topper09er

GOMEZ: run to first AFTER you bunt the ball. Why do we have a hitting coach?

True, but in RRR's mind being fast = good at bunting

2B Rickie Weeks CF Carlos Gomez LF Ryan Braun 3B Aramis Ramirez RF Corey Hart SS Alex Gonzalez 1B Mat Gamel C Jonathan Lucroy P Chris Narveson Is Gomez fast? Yes Does he play CF? Yes ding ding ding! All qualifications for hitting second are met

What were the questionable decisions RR has made that were good? Starting Fielder every game? Starting Greinke every 5 games? Should he get credit for that? What were the questionable decisions he made that were bad? Batting order, Gomez in the 2 hole last season: 38 GS, 170 PA, .235/.270/.399 Leash on Casey McGehee: 600 PA, .223/.280/.346. Aver ML player with 600 PAs had 363 baserunners and 64 RBI, McGehee had 438 baserunners but only 67 RBI. Horrible. Shaun Marcum in the playoffs: 3 starts, 0-3, 9.2 IP, 16 ER, 5/5 BB/K Mark Kotsay over usage: 255 PAs, -0.1 WAR. Burning out Lucroy, letting Kottaras start against lefties. Never played matchups with the bullpen, EVER. Just putting a guy in for an entire inning no matter who is due up, including Kameron Loe in the auto-8th inning for half the season.

RRR does not think like that, he has 2 reasons for hitting Gomez 2. First is the old school mentality of having a light hitting, fast guy batting 2 who can bunt the leadoff hitter over for the "run producers." Secondly, he wants the centerfielder to hit second so the lineup has to change as little as possible when Morgan plays. It would be too difficult for Hart to hit 2 sometimes but 5 some other times. He would go crazy and forget how to hit. Just like how Kotsay had to hit 3 when he filled in for Braun last year.

RRR does not think like that, he has 2 reasons for hitting Gomez 2. First is the old school mentality of having a light hitting, fast guy batting 2 who can bunt the leadoff hitter over for the "run producers." Secondly, he wants the centerfielder to hit second so the lineup has to change as little as possible when Morgan plays. It would be too difficult for Hart to hit 2 sometimes but 5 some other times. He would go crazy and forget how to hit. Just like how Kotsay had to hit 3 when he filled in for Braun last year.

For the 2nd spring training in a row, Gomez walked 1 time! 2011: 63 AB, 1 BB 2012: 66 AB, 1 BB Career number vs lefties: 557 PA, .242/.287/.392 This is who Roenicke picks to hit in front of Ryan Braun. How many times today will he try to bunt for a hit while running to first base, resulting in a horrible foul bunt, at least once.

For the 2nd spring training in a row, Gomez walked 1 time! 2011: 63 AB, 1 BB 2012: 66 AB, 1 BB Career number vs lefties: 557 PA, .242/.287/.392 This is who Roenicke picks to hit in front of Ryan Braun. How many times today will he try to bunt for a hit while running to first base, resulting in a horrible foul bunt, at least once.

Not to mention 2 first baseman! What are you thinking RRR, Gonzo cant have that good of range

Not to mention 2 first baseman! What are you thinking RRR, Gonzo cant have that good of range

Unfortunately the Bud drinkers are 1-0 on the season, lets bring them back to .500 where they will hover around all season long.

Unfortunately the Bud drinkers are 1-0 on the season, lets bring them back to .500 where they will hover around all season long.

Gomez took a bad angle on that one, pretty rare for him

Can someone show me the rule where it says the catcher has to hit 8? Gomez in the 2 hole for sure on OD.

Starting Kotsay in CF and Marcum in game 6 of the NLCS should have gotten him fired.

We need to accept the unfortunate reality that we CANNOT be perennial contenders. Period. We are not the Yankees, we can be good a while but then there is a mandatory period of being bad. The only way out of this is if we get really, Tampa style, lucky that we get a whole crop of mlb contributors at the same time. That is very unlikely, it is almost a given that we will have to overpay for veterans who can fill in where our farm system missed. We have to realize that to win it all we need to decide on some time to sell the future for now. I think last year was an excellent time, and we won 96 games, the division and even ended up with homefield advantage throughout the playoffs. I think the gamble worked just as we hoped, but our manager gave away the NLCS. Lawrie may be an all-star the next few years but it would have wasted on a team without the pitching necesary to win it all. I really think we should not have the model of trying to be competitive every single year, Id rather have the ups and downs of going between great and terrible. Im glad we have an owner/GM who is willing to take the chance that a move for now may hurt us down the road.

I think you'd find differently if you re-read some of the older topics on McGehee or McGehee/Gamel. There were plenty of posters here who didn't drink the McGehee Kool-Aid. Good point, there was concern, including from myself. But the extent of McGehee's failure still seemed pretty staggering.

Well they had to trade for Cliff Lee to make the WS in 2010. They also have the ability to sign the type of impact players we generally don't, like Beltre and Darvish. We wouldn't have needed to trade for Marcum if we just would have signed Cliff Lee.

But you can't stop believing that young players can succeed, and you can't build a small/mid-market team as if you had a major market payroll. We always need pre-arby / arby players playing significant roles on our roster. You can't win the World Series unless you trade away your prospects for guys that will help the team now. What better window was there, Braun entering his prime, last year of Prince etc etc. The chance we were taking was risking that Lawrie would turn into a stud in exchange for the chance to win now.

ARod did not have success early on and at a young age, what are you talking about. It took him 2 years of seeing MLB pitching to be ready for it. As was pointed out earlier Lawrie racked up a lot of stats vs September callup type players, we'll see how he does if he gets 600 PAs this season. He cannot be compared to Ted Williams who showed he could rake over a full season instead of 150 PAs.

You can't rebuild forever, I'm glad our team now has the mentality to take some chances instead of being conservative. We just extended Weeks and no one thought McGehee would regress into Bill Hall. We had a big hole in the rotation, no where to play Lawrie and the last year with Prince. By adding Marcum we had the 2nd best roster in the league and ended up with the 2nd most wins. Ryan Braun was just entering his prime and Hart may be nearing the end of all-star level production. By your logic should we just wait and wait forever? Should we be aiming for forming our best core when Braun, Weeks and Hart are all 35 years old? Even though we lost a cheap, cost controlled Lawrie we added Ramirez who should be fine and Green is waiting behind.

ARod had a 16 OPS+ at age 18, his first year, then a 72 OPS+ his second season. He does not qualify to make the list.

Because those who had over 300 had a much bigger sample size. I am pretty sure toppers point is that a lot of people have put up numbers like Lawrie's in a shortened first season, but only a handful where All-Stars or HOFers. His list simply proves that people MAY be jumping the gun on the greatness of Lawrie. Now I think Lawrie is going to be very good but that list does show people have had years like Lawrie and fallen off the map or just become mediocre MLB players. Thanks, my point was you could pick anyone on the list and draw the same conclusion as you could with Lawrie. If someone saw any player on the list and said they were a potential HOFer it would be correct to say unlikely. I just put the lower cutoff so the list wasn't excessively long.

Here are all players with between 100 and 300 PAs in their first season with an OPS+ > 140 [pre]Player Year PA OPS+ Tm BA OBP SLG OPS Brett Lawrie 2011 171 152 TOR .293 .373 .580 .953 Carlos Santana 2010 192 143 CLE .260 .401 .467 .868 Chris Dickerson 2008 122 162 CIN .304 .413 .608 1.021 Mike Jacobs 2005 112 179 NYM .310 .375 .710 1.085 Willy Aybar 2005 105 140 LAD .326 .448 .453 .901 Jason Bay 2003 107 145 TOT .287 .421 .529 .949 Craig Wilson 2001 183 146 PIT .310 .390 .589 .979 Erubiel Durazo 1999 185 153 ARI .329 .422 .594 1.015 Bret Barberie 1991 162 168 MON .353 .435 .515 .949 Kevin Maas 1990 300 150 NYY .252 .367 .535 .902 Frank Thomas 1990 240 177 CHW .330 .454 .529 .983 Sam Horn 1987 177 142 BOS .278 .356 .589 .945 Kevin Seitzer 1986 116 141 KCR .323 .440 .448 .888 Kal Daniels 1986 207 148 CIN .320 .398 .519 .917 Dan Thomas 1976 121 145 MIL .276 .372 .457 .829 Dave Kingman 1971 128 148 SFG .278 .328 .557 .885 Bill Sudakis 1968 102 165 LAD .276 .382 .471 .854 Doug Rader 1967 176 144 HOU .333 .360 .481 .841 Willie McCovey 1959 219 187 SFG .354 .429 .656 1.085 Bill Skowron 1954 237 167 NYY .340 .392 .577 .969 Whitey Lockman 1945 148 146 NYG .341 .410 .481 .890 Bob Elliott 1939 140 143 PIT .333 .377 .527 .904 Tommy Henrich 1937 241 141 NYY .320 .419 .553 .972 Chuck Klein 1928 275 145 PHI .360 .396 .577 .973 John Stone 1928 122 141 DET .354 .387 .549 .935 Braggo Roth 1914 141 141 CHW .294 .355 .444 .800 Babe Borton 1912 118 142 CHW .371 .416 .419 .835 Olaf Henriksen 1911 108 141 BOS .366 .449 .409 .857 Zack Wheat 1909 113 144 BRO .304 .343 .431 .774 Buck Herzog 1908 213 154 NYG .300 .448 .363 .811 Joe Ward 1906 136 140 PHI .295 .321 .450 .771[/pre] Not that great of a list, Thomas, McCovey, Klein and Wheat went on to have HOF careers. A few more all-stars as well