bill hAll Star

He's not anywhere near Ozzie yet, but he is #2 in UZR at this young age. Not bad. His hitting will never be anywhere near elite or even above-average but I think it is coming around a bit to the point where one can feel some confidence that it will improve.

I have been a person asking to sell at the deadline most years with various proposals to fill the minor league pitching pools. I also like rookie contract/arby buyout deals and Weeks-esque deals. Basically, I cannot say I'm anywhere near the ballpark of Andrew Friedman in terms of brains, but my philosophy for the team during this building stretch has been in line with how he operates. All of that said, we still need to be buyers this year. We put the chips into the middle of the table and have depleted the farm system. Looking from July 19, 2011, we need to buy a 3B, SS (or fill 3B from within if we feel confident), and maybe keep rounding out the bullpen. We know Melvin is all-in, so let's just hope he accidentally finds positive value players (even though he doesn't know what WAR is) to fill out the roster and we have a prayer down the stretch.

I wonder if there have been better examples in recent memory of this: When we were playing Kotsay, Gomez, Nieves, 2011 Casey McGehee and Betancourt -- You had 2 Hall of Fame caliber sluggers, a guy that may be a perennial All Star for the foreseeable future, and 5 below replacement-level hitters. Just weird. I would guess good comparisons to this may exist in the days where managers had less stats available and were going more by non-important stats like batting average, tenure, and the ability to provide "professional at bats" to make their lineup. Well, I guess that would still include Roenicke.

The one that chafed me the most, El Dude, is a Cincy series when we were in one of those "can't do anything right" funks. I believe this was the same game that Aaron Harang pitched 10 innings, but we still had a handful of chances to drive in a big run. I think it was bases loaded in the 11th and even though we were scuffling hard, there was a feeling that if we could luck across a run, the Reds weren't really capitalizing on much either. Bases loaded in the 11th, nobody out, and he hits a trickling grounder to 1st. Any major league player with a heart could have kept the bases loaded at the very least after the initial throw went home. Estrada was thrown out by a country mile and you could just get that "I've been catching 10 innings so I'm not going to run hard" feeling out of it. Looking at the box score now, Jenkins got hit after that and we had a fly ball that could have produced a run after it.

It's pretty easy to expect mostly the same answers from people, because this team has become painfully polarized in terms of production. 1. We see a lot of Weeks, Braun, Fielder because of hard work, flair, and enthusiasm on top of the fact that they are elite players. 2. Betancourt, Kotsay, and a lot of the guys we kicked to the curb like Nieves ended up on the hate watching list because of their negative impact on the team and responsibility they were handed. McGehee is reluctantly added because of his somewhat expected (but not to this extent) decline and the fact that we won't try other options yet. 3. Plush is Plush. 4. The pitching has been surprisingly almost an inverse. Greinke was supposed to be our most exciting guy and his production has been brutal. Yovani was supposed to be our solid rock at the #2 and an excellent #3 and has fallen short (but not flat on his face) of expectations. People knew Marcum could pitch and were excited, but had worries coming in about his injuries, velocity, etc. and he has been our most consistent guy, albeit starting to show the injury bug. Wolf is everyone's whipping-post of overpaid mediocre production when looking at the advanced stats but as much as I curse him out for every start -- his final product has been pretty good this year. Narveson has been a nice #5 but he still has those frustrating games where he can't hit the zone at a given point and it makes you forget that sometimes. All of that is a long way of saying very few mentions of pitching. Historical note -- Bill Hall was one of my favorite guys historically to watch. I wasn't as advanced-stats oriented back then to realize that his plate patience was going to become an issue, though I did notice that he was probably on roids. Either way, I loved his dramatic flair and swagger. After all of this -- Weeks is still my guy. I've been cheering for him for the same reasons as most of you and I am also a fan that seems to cheer harder for guys like Weeks when most casual fans don't understand that the guy is doing it the right way. Weeks had the plate patience to become a special hitter even though when he "struggled" he had some ugly strikeouts.

The book obviously has not been closed on 2011 but if all he can get out of 2 HOF players, Weeks, Hart, Hardy in his good years, etc. is a squeak into the Wild Card in 2008 spot I think it is a good indication that he has failed. I was one calling for his head the past few years hoping for a youthful continuation like the Rays so smartly do instead of trying to build on the house of cards that Doug has by paying for overpriced vets and gutting the farm system to get short-term goals (I don't totally hate every move of this strategy, just not what I'd prefer). He bought himself some time/excitement with the Marcum/Greinke trades, but I immediately lost the enthusiasm when he finished filling out his roster. It's pretty incredible that in today's world of stats and information so readily available that a GM has no clue what OPS, OBP, UZR, etc. have to do with a team is incredible. To boot, a manager that can't use any of those stats to play a matchup or fill out a lineup card is also staffed. Plus, Melvin just had his "eureka!" study last year that... *gasp* ...big pitchers with a plus fastball and secondary pitch are more prone to success! Of course Doug has heard of and knows of all of those stats, but other than Cameron who he had to pay big bucks for that most casual fans hate but is a great advanced stats player, none of the moves I've seen Melvin make show me he's looking at anything other than AVG, ERA, and RBIs. He may have some sabermetrics guys on staff, but he's definitely not listening to them.

Fair enough. Makes some sense. I really have minimal understanding of the matter I just did think it was a bit fishy.

But other than maybe not wanting to "hurt" your MLB club with his under/over sleeping performances, what good does sending him down to AAA do to his condition? Shouldn't he go back on the DL, then?

Other than just losing out on Greinke/Marcum (which may happen no matter what: Greinke too expensive, Marcum too expensive/worried about his long-term abilities), what would be the big deal though? I'd assume you'd be fine paying $15-20 million per year for Prince, right? If your options were:A. Prince walks but saved money signs Greinke/MarcumB. Prince stays for above contract and we can't sign anybody elseC. Hypothetical Prince for $15-20 and we use the extra $10 million on a serviceable SS and fill-in for WolfD. Prince walks and we can't use the money for anything of major value (spent completely on Wolf-type contracts of OK players that are overpaid). Some people would argue they'd prefer APeople would be fine with B with some arguments about $ paidC does not exist, but if it did, you'd have to have to have good options with that excess cash to argue it to me.D would stink, but we have some cash to spend, then. What I'm saying is, I don't see a ton out there next year that would warrant having an extra $10 million to throw around. We may need bullpen help and our ability to fill-in at SS will be risky, but if we did this, I'd move Gamel to RF and deal Hart for a similarly paid SS with moderate abilities like Hart. We may be real close to our cap of what we want to spend, but if Doug doesn't waste a few hundred Ks here and there to buy the Reeds, Kotsays, and Nieveses of the world, we could maybe throw our small remaining cash into some risky moves to fill our bullpen out. What I'm saying is, the extra $10 million over value is not my money, and would be the "fee" for keeping him here. It wouldn't cripple the franchise long-term unless he got injured severely during year 1 or something. Your other options would be to use the extra money to fill in random holes with probably overpaying some free agents that wouldn't be up to Prince's par. Of course, if that saved money from not signing Prince got Marcum and/or Greinke, then I'd be OK with it.

Would it be possible to frontload a deal where he's making ~25-30 million over the first 3 years and then declining with a player option? So basically he can make a ton of money and if he's still dominating at 30 years old he can opt out and try to sign a different huge deal? Then whomever else we sign long term we can try to backload or something? Obviously this may not work but just thinking out loud. 2012: $30 million2013: $35 million2014: $25 million2015: $20 million Can opt out2016: $20 million Can opt out2017: $15 million Can opt out Basically give him Wolf's money after 2012 to satisfy the total dollar amount. That would put us at probably $90 million without adding anything next year and a few arby raises. Also, I'm not sure if there are any rules regarding incline/decline on contracts. The idea is that we push back a few more years of our "window" (I realize we have to worry about pitching after 2012 (if we're all still alive)). Hopefully by 2015, either Prince opts out and officially leaves but our next farm wave is ready to start a new build or if Prince is dead contract weight because of some injury, we're playing a few guys scattered around the field on the rookie 500K.

I'm a big Weeks backer and assume sometimes he seems like he is pressing it a bit...but I'm trying to think back, I want to say it was early last year when we had a little burst to start the year (or was it '09?) that he had a few big hits at Wrigley to tie a game, take the lead, etc. Obviously he's done more, but I guess we just haven't seen the BIG and memorable moments from him.

I'm almost thinking it may end up being more of a 2 team race as this thing goes on. The 2009 Brewers -- err -- the Reds might just fall apart on the pitching side. Their lineup is incredible and if their guys can patch it together they may be alright. But it is crazy how they mirror the 2009 Brewers. We had Fielder/Braun and they have Bruce/Votto. The supporting offensive cast fits the bill as well. We were thinking a window of contention may have been opening up even though we lost some of our top pitching dogs. Then it all fell apart. Injuries, guys falling off a cliff, pitchers we thought would be long-term pieces falling off the face of the earth. Leake got a little bit too much love last year and will definitely be an MLB pitcher but couldn't have been counted on as they had expected. Volquez may not find it again. I still think they should move Chapman to starter. The one thing they have on us though is that they can defend.

When we talk about the "average" 3B in the NL we need to think about this: Pablo Sandoval has barely played and was raking after his weight loss. Ryan Zimmerman has barely played. David Wright is on the DL and when he played he was nursing a sore back. Alvarez was extremely cold and is on the DL. Rolen spent time on the DL. Chipper....well, this is to be expected at this point. Not that I'd give him a ton of credit but Casey Blake has also been out. Obviously that could still apply to the argument of: "well nobody has had good play out of their 3B!" But in a more correct manner, you can basically say that if McGehee theoretically kept these numbers up, then he'd be a massive disappointment to those guys who are better (or are supposed to be better) than McGehee. To be honest, most of those guys crushed the ball for 2 weeks and be it through nagging injury or just being on the DL, the "replacement" or injury-plagued play has basically been HORRIBLE bringing them down to that above mentioned .700 OPS. EDIT: Freese isn't a dominating force but he was a decent bat also on the shelf for quite a while.

Unfortunately I think Weeks will lose out by Phillips being a more known name. Not that anyone cares much in All Star voting, but I'll give Phillips his due that he's a better defender. Nobody has wanted Weeks to get to this point more than I have. I don't post on here much but I drove the bandwagon through every "he strikes out too much" comment I heard in casual conversation. He deserved a spot last year and if he gets left off this year, it will be a catastrophic mistake. EDIT: There is an All Star selector on ESPN and I find it comical that LuCroy isn't even on their ballot.

If you want to see those sites, there is the "red line" tour that you follow by foot and you can see quite a few of those in a relatively short period of time. There should be maps online or probably at most of those sites that you can just pick up and make sure you're going where you want to go. I never took a bus, but that's all you have to do. The "red line" or as it is more popularly called, the "Freedom tour" or something, I think.

Ron Ron does not have a ton of offensive depth to work with, but he wastes a ton of outs. We've got Gomez, Betancourt, and normally Nieves or (Almonte) or Kotsay in the lineup every day, too. On top of that, we have a team that either has runners that do some stupid stuff on the bases or aren't fast. I mean, you've got 3 of the best hitters in all of baseball and you're shrinking yourself down to 15 or so outs with small ball, baserunning errors, pitchers hitting (though we have some decent ones), and guys like Nieves/Yuni getting out all the time. The object of the game should be to get Weeks, Braun, Fielder up as much as possible and also have McGehee and Hart there doing their part (though they haven't really yet). Another thought is the fact that guys like Yuni don't work a pitcher. That way, their ace can go 7 instead of 6, their "door-slammer" can face our top hitters once through, and their closer can come on. You look at a lot of the other good teams and they draw enough walks and fight off a good pitcher's stuff until he's KO-ed early and then they get multiple rounds on the middle/late guys. As for defense, I don't know what else to say. I can blame RR for doing this today in CF but his hands are tied. He's been given a great 1, 2, 3 punch, a decent Narveson, and Wolf. He's only got Gomez and Plush (normally only one at a time) with some range in the OF to back them up. We've all gone over the infield defensive issues, but his hands are tied there. It's not like Counsell can play that often, though I would like to see him at SS a little more.

I went to see the Pack/Pats game this year but may have to pass on the Red Sox game, though my brother lives out there. I was visiting the family around Christmas and got a Frontier flight for $135 and actually saw an Airtran one come in at the same price shortly after. You guys are lucky in a way with Milwaukee. I obviously grew up there but now live in the Twin Cities. If I want to hop out somewhere for a quick weekend game trip, I can basically pick any time of the day that I'd like to go with this Delta hub, but it will cost me no less than $250. You guys may get less times to choose from, but whenever I cross-reference my planned trip from MKE as if "maybe if I was back visiting family and just flew out from there" I routinely see $150ish deals on there. Obviously $210 is pretty good, too. If you're going from Milwaukee a short distance or through Denver with Frontier you can get great deals. Frontier/Airtran do basically try to steal away some flights here basically just constantly running constant hops to MKE/DEN from MSP and tack on $50 to your guys' low rates through MKE but then I have to deal with 2 hops. Anyways, off my airline rant. If you want seafood at a good price at a nice place, there is a little strip between Quincy Market and the North End that has some of the oldest restaurants in America. The Union Oyster House and the Green Dragon I believe are good to go to during the afternoon. I'm sure you can find cheap seafood somewhere else but they run some great $10 lobster tail/lobster sandwich specials. At night, you're going to pay the $30+ dinner price, though. As I said, the Union Oyster House claims to be the oldest operating restaurant in America. The North End probably has some decent bars, though I can't attest to that. One of the times I was there we spent a night riding back from Foxboro and drank by my brother's house in Brookline (just past Fenway from downtown). Anyways, the North End is all Italian/very nice restaurants, bakeries, etc. I can't necessarily compare it to anything we know in the Midwest, but it has the classic east-coast jam-packed streets and some awesome (some very expensive) restaurants that I would assume might be cool bars. The other unique thing is that obviously, you've got a bunch of historic things in there like Paul Revere's house. From what I understand, Fenway may be a decent place to drink? My brother has called me numerous times from I think either in or across the street from the park drunk, at some concert at a bar. Sorry, kinda scattered here but hope it helped a little bit. Oh, I see you're checking out Harvard. I've been out to Cambridge for only a few minutes but we did hit what seemed to be a very famous Burger joint. Somewhat of a Dotty's (if you're familiar with Madison) but obviously way better. Just a bunch of creatively titled burgers and I thought it was pretty good. There was a line out the door which seemed to jive with the fact that we had heard/thought it was famous. I wouldn't say you HAVE to go there, but if you're looking for lunch in Cambridge, you could do worse. http://www.mrbartley.com/mrbartleys-menu.html Checking out the Cheers place is alright, but I wouldn't plan a trip around it. The West End (I think it is called that?) mostly on Commonwealth Ave is a huge outdoor mall (not State Street Mall, but think Banana Republic and Gap) that probably wouldn't suit 20-something guys (I had to go with my girlfriend) but maybe there are some cool restaurants there. Otherwise just follow the Red Line or Freedom Trail as they call it. Quincey Market is cool. Apparently the Sam Adams factory is really small. I was told this by a waitress so I cannot confirm because we didn't actually do the tour. I guess they just produce a small amount there and give you a tour/history/let you drink beer, but it isn't like going to some massive beer producing site. I'm probably one or two more visits to my brother away from being a Boston expert.

AJAY, I don't think anyone is going to complain about a Vina, Cirillo, or (I'll add this one) Loretta. Yes, most of us on here are OPS guys, but a big part of that is OBP. I agree (without looking at stats) that Vina, Cirillo, and Loretta could all work the pitcher. But you know what else? They could all get on base, too. I'd love any of those 3 guys in the 2 hole. We'd have a plethora of extra runs this year from the 2 guy being on base for Braun or Fielder. I don't think anyone disagrees with that assessment even if they are OPS guys, AJAY. Having simply OBP guys is just fine when you've already got some pop in your lineup. And being able to work the pitcher goes hand-in-hand with those OBP numbers usually. Always a great bonus. The Yankees roster outside of their sluggers are filled with these guys and they basically just try to KO a pitcher via pitch count if they can't slug him to death. Those guys are all around .360 in their careers, and that is excellent. That's 70 points higher than Yuni and Gomez.

In the Yost/Macha/Roenicke comparisons I find it fairly easy: Yost is a Cox disciple. He's going to ask for slightly aggressive moves, go on "feel", and shake the lineup up when things aren't going right. He was a somewhat likeable guy, but he wasn't Bobby Cox. Cox probably rarely had a "the ship is sinking" moment for his team to turn on him anyways, but that is why the guys turned on Yost. Macha was basically an extension of Billy Beane. Say what you want, but most of his moves were great calculations. He wasn't under the wrath of Beane anymore so he'd switch it up a little bit sometimes. Roenicke is a Scoscia guy. Likeable. Going to do some headscratching things that somehow find a way to fool the other team and you the viewer who thought it would fail. The difference is that Scoscia and Maddon (other disciple) had smarter players to work with and better guys to be aggressive and do off the wall things with. You can't do kooky shifts with our below-average defense. You can't run on contact with guys not named Weeks, Braun, Fielder, McGehee, or maybe LuCroy because more often than not, the guy at the plate is going to screw that up. Finally, you can't ask for aggressive baserunning because Gomez is incredibly fast but doesn't get it out there, McGehee/Fielder are too slow, Hart/Weeks/Braun are probably right for it aside from a random Braun blunder, and Yuni just really has neither going for him in the speed or baseball smarts category.

One of these days we'll stop shuffling the deck chairs on the titanic and fire Melvin. McGehee is an average to above average at times hitter that is cold (he does this fairly often). Hart is much of the same but coming off injury. However, Boggs/Almonte/Reed, Betancourt, and Gomez have never been very good hitters in their career and they can't even seem to work a pitcher out a bit when he's hot. Kotsay's got an OK bat for the deep bench but he's a statue in RF. I'm not going to include Nieves in the above statement because I won't call what he does "hitting". In his "go for it" year, I would have much preferred Renteria, Punto, or Orlando Cabrera at SS. Plush/Gomez...if Plush was healthy I would have taken it but I still would have preferred finding a guy with a reliable bat out there. That said, I won't chastise Doug too much for that especially since he got Plush. If Sveum goes, maybe we have a little hot spurt because of the fire lit...but overall I don't see it doing much difference.

That's the annoying thing about the MLB. The problem is we have all this "parity" the pundits will say in the champions because teams have capitalized on their one or two magical runs. But then you have teams disappointed about winning 87 when we haven't had anything more than 87 for the better part of 20 years aside from 2008 (when said disappointed team took our MVP to get to 87 away). Oh, and another team loses out on the Wild Card to the Yankees and a small market team and then buys away said small market's top free agent and bullies another feel-good story into giving them their only dominant force on offense to rid themselves of such an awful year. Back to the Brewers...not sure what I want to do. Do I want to make a Garza/Shiels/Greinke deal (assuming we have the ammo for Greinke if it is him) and hope that Utley smashes his finger again just before the playoffs and the absence of Werth's bat is costly enough for them to bow out early....or do I just wait to wait in the weeds again for another, more open season to make our one charge at it?

Tampa isn't giving up Hellickson for Prince. They're already losing Crawford et al and Garza/Shields won't be there forever. Throwing Hellickson in there and losing Prince after next year would be the downfall of that franchise.

For those that think what Depo and Beane did really wasn't as good as the book said and it was actually Zito, Mulder, etc. I would have to disagree. What Beane did was actually bury himself to the point of having to re-invent what he's doing. The Yankees had Swisher leading off the other night. Weeks leads off. Teams with much larger payrolls get the idea of what Beane was going for. 15 years ago, teams would have gone strictly with slap-hitting leadoff guys and a "contact hitter" that could bunt #2 more often than not. Not saying every single team did it, but Beane brought the widespread statistical analysis into the game. Now he's getting beaten by it since 90% of the league, sometimes more, can outspend him. He seems to be trying for the defense/ground ball/pitching run prevention game with his team this year. He has bats, namely Carter, approaching in the minors. If most of Gonzalez, Cahill, Braden, Anderson, and their up-and-comers stay healthy, with their defense and hitters approaching, they may be the challenger to the Rangers in 2011. We've seen the run prevention go a bit too far with Jack Z in Seattle, but I like that these guys are looking into those things. Some of Melvin's pitching moves make me think that he doesn't look into the sabermetrics much there.

For a guy that has been trashing Melvin all over this board the past few days and isn't a huge Hart supporter I still say... Nice value contract. I worry Corey falls back into a bit of an abyss but as long as he remains patient at the plate and doesn't dog it too much on defense (maybe it just looks like he is sometimes), this is an amazing contract.

Who said anything about taking out best and worst starts? I did, because it would only be fair if you want to skew the numbers.