Bombers

I probably think this every year but it sure seems quiet this year on the trade front. Here is jump to 7/31 last year viewforum.php?f=63&start=480 Brewers have pieces and I am interested in who we can get

@KathanNirby: Officially a member of the Milwaukee Brewers Organization! Could not be more thankful for the opportunity!!

Getting worried? Brewers are 19-14 since June 1. That's a bit more than a simple dead cat bounce. I have a problem with surrendering their chances to compete in 2016. Good franchises can build their systems and still compete. So at 11-14 they were I guess just the dead cat? I am not sure what dead cat bounce means ... Anyway. My point is the organization could benefit from a talent infusion via a top 5 pick and with trades of some current assets. Winning 8 games shouldn't change your mind

8 game winning streak! Looks at standings ... sees we still have 2nd most losses in all of baseball. Don't let the recent streak fool you ... Sell Doug Sell

Another great outing. Would be really hard to send him down but unless someone is foolish enough to take Lohse then it is what it is. Your hands are kind of tied.

Not trying to rag on you for proposing it LouisEly - but I would fall off my chair laughing if the Astro's honestly traded for someone this year. They haven't been to the playoffs in a decade and haven't had a winning record since 2008. This is a perfect example of a franchise who has experienced losing for a good period, finally righting the ship and then immediately sacrificing their future. Going into this year, Baseball America has them as the 14th best organization in terms of prospects. Any trades would immediately weaken it - making it pretty foolish - IMO. But as we all know GM's don't always think with their future in mind. Also, I don't even think they are one of the top 3 teams in their own division much less a top 5 team in the AL. But whichever - trade away Stro's!

I agree with this. And who do we really want to be penciled in for both Garza and Lohse next year? I am all for rebuilding but going into next year and saying ok 2 of Cravvy, Jungmann, and Wagner are going to be in the rotation would be getting a little ahead of ourselves with this whole rebuild. I would rather reward 1 player for a good 2015 and strong spring. (Whoever that is) ... Then use next year as another re-tooling year and look to dump Garza then when he has 1.5 years left. (And we hope he has a great first half next year)

So who would you have brought up? Look at Colorado Springs http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/team.cgi?id=bffa65ab&mobile=false No one is doing great. Cravy is ok. I actually think this is the opposite of what they would normally do. They are rewarding a 2012 4th round pick with a professional start with how successful he has been. I am all for it. Let him get in the big league club and get some experience ... This season is over anyhow

We had Hardy / Weeks / Hart and decided to keep all 3 who were all pretty similar (hit homeruns but struck out a lot.) We should have traded at least one of them when we realized none of our pitching was panning out. Early in their time you could have traded any one of those for a good pitching prospect. But we didn't, we held on to them and got nothing for Hart/Weeks and lucked out with getting Gomez for Hardy. (One of Doug's better trades considering we had Escobar in the wings and it put him in a position to start.) Although we would then in turn trade Escobar and watch everyone's favorite brewers man SS (and 1B) for years to come. Yay for Yuni B!

For sure. The drafts in 2009, 2010, 2011 were just bad. 2012 (Coulter and Taylor) might be a good one. The success of the 2013 draft was impacted by signing Lohse and 2014 is to recent. Hopefully Ray Montgomery continues his success of drafting well as the dbacks are ranked 6th here. (Ray drafted all of them besides the international signee's) http://www.baseballamerica.com/majors/2015-organization-talent-rankings/ Also - Splitter, I am with you. I have been touting that one series win in 25+ years for a while. Doug needs to go and I hope it is this year. I am not sure who they would bring in but at this point we have to hit somewhat of a reset button. (Although Ray Montgomery did well in Arizona so I might keep him around) ... I do not want Doug leading the charge on any type of rebuild

That's a lot of misinformation. There are reasons to dislike Melvin but his ability to make trades is not one of them. The only real mistake trades I can think of he's made have been late season relief pitcher trades, like the Broxton deal, or Linebrink deal, or Weathers deal. As for the draft it's usually the scouting director calling the shots. I'd blame Bruce Seid before I blame Melvin for poor drafts in recent memory. Why did we continue drafting hitting? Because it's pretty much BPA for the whole draft, that's how you approach a baseball draft. The little what if game you're playing can be done with every team in every sport and every draft, if only we'd have known exactly who to pick. Give me your predictions for this year's draft and lets see if they all turn out to be super stars. That's fine, you can blame Seid, and the others who have been in his role. But to say, we missed because we went with best player available, I don't agree with. I look at Ted Thompson who everyone always says drafts the "best player available." But then happens to usually draft the best player available at a position we need. Did he have Haha last year and Randall this year as the best player available at the time we drafted? Only those in the draft room will really know, but I doubt it. More so this year, I doubt Randall was sitting atop of our board. I do believe he was sitting atop the CB board though. We desperately needed one as we saw 2 leave in free agency. I am not involved in the MLB draft process, nor do I follow much of any HS or college ball. But I have a hard time believing it is a complete crap shoot. Now is it blackjack? Sure maybe, I don't disagree that there is a factor of luck, but to say strategy / prospect analysis doesn't play a massive role I would say is undervaluing a good front office. Just like the Packers in NFL, there are some in MLB who are just good at it. To me, the Brewers are not in that camp (Luck or no luck.)

The worst part about the Greinke trade(s) is how we unloaded so much talent and only got Segura in return. Not surprising though that Doug got fleeced. He seems to always get the bad side in a trade. As for the Sabathia trade and other pitcher related moves, maybe if Doug could actually draft talented pitching we wouldn't have to give up so much. Like drafting Matt LaPorta instead of Madison Bumgarner who went 3 picks after Matt. Once we had already drafted Braun, fielder, weeks why did we continue drafting hitting? And then once we do finally start drafting pitching, Doug whiffs on all the picks outside Jake. 2011 is case and point; we should have drafted Jose Fernandez or Sonny Gray but nope. 2 top 15 picks and nada

Blazek joining in on the fun

And add in intentionally walking a guy hitting .147 ... See it just isn't Brewer managers who make dumb decisions

Considering the brewers gave up the 17th overall pick and the Cardinals pick at 19 just won their "Minor League Pitcher of the Year" award in 2014, I don't think anyone is going to stop complaining anytime soon. Who knows who the Brewers would have drafted but it wasn't a very smart move. In addition to giving the Cards the sandwich pick. Uhg. No wonder we will never be better than them. Not only did we move them up 1 spot in the draft, we also gave them an extra pick. Good work Doug. I really really hope we can unload Lohse for something of value so it evens out.

Hopefully Lohse can build off his last two starts. If you take away opening day, his ERA drops a whole point. ~5.5 to ~4.5 If he can string together a bunch of quality starts maybe we could entice the Royals to trade one of their pitching prospects. 6 of their top 10 are pitchers. I don't know their farm system well but with the success they are having, adding an arm to help with today may be in their future. Especially if their starters continue to pitch poorly. (They have 1 starter with an ERA under 4.5) I know the Royals are a small market, but just like the Brewers, they have gotten that taste of winning and have the team to go for it again this year.

I say lets go with 2B - Gomez SS - Sardinas 3B - Herrera

Just saw haudricourt retweet this (Not that it has anything to do with this game - but MB continues to amaze) @Indians: Michael Brantley's last 11 games: + .463 (19-41) + 8 XBH + 10 RBI + 6 BB #ASGWorthy

And in "team" sports like basketball and football I tend to agree. But baseball is largely an individual sport - it's batter vs. the pitcher. It's not like you have to work with your teammates to succeed in that case. Yes, I'm sure you can find some exceptions but to me they don't occur enough as to matter significantly. In baseball, those "individuals" play 162 games together, double that of basketball and 10x that of football. Morale over the course of a season for a baseball team, I'd argue, is 2x more important than basketball and 10x more important than football. In 2003 the Marlins fired Torborg early in the season after going 16-22, then went 75-49 under that retread McKeon. How is that different? (I could pick apart that argument too and say that both of those sports are about winning individual battles - pro basketball is predominantly a one-on-one sport and football is about beating your man to make a play, but it's not the point of my argument. Yes, those sports are more directly about one person passing to another, but in baseball a team's performance is significantly impacted by the overall defense played, thus making it just as much of a team sport.) I don't think # of games equates to importance of morale. I get what your saying but there are more factors. For instance, the Packers practice daily and that factors into their morale. One of the reasons the Packers offensive line is humming a long is because they are cohesive, have been together for a while and have good morale. On the surface it appears they actually are friends with one another. And as a performance coach / manager of others, I cannot stress the importance of having a good relationship with your peers. It is a critical component of running a good team regardless of whether your team is writing code, auditing a company or playing baseball. When the team has good morale, everything just seems to go better.

Davis having a rough 2015

Lets not get crazy ... how about we hope CarGo does this on the first pitch. That would be pretty funny. CarGo did play with Counsell for 2 years.

With no Lucroy, Segura, Scooter and us facing a lefty so no Lind, we get: 1. Gomez 2. Rogers - 1B 3. Braun 4. Ramirez 5. Davis 6. Maldanado 7. Herrera - 2B 8. Gomez - SS

There was a bazzilion things RRR did wrong at the end of 2011 but to focus on your "What was the better option" question - I guess for me: 1. Marcum closed out the regular season giving up 5+ runs in 3 of his final 4 games. Everyone knew his arm was dead but we kept trotting him out there. He then gave up 7 earned runs in Game 3 of the NLDS. So why we even started him in Game 2 of the NLCS is beyond me. We gave up 12 runs that game. There are better options that just throwing the game away. 2. We finished at 96 wins and had to use Greinke on the final game of the season. (There was a chance we could have ended up tied with dbacks at season end with a loss in that game. But at that point, you need to focus on setting your post season pitching lineup. Especially when you knew Marcum was done. 3. Us not able to close the NLDS series in 3 or 4 games forced us to use Yo in game 5. Why even start Marcum in NLDS game 2 - he was done. 4. We should have been at a 3 man rotation in the playoffs. Greinke, Yo and Wolf. Even with all the starts Marcum made up until Game 1 of the NLCS and all the bad choices made thus far, RRR still had the option to say; 3 man rotation time. Marcum is out. And the NLCS should have went Greinke on October 9th (Who last pitched on October 2nd! Greinke somehow managed to get 7 days rest in the playoffs!) Wolf on October 10th (Who last pitched on October 5th) Yo on October 12th (Who last pitched on October 7th) Greinke on October 13th Wolf on October 14th Yo on October 16th Greinke on October 17th How Marcum managed to get 3 playoff starts is baffling. Then toss in him starting Kotsay over Gomez and I'm sorry - he should have been walked to the door then. What was he thinking?

And this is where I am at. Canning RRR is fine as he failed far to often and his team under performed. As for the direction of the franchise and the talent that is brought in from year to year, that is on Melvin. And I keep going to he has 1 post season series win in ~20 years as a GM. He completely squandered our opportunity from all the talent we had with top draft picks. Looking back at the teams with Fielder, Braun, etc - there is no reason we should have had only 2 playoff appearances. His lack of developing and obtaining pitching for most of those years is his legacy. He would rather spend $23 million on Gagne and Riske than spend it on starting pitching. To me, the only thing left is to can Melvin. He had his chance and failed.

Yep. Time for change. Guy should have been canned for starting Mark Kotsay in CF over Gomez 3 years ago