him in FA, or paying extra for 2016 if an extension is signed. I am being a bit more general than one specific instance partially to make my more general point and partially because I think it's too hard to reset the conversation and make all decisions starting from the beginning of the season accounting for all the relevant factors and uncertainty in the final outcome. That is basically a key component of the GM job. It's why it isn't easy, and why many of them work 70-90 hours a week during the season and work a decent amount in the offseason as well.

Case example Kerry Wood first brought up in 1998, due to injury eating up a year of service time he needed 7 years to accumulate the best 6 years of his career. Do you think the Cubs wake up screaming in the middle of the night, thinking it's a good thing we bought out a year of FA so we could have that last productive year as a starter? We must be having different conversations, because I don't understand what this has to do with monitoring a player's service time. I presume the Cubs bought out a year of FA because Wood had performed well over a number of years and they wanted to retain him. I don't think they were trying to get an extra year because they lost a year. My original point was only to argue against wanton use of service time as a sole justification. Nobody has said that service time should be the sole justification. We have talked about how a middle reliever isn't likely to provide much value over the first 3 weeks, or 7 weeks of a season, so it makes sense to leave the prospect in the minors ready to come up in case of injury or bad performance at the major league level. So when I make that argument, I am talking about value and depth, not just service time. Except injury risk should be a huge concern Why, exactly? If you decide to bring up a player to the big leagues, you are presumably doing so because he is your best option. You can't do anything to prevent him from being injured, so why should it be a concern? Now, if we want to talk about the value of having players in major league camp in Spring Training if they aren't likely to make the club, sure that's a point of discussion, but that's not what is being talked about here. As for Odorizzi, I would prefer to follow the Gallardo path. Unless he is just far and away one of the best 5 SP in the organization at the beginning of the year, it's best to leave him in the minors to start the year, get some more development time, and be available to be called on in case of injury or bad performance.

Narveson, had more upside than Suppan could dream of this year, plus had a stellar spring training on top of a decent September last year A lot was made of Narveson's September and spring training stats, and how it was clear to many people that he should be starting over Suppan. Hopefully some people have learned that September and spring training stats aren't that useful as a predictor. Whether he threw innings in AAA or in the big club, he would have been used one way or the other, if one is concerned with injury risk. No, injury risk was not my concern. The concern is that once a player ends a season with 6 years of major league service time, that player is a Free Agent and I don't see the benefit of using a full year of time, when you can call up a player 3 weeks into the season and get 6 years and up to 5 months of service.

That's really all it takes. Umpires allow players to ask where a ball was, but they won't allow the hitter to get in their face and question them. Arguing strike/balls is grounds for ejection.

Manny didn't even get through three strikes. He was ejected after arguing the first strike.

.328/.539 in 3 seasons at AAA does not jump out as anything but a platoon/reserve to me Is anyone claiming anything different at this point? I would love it if Katin was on the ML roster next year and would hope that he would get few starts. But he would be a nice PH to have off the bench several times a week.

There is more to hitting than batting average. He's not taking many walks and he's not hitting with power. He's below league average, and I believe he's below average for catchers, but it's close.

Post 94 doesn't contradict anything I have written. If you read your own link, you can see that revenue sharing can decrease by $9-10M in a single year, contradictory to your own questioning that this can happen. Since you are so confident that the Brewers are getting so much in revenue sharing, how do you reconcile the Rangers revenues and their revenue sharing with the Brewers reported revenue? Until you can do so, saying I am flat out wrong is irresponsible.

Yes, in years past the Brewers got lots and lots of revenue sharing. But that doesn't mean that a team that has drawn 3 million fans in consecutive years is getting that much money. Until you can piece together evidence that they are, you don't really have any standing to say that I am wrong. In another thread you are saying that the JS gets basic facts wrong. Why would you assume they would get this one correct?

That figure isn't attributed to anybody. It certainly isn't part of a quote from Attanasio.

But what are people's legitimate gripes with him? I don't like that he chose not to get to know his players his first year here. He talked this spring about how he was going to make more of an effort to communicate with his players. That's just basic management, and he failed to do that in his first year. If a manager isn't going to take the time to get to know his players, he may as well be replaced by a guy in the Operations department with a laptop to make roster and management decisions.

The piece is written by JC Bradbury, an economics professor and a Braves fan. Without revenue sharing we have a $40-50m payroll, maybe. I don't think the Brewers are getting $30M in revenue sharing. In 2008, the Pirates got $39M in revenue sharing, and their total revenue was almost $146M. The Rangers in 2009 reported $167M in revenue and paid out $5M in revenue sharing. The Brewers estimated revenue in 2009 from Forbes was $171M. So, I'm not sure the Brewers are actually getting significant revenue sharing. Who outside of Florida does not seem to be at least trying to improve their team? As discussed in this thread, the previous ownership of the Pirates wasn't really doing anything to improve the team, and paid themselves money they would not have had if not for revenue sharing. For other teams, we would need to know who is getting the revenue sharing and how much they are getting to answer that. I can guess that the A's have been getting money and not spending it, and that is why there is speculation that the Sheets signing was done in response to the MLBPA questioning how the As were using their share.

But to pass on calling up Stetter when the rosters expand makes no sense. It would cost $60-70K to bring him up. That's not a small amount of money, and he wouldn't pitch a meaningful number of innings.

This may be worthy of its own thread, but it is relevant to the Pirates specifically and all teams that get revenue sharing. There is a piece in the NY Times that argues that the increased revenue sharing hasn't led to more competitive balance, and does more to increase profit for the receiving teams than increase competition: http://www.nytimes.com/20...seball/29score.html?_r=1 At the end, the author says that since the program isn't working, MLB would be better off getting rid of revenue sharing. Now, I don't know if I agree with that, but it is something to think about. There has been an alternative proposal that has been talked about over at bbtf.org that I like. Rather than a team getting revenue sharing dollars when they aren't improving the team, MLB could help subsidize retaining players for teams. One idea is that teams aren't guaranteed any revenue sharing beyond the splitting of gates, but if a team retains one of their players, MLB has a fund that would pay 50% of the contract. There would have to be lots of rules to go with it, and it's more fun for discussion than a realistic plan. One of the questions would be how to define players that would qualify for this. Is it limited to players that are drafted by the team? What if a player is drafted and developed by one team but then is traded to another team and spends all of his time with one team in the majors. The fans of that team would be tied to that player, even though he wasn't homegrown. So maybe you come up with a rule that a player has to have most of his major league time with one team to qualify. I could go on more, but I'm heading out.

I consider a players 2nd and third season their most valuable from an organizational perspective. That's probably true. Rookie years are too unpredictable with adjustments and the like to count on too many of them. Given this belief, why do you advocate potentially wasting a rookie year, when you can bring up the player 3 weeks into the year (thank you Logan for the correction) and getting the rookie time when the player isn't being counted on. In other words, as injury replacement, or allowed to get further development in the minors while seeing if the talent in the big leagues is good enough.

It is one thing to be conscious of the service time value, it's quite another to treat not playing as more valuable than playing. All it takes to delay FA is a week or two. You would have to demonstrate that a middle reliever is going to create enough value in a week or two to be worth losing that player for a full year 6 years down the road.

How is the AAA season relevant? Because, you know, the article from AM said that Jeffress might be promoted to AAA.

I have a crazy theory. My crazy theory is that Bush was claimed and he doesn't want to go to the team claiming him. By the Brewers outrighting him, he becomes a FA and can sign with the team of his choice if someone wants to pick him up for depth for a playoff run. First, I don't even know if this is within the scope of rules. Second, it seems outside the norm, and that's not really Melvin's style. But it is one possible way that this would make some semblance of sense.

I'd argue a few months of service time are more than worth going from a high 70's win team to a low 80's win total. That may or not be true, but the relevant issue here is that Braddock in 7 weeks isn't going to get you there. Bref has his value at .5 WAR in the 3 months he's been up. It's hard for middle relievers to have that much impact.

Given the vagaries of development it makes some sense to test guys out if your unsure about a year, under the idea that then you can count on them the following year. Sure, and you can accomplish that by calling them up at some point later in the year, either when some time has past to give more confidence that the player is ready, or to come up in case of an injury. If Braddock is up with the team at the beginning of the year and is good, he gets a whole year of service time. I would much rather have Braddock on the Brewers in 2016 with Lawrie, Cain, Lucroy, and whichever pitchers make it than have him on the 2010 Brewers for 7 more weeks. After all, he's a reliever, how much could he have really been worth in that time?

For quick review, Lorenzo Cain sat in the minors darn near all year Cain played in 84 games in the minors this year. That's not all that close to a year. Zach Braddock should have made the roster out of spring. Why would you want to waste one of Braddocks 6 years of service time on this year? Chris Narverson should have been the #5 starter from day one instead of Jeff Suppan taking a few turns Narveson this year has been worse than Suppan was last year. He also isn't really any better than Suppan was this year when we include Suppan's time with the Cardinals this year.

While this may be true with current revenue and payroll, it would seem obvious to me that without revenue sharing the payroll would obviously be lower. Let's take a look at 2008. In that year, the Pirates received $39M in revenue sharing. Their payroll in 2008 according to Cots was $48M. If I take $39M from $48M, the Pirates couldn't even pay a 25 man roster the minimum salary. The first is that the Brewers under Attanasio have been very profitable. Not sure why this is being pointed out. Has anyone complained here about the Pirates being profitable? I have been complaining that the Pirates owners paid themselves money they wouldn't have had without revenue sharing. The Brewers should aim to be profitable, and the Brewers have certainly put the team's money into payroll and into development.