Bombers

At PNC Park, Pirate cheerleaders shoot hot dogs out of the t-shirt guns. Fans love it - girls told us to not eat them as they are nasty

Sunny again - ETA is 4:25 eastern per scoreboard

Thanks AZ ... Hope this ends soon

At the game. I am glad we brought the pancho's. lots of soaking wet folks ... On the banner / ribbon going around the stadium they had a sign that said rain is stupid

I see Liriano is on the mound today for the Bucs. This has turned out to be a good signing for them - this far

There have been plenty of good pitchers with bad debuts. (Most recent one I remember was Yu Darvish gave up 5 in two innings : http://m.voices.yahoo.com/why-yu-darvishs-rough-mlb-debut-not-bad-thing-11215092.html) It certainly wasn't ideal but fitting for how the year has gone.

And there is his first major league strikeout

When the Brewers traded 3 prospects for Linebrinks 2 months of garbage, I certainly wasn't happy. Inman never did amount for anything but that is half luck. (Joe Thatcher was also included in the deal and he has been a good relief pitcher for 7 years) If we could get the same haul for both Krod and Ax, I do that all day long. You never know what a prospect will amount to, but I would take my chances with 3 guys and 1 of them are ranked in the top 100

I answered my own question. In 2007 Inman was ranked 91 out of 100 by Baseball America. http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/prospects/rankings/top-100-prospects/2007/263445.html

We traded 3 of our top 10 pitchers for Scott Linebrink (I don't know what Will Inman's overall rating was but I don't think it was top 100) ... Anything is possible

Highly unlikely that he gets a raise. He doesn't have the comps to get more than $5M - he is a setup man this year (no saves), and setup men don't get $5M/year. He had a bad 2011 on top of that so what comps does he have to support $8M/year? That is a good question. I couldn't find a situation where a guy lost money in year 2 in arbitration. Especially if his stats get better. (Even though Ax went from 9th inning man in 2012 to 8th in 2013, I still think it will go up.) ... Looking at bbref, it shows Jose Valverde as a comp to Ax. Here is how Jose went through Arby: 2006 - yr 3 - 5.87 ERA - 17 SV - $359k 2007 - yr 4 - 2.66 ERA - 47 SV - 2m 2008 - y4 5 - 3.38 ERA - 44 SV - 4.7m 2009 - yr 6 - 2.33 ERA - 25 SV - 8m Ax: 2011 - yr 2 - 1.95 ERA - 46 SV - 442k 2012 - yr 3 - 4.67 ERA - 35 SV - 500k 2013 - yr 4 - 4.09 ERA - 0 SV - 5m So in the example, Valverde, while underperforming in year 3, was still given a substantial raise in his first year of Arby. He then had 2 of his best years during his first 2 years of Arby. Not the Case for Ax. But I really don't see, him getting less. I would anticipate: 2014: 7 - 8 million 2015: 10-12 million (Would be based on if he goes back into a closer role. Otherwise, he might settle out around that 7-8. Which then you are right his raise won't be huge next year, but it wouldn't be less than $1m increase)

Great news!! Please bye bye to Yuni

Haudricourt just said he'll start on Friday. Bummer! I will be at the Sunday game ... Oh well. Still looking forward to his first start.

Weeks with a double and 2 HR's vs Cubs tonight. April: .191/ .296 /.319 May: .173 / .272 /.235 June 26: .395 / .477 /.711 Season: .230/.328/.400 Rickie has lit June on fire (1.188 OPS) ... Way to go Rickie ... Stay hot

I can attest to that. When I travel and say I am from Milwaukee, I get the blank stare back at me. So I always follow it up with, "about 2 hours north of Chicago" ... then I get the "ooooohhhhhhhh, ok."

May 16th was hitting 216 ... June 23rd and batting .279 ... Way to put that abismal opener behind you Luc

As far as Aoki is concerned, we say "he is over 30 so we should dump him" - Other teams know his age too. We say, he would be worth something and should get a good piece for him. But from who? You could probably cross off the small market teams. I would assume they are not going to trade pitching for a RF. So that leaves you the mid to large market teams. Most of which already have a middle of the road RF. Aoki is 11th in WAR for RF with 200+ AB. wOBA puts him at 12th. Even last year he was around 12/13th in WAR / wOBA. So what is his value? I highly doubt it is a AAA pitcher that is busting at the seems to just be added to a big league staff. For the 2013 season, there are 30 RF's with 160+ AB's. The bottom 11 in terms of WAR are: 20. Drew Stubbs (.7) - Indians - .233 / .286 / .376 21. Torii Hunter (.7)- Tigers - .292/.341/.407 22. Jason Bay (.7)- Mariners - .222 / .311 / .395 23. Nick Markakis (.7)- Orioles - .294 / 341 / .422 24. Nelson Cruz (.6)- Rangers - .258 / .324 / .500 25. Andre Either (.5)- Dodgers - .249 / .328 / .373 26. Josh Redick (.5)- A's. - .211 / .302 / .340 27. John Mayberry (.5)- Phillies - .261 / .315 / .451 28. Josh Hamilton (.3)- Angels - .213 / .271 / .384 29. Ichiro Suzuki (.2)- Yankee's - .265 / .308 / .338 30. Michael Morse (.1)- Mariners - .259 / .318 / .468 Aoki has a .9 WAR with a .297 / .369 / .392 Looking at that, who makes a good fit? Oakland? - I don't see them trading young pitching for Aoki. The Yankee's - Give up on Ichiro? Don't see that either. The Dodgers??

Torts - I agree. I like Aoki. He is the best leadoff hitter we have had in a long time. I don't want to see him moved. JohnBriggs12 - I agree. What does down the road even mean? Are we scratching the 2014 season when it is June 2013? I am sorry, but I cannot get on board with that. Realistically we are missing 1 top end pitcher. All other pieces to the puzzle are accounted for. So why sell everything. I am fine with trading Hart as he is gone after this season anyhow, but trading Lohse, Ramirez, Gallardo, etc will not just concede 2014 but probably 2015 too. As JB and Thurston said, you are not going to get a AAA Jeremy Hellickson in return for these guys. You are going to get a crapshoot High A / AA player. Then you will be stuck getting 3 yr $30 mil pitchers to fill out the rotation. I would rather continue the course and only trade players who are in a contract year when that year is in the can. (i.e. Hart) So the real statement of this thread is I don't want the Brewers to try and compete until at least 2016. Which by then we will need a whole host of new players. I guess I am not on board with a 3 year re-build. I would find that quite drastic, IMO.

Is that what they did with Gumby? He went like 3 years between homeruns. He hit a HR in 87 and then hit his next in 1990. So with him they must have said "ah screw it he can't beat us - it will only be a single." he batted around .275 / .330 / .336 over those years. Was he useless? I was young so I can't say for certain but I have never heard anyone say - Gumby sucked all he could do was hit singles. Now if Gennett is batting .200 and only hitting singles, then yes that will be pretty useless.

I had not seen that. Thanks for posting. Great piece. Hopefully Jean gets to be an all star

I know his lattest start was against the Marlins (and he pitched great) ... but if he can slot into that 5th starter spot and continue to pitch effectively. This might have been a rather good find by Doug's international staff.

I am curious as to how many times over recent history a player has put up 20 triples and 20 homeruns. I went to: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/hitting/hitrip4.shtml This showed me the yearly triples leader by league. I then looked up how many homeruns a person had if they had over 20 triples. Over the past 60ish years, here is all I could find who accomplished this. Name/Year/Triples/HR's Jimmy Rollins 2007 20 30 Curtis Granderson 2007 23 23 George Brett 1979 20 23

Right now Carlos Gomez is #1 in all of MLB in WAR, regardless of position, pitchers or position players. I just said top 5 because I can't say he is better than McCutch or Trout ... So I just said top 5. But you are right, he does lead the league in WAR

I am torn on the idea of trading him. I wouldn't move him for anything less than a pitcher with ace potential ... Just trading him for some guys isn't worth it. He is a top 5 CF in baseball. And if he does keep it up, then his value will continue to rise and we can trade him in year 4. Ha, ya. First time ever Boras had his client sign for under value.

Carlos Gomez continues to rake. His last night stat line 4 for 5, 3 runs, 3 RBI's and two of his hits were triples. He also scored on one of his triples as the throw to 3rd went into the stands. I always knew if given regular playing time he would do better than his career .255/.302/.403 line shows. But I didn't see this. He might hit 20 triples this year along with his 20 home runs - that would be nuts. Keep it going CarGo we are all cheering in excitement. He is a player that seems to truly love playing the game, and is a lot of fun to watch and root for. It may have taken a while for the 5th tool to come around, but it has arrived in a flurry.