kramnoj

The 2011 Brewers could not win the World Series by winning one road game. That's too definitive. Since the NL has homefield, the Brewers wouldn't need to win a road game in the WS, if they got that far. As far as the series before that, we don't know right know how everything would shake out. So just to be clear, you are going back 24 years to find a team with a comparable ranking to find one who won the World Series? Absolutely. If you are saying that a team like the current Brewers can't win the World Series, I offer an example of a team that has some similarities that has done so. That's why I say I can't see them as a World Series team even if they do sneak into the playoffs. That isn't proof that they can't make the World Series. It is evidence that it will be tough to get there, but I don't see anyone saying something to the contrary. This has much more to do with the fact that this team is not nearly as good as I thought they'd be As pointed out earlier, this isn't a problem with the Brewers, this is a problem with your expectations.

and I am convinced that even if they sneak into the playoffs they'll be a one a done because they can't win on the road. The 87 Twins only won 1 road game in the playoffs, and had a .358 winning percentage on the road in the regular season. The Brewers this year after tonight's lost have a .360 WP. Your conviction does not match history. Edit: The season is 60% over and they are tied for 12th in the league out of 16 teams in ERA. The pitching staff doesn't just need get better. They need to get a lot better. In another comparison to the 87 Twins, their pitching was 11th out of 14. That team also won only 85 games total. The Brewers aren't anywhere near WS favorites right now, but tearing down the team for prospects isn't a guarantee of a better shot in the future.

Sadly, each game we play that we choose to play without calling up Green lessens the chance he's brought up. How did you reach this definitive conclusion? Melvin has done things that people say he would never do: Demote Gagne, cut bait on Hall, cut Suppan, etc. He often takes too long in the eyes of most to make these moves, but he has made them.

CBA expires after this season. It is not guaranteed that draft pick compensation will be included. Negotiations are going on, but the details haven't been made public, AFAIK.

Until he publicly says 'we can only spend x at the deadline this year,' we have no way of knowing what Melvin REALLY has available to him. This really needs to be emphasized. Cots's has the Opening Day payroll about $7M less than last year. With this trade, the Brewers still haven't hit that number, AFAIK. If the Brewers need to borrow from future payroll dollars to get this team closer to the World Series, I'm going to guess that Attanasio will approve that.

If we ended up giving up not much in terms of prospects to get K-Rod, i'd credit Attanasio and Brewers fans as much or more than Melvin. It's Melvin that has put together teams that the fans come to the park to see as well as watch games at home, resulting in a better TV contract. It's Melvin that has put together teams that have brought in revenue for Attanasio, that lets him give the green light to add extra payroll. And with the dynamic pricing test, the option to bring in additional revenue (admittedly not a huge factor this season, but it could add more revenue next season, again based on the popularity of the Brewers). Attanasio and the fans absolutely deserve all credit due to them, but it's not like this happened without Melvin. It's Melvin that negotiated the trade, and put the Brewers in a position to make this trade.

Per TR at jsonline.com "Another arm to cover us," manager Ron Roenicke said. "(Nashville) right now is in Albuquerque, and it would have been really tough to try to get somebody here for the game. So Scarpetta's on the 40-man roster. http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/125291908.html Also It's likely Scarpetta will be sent back down to Huntsville by the time the Brewers open the second half in Colorado on Thursday, with another move then forthcoming. "Probably that's what we'll do," Roenicke said. "I'm going to talk to (general manager) Doug (Melvin) about it, and make sure when we start up again Thursday that we've got the guy in place that we want." and Roenicke said Gamel will now play both in Nashville. "He's also going to play some third base, in order to make sure that if we bring him back up for third again, at least he's got a lot of games," Roenicke said. "I think most of the time right away he may be at third, get comfortable there, and then move back and forth.

It would be tough for me to be privy to specific info on that, but I know that a lot of guys have reportedly vetoed trades to Milwaukee in the past few years. Why would that be private? If a player wanted to make a point about the Brewers handling of Hardy, they should actively say it. There is nothing preventing a player from stating a reason that he doesn't want to play somewhere, and doing so privately doesn't advance the union cause. As for players vetoing trades, there is no reason to assume it's tied to Hardy. Some may prefer spring training in Florida. Some may have wanted to play with a team that had better playoff hopes. Some may just not want to live in Milwaukee. Counter to this ephemeral conviction that the Brewers would be hurt by the handling of Hardy, three Brewers, who know exactly how the Brewers operate, have chose to extend their stay here. I actually think that despite the 'extra year' angle, this hurt Hardy's trade value. I would guess that the biggest thing that hurt is value is he was a bad hitter that year, and teams saw no reason to give up something good for a player coming off such a bad season.

It was a bush league move, that I can't imagine helped the Brewers rep in the eyes of the player's union- not to mention how word spreads amongst other players and agents. That was a point that at least one poster here tried to make. Can you provide one example of how this has hurt the Brewers?

If you don't think that's clear manipulation of the arbitration clock then I'm not sure what to say. I'm curious if you actually took the time to read what I wrote. Because I wrote "It's hard to deny that service time was a motivation". Now maybe that's not enough for you. Maybe you think I should be outraged that Hardy lost service time. I think Escobar deserved a shot, because of the reasons that I have provided. Escobar only "outhit" Hardy because of his .346 BABIP, which was completely unsustainable for someone like Escobar (in his ML career his BABIP is .283). Why did you put outhit in scare quotes? The point of taking a risk is that sometimes it pays off.

With the way Escobar hit in AAA there was really not much reason to expect him to outperform Hardy over the last two months of the season. But Escobar did outhit Hardy, and was judged by scouts to be as good as, if not better defensively. It was a clear manipulation of the arbitration clock, all so the club could net Carlos Gomez in the off-season. It's hard to deny that service time was a motivation, but as Xellence notes, the move should have been made sooner. The Brewers had lost 8.5 games from their peak on June 30th until Aug 12, when Hardy was sent down. They were still only 6.5 back and had hopes of regaining the ground they had lost.

It isn't hard to see it's lopsided but if a team who has been pretty good the last decade did it there has to be some sort of logic behind it. I think the logic is that they were prepared to spend over $20M on an OF for 4 or 5 years. They were just prepared to do it for Crawford. Once Crawford got more years and the Angels didn't feel comfortable with Beltre, they figured they had a budget to spend, and went and got Wells. After all, he's an OF, and he comes at the price they were willing to pay. One problem though, is treating Wells like he had value, and giving up actual talent to get him. Getting past the money spent isn't Wells likely to help them win more games this season? I don't know if it's likely. Napoli has produced more wins than Wells over the last three years, per fangraphs.com I get the money is totally out of whack for what he brings but the Angels are not mid market. They have resources. Sometimes even the Yankees have to make choices. Years ago, they had the budget for Beltran or Randy Johnson. They couldn't afford both. They are not going to be out of the running for future FA's because of it are they? This may not take them out of the Fielder race, but it would then certainly impact the money available to build the rest of the team.

I would much rather have seen the Brewers eat Betancourt's salary if it meant getting Punto this cheaply. Punto has never started more than 60 games at SS in a season, and is going to be 33 years old. I'm not happy that Betancourt looks to be our SS, but I don't have much confidence that Punto can resume playing 100+ games well.

The main problem is that the 40-man is full. Of course I wouldn't mind a flat-out release of Betancourt, but it sounds like it's a bit more complicated for DM the GM. That wouldn't really be the best move. The best move would have been to release Cruz and pay Punto a couple hundred more thousand, if Punto would have taken it. Betancourt has at least been close to the quality of a starter, which would be incredibly tough for Cruz to reach.

They are betting that Wells continues his comeback and returns to elite status. They wanted an extra OF so they could move Abreu to DH. With $27 millon for Abreu and Hunter off the books after 2012, they had the money to overspend. Considering their lack of success in FA market, it's not so surprising. I normally try my best to see things from a GM's perspective, but I just don't see any way this is a good deal. Let's say that the Angels have money to overspend because they wouldn't pay for the extra years for Crawford. Why the need to spend it now for Wells? He's never really been elite. He's had a couple of good-very good years, but not enough of them. The Angels would have been much better off not making this deal and saving money for next year. They could have saved this money for Fielder or Pujols and been a major contender. And if Fielder and Pujols escape their grasp, I'm going to guess they could have traded for Wells next year, if they really wanted to.

But a low BABIP is going to have an effect on a players OPS. So a hitter will not be as productive, based on things he can't control. I don't just use ERA, in case anyone is wondering. I think ERA+ is useful, but I certainly understand there are more descriptive and more predictive stats out there.

I'm curious, Ennder, do you look at a batter BABIP and use that to say whether he had a good year, versus his ISO, or whatever stat you choose to use? If a batter has a .260 BABIP and another batter has a .350 BABIP, do you say the first batter is better? The batter can't control where the defenders are in the field, but it will affect his production.

He didn't outpitch him last year. Greinke's WAR was 5.2, Pavano's 3.2. There are different values for different needs. If we only want to look at numbers based on theories, you can choose to use that set of numbers. If we look at numbers based on production, and thus the value that the team derived from the performance, Pavano was better than Greinke last year. The numbers you use are better for predictive purposes, and leads to a smaller chance of there being questions regarding Greinke.

If Pavano outpitches Greinke this year, there's going to be some questions. That has happened twice. Last year, and in 2004, when Greinke was 20 and only pitched in 145 innings.

Not trying to get into a battle with you over this but do you know they waited until after Uggla got his deal before they exchanged offers? There were reports early in the off-season that the Brewers wanted to look at extending Weeks. Based on information that we have, it doesn't look like Weeks agent got serious about negotiating until Uggla got his deal. You left out me mentioning the gamesmanship of arbitration hearing. I alluded to this in my previous post. The Brewers arbitration offer shouldn't be compared to a salary for someone in their post-arbitration years. It has nothing to do with gamesmanship, and is based on the rules of arbitration. It seems to be commonly accepted that a player in their last year of arbitration should get about 80% of their market value. The Brewers wouldn't have made that offer if they didn't think they had evidence to support their proposed value. Now less than $5M would be less than 80% of the market value that Weeks has if 2010 represents his true talent going forward. However, after looking at career, the Brewers offer doesn't seem completely out of line. All you have is speculation as well. Not completely true. We have Ash's statements regarding Uggla's contract, and I have my observation based on reporting of events. How do you know Rickie is asking for Uggla's deal ($12.5MM average per season) when he asked for $7.2MM in arbitration? Because arbitration and free agency are different, and it can be difficult to make direct comparisons. Weeks agent would have presumably based Weeks price on players he found to be comparable. He may feel Weeks market value is $12M, but if there isn't enough precedence to support that, he's not going to present it in arbitration. On the other hand, free agency is much more of an open market, and he can ask for whatever he feels Weeks is worth. As the extension talks have now been shelved in favor of a 1 year deal, I feel sickens, ridiculous, absurd is quite fair to use in this situation where we lowball a player who wants to play in Milwaukee. If you compare Weeks history with all players that are comparable to him, what is an appropriate arbitration offer? What players are you comparing him to to reach that number? You yourself said that you don't want Weeks signed to an Uggla deal. Why would you want to feel sick before you have all the relevant information? Brewerfan posters are never allowed to use anything resembling strong adjectives or descriptive verbs if kramnoj has anything to say about it! Your sarcasm escapes me. I'm in favor of strong language, but I also think it should be backed up by logic or reason. If there was nothing but emotional posts that had no basis, I don't really see the point of discussion. People might as well just start their own blog or tweet their reactions.

I'm sure everybody including Weeks' agent noticed what Beltre and Werth got. Beltre is the best or one of the best defensive 3B in the league. Weeks projects to be basically average defensively. It's possible that Weeks may get signed by some desperate team after this season, but there's no history of teams paying 2B that much money.

. But as an organization, with the arbitration number offered, the Brewers front office is telling me they believe Corey Hart is worth almost double 3yrs/$26.5MM (Average annual salary approximately $9MM. Hart's 2011 salary is $6.5MM) then Rickie Weeks in 2011. This isn't a valid comparison. You are comparing salaries in free agency years to an arbitration offer. No. If that's the holdup, then I agree with you. Why do you have any reason to believe this isn't the holdup? Sure, we can't trust everything a person in a front office says completely, but I don't think it's a coincidence that Weeks agent waited until after Uggla got his deal before exchanging offers. My pure speculation is that I do not believe that is what is holding up this deal and the Corey Hart contract is really the baseline Weeks is looking at for his extension. If all you have is speculation, you are throwing out some pessimistic words out there: sickens, ridiculous, absurd. Edit Yes, he's missed a lot of games with wrist problems, but career ending wrist injuries have to be fairly uncommon- I don't think I've seen anybody say that the concern with the wrists is career ending. It's that if you pay a guy $62M, you have the expectation that he will play in an average number of games. If he misses 1/3 of the games played because of injuries, your team has spent money on production it's not getting. And even if you get insurance for the dollars spent, your policy doesn't replace the production lost.

I for one believe him to be a $7MM player now and would have no problem offering him a 4 year deal where his salary extends $1 per year or something along these lines: You don't know what the Brewers are offering. Calling the situation ridiculous without knowing this doesn't make a lot of sense. If Weeks is asking for 5 years and $62M, he is looking for a guarantee of 50% more than what you are offering.

Wonderful idea. I wonder how long this has been planned. The cynic in me thinks this could have come as a reaction to the talk about how bad the farm system is, in a way to say, we have some exciting players, and we are going to showcase them for you.

ZiPs projects Tolleson at a OPS+ of 83, with a 40% chance of being average or better. Hasn't played enough SS to get a rating, but was given a Very Good rating at 2B. Betancourt projects to an OPS+ of 83 with a 32% chance of being average or better. Interesting comparison.