jerichoholicninja

I think I've brought this up in the past too. Owings career OPS is .861. Prince's is .919.

Dream scenario. Pujols snubs the Cards and heads to the Cubs. Prince takes the most money and heads to the black hole that is Baltimore where his team never finishes higher than third in their division.

I feel that trading Gamel for a BP arm would be a waste unless management has lost all faith in him.

Can we add Jeremy Bonderman to that list? Last year was his first year back from injury and he put up a 1.44 WHIP (career is 1.40), struck out 5.9/9 (career 7.1) in 171 IP. BB/9, H/9, HR/9, all pretty much the same as his career numbers. From what I've read the Yankees are the only team to have really shown any interest. I think we all feel comfortable with the Narv dog but if Bonderman will come cheap why not?

Cruz and Balfour are really the only two guys that Melvin let go that turned out to be mistakes. I think that's a pretty good record.

MLBtraderumors per Tyler Kepner of New York Times Is it just me or this an un-freaking-believable amount of money for a non-closer, even by Yankee standards?

link From mlbtraderumors. Any chance the Brewers are the National League team? Last years numbers were not very good .220/.294/.298.

I would love to but I know I do not have the time. I still play Season Ticket all the time. I think I'm on season 13 or 14 of my fifth different team.

Crew you seem to suffer from the small market disease that most of us here did until recently. The disease that makes us believe that the job of a small market is to spend money on no one and develop (a.k.a hope) the farm system produces quality major league players and then overvalue them to the point that they are hall of famers before they even reach the bigs. Hence we fall in love with Inman and LaPorta and scream the sky is falling when they are traded, despite getting great talent in return. I think we as a fan base are afraid of success. We've been told for almost 20 years now that the Brewers are a terrible team and a terrible franchise and a laughing stock of baseball. We've gotten used to not ruffling the feathers of MLB and now that we have some are getting uncomfortable. This team has a front office and owner that are not willing to accept mediocrity any longer and as a fan base we need to enjoy it.

Just because I'm on a bit of a stats binge lately...for comparison. Sizemore 21yo 739 OPS 22yo 832 OPS 23yo 907 OPS 24yo 852 OPS 25yo 876 OPS 26yo 788 OPS 27yo 560 OPS career 840 OPS Braun 23yo 1004 OPS 24yo 888 OPS 25yo 937 OPS 26yo 866 OPS career 918 OPS At the same age Sizemore vs Braun 23 907 vs 1004 24 852 vs 888 25 876 vs 937 26 788 vs 866 I think they are vary comparable. Braun would get the edge in offense but with Grady's defense I think they would come out about even.

I think what Doug needs to do is say "Zack, Yuni? Give him a shot or give him the boot?" Zack has watched him play for almost two years and he seems to be brutally honest. Personally I think putting Gomez at short is a better idea than starting Betancourt.

I would hope both sides wait till next offseason to seriously discuss this. Zack could blow out his shoulder at any time and he would still be inexpensive under his current contract. I really don't think he could possibly improve his value any more that what it is so might as well wait till next year.

I thought he would be a good fit too after reading that same article. His defense won't be Carlos Gomez good but his offense would be a real upgrade and he would platoon well with Dickerson. Gomez .246 .293 .349 .642 vs LHP .234 .284 .357 .641 Milledge .269 .328 .394 .723 vs LHP .289 .363 .435 .798 Dickerson .267 .356 .403 .759 vs RHP .273 .363 .420 .783

A lot of people seem to be liking the Orioles next year. I don't see any way that they finish higher than 4th in that division. Quite Frankly I'll be shocked if they finish anywhere other than last.

I'm trying to put together a video of a recent trip I took. I've got some pictures and a few videos I want to make into a movie and burn to a DVD. This seems like a real simple task except iMovie will not import the videos. They are .MPG's and I tried converting them to .AVI's and .MOV's but neither format worked. I downloaded a few free video editors and neither of them would import them either. Does anyone know of a free video editor that will import these files or anything else I could try?

Stephen Drew? Wasn't Arizona trying to trade him most of last season?

Whatever Doug does he shouldn't throw gobs of cash at it. The bullpen is such a crapshoot he should just sign another 3 or 4 NRI guys and see what happens.

Huge agreement. If Doug is able to trade Casey, then yes Gamel should start. However, benching Casey for Mat would be a huge mistake in my opinion.

Unless Gamel greatly outperforms Casey in spring training, what message would it send to players throughout the organization. Casey (.288/.342/.470/.812) has better career numbers than Mat (.241/.335/.414/.749). Looking at facts (<--those numbers) Casey has shown himself to be the better player. Now if Gamel suddenly becomes the starter (barring a hot spring for Mat) I can see other players thinking that potential trumps results in this organization and it may not be the place they want to play anymore. Especially when you consider that Doug has gone all in for this year, starting the guy who has proven to be the inferior player (to McGehee) is not the message you want to send. Once again, though, I want Gamel to succeed. I want him to be great. But right now McGehee is the guy who deserves to be starting and has proven that.

Just read through the last page and this just ties in with my "so many chances" thread quite well. McGehee has now played quite well for two years and some still are waiting for him to crash and burn. Gamel on the other hand has done absolutely nothing on the MLB level (very, very small sample size) but he is still considered the better player because of "potential". Yes Gamel has had the better minor league career but they are called the "minor" leagues for a reason. Now I hope Gamel becomes a really good player but to negate anything Casey has done because Mat "might" be better is not using good sense from a fan or a managing perspective. If healthy, Casey will be at third opening day and Mat will most likely not be on the field in the bigs. Casey has earned his spot and Gamel hasn't.

If the Crew makes the playoffs the next two years and then has to slightly rebuild will it really matter? We would have been average to mediocre the next two years with what we had and then hoped our prospects turned out to be good players or we could trade the potential for two pitching starts and keep our offense intact. Personally, I'll take what Doug just did and deal with the rebuilding instead of trying to patch holes with expensive free agents like Davis and Wolf.

In baseball you usually have at least 2-3 years of minor league statistics to look at. In football all you have is what a guy did in college against uneven competition.Which even more so strengthens my question. In the NFL one good season determines what kind of player you are. In MLB players have 3-4 minor leagues seasons and still one good season or two in the majors leaves questions.

Not that they really care at all but has ESPN even mentioned this. I know they had NFL games to show but I don't think it was mentioned once on SportsCenter this morning.

Let's look at it the other way. In baseball one successful season is always questioned. Casey McGehee's break out year was followed by calls to trade him before he crashes. Yes, I know McGehee never had shown any signs of being great and he did dip (.859 OPS to .801) but it certainly wasn't the crash and burn many were expecting. Overall there sure are a lot of baseball players that have a great rookie or first few years and then completely drop off. To compare it to football, Arian Foster was a backup and practice squad player before this season and now leads the league in rushing. Adrian Peterson has a great first few games and has been a star since. I guess what I don't get is after one season of baseball you have much more information about a player than football. Spring Training, regular season and playoffs could add up to almost 200 games. With football you are looking at 24 tops. A lot of people pointed out quarterbacks who were given constant opportunities and I will give you that. I took a quick glance at the first round of the 2007 draft. There were some really good players in that first round (Calvin Johnson, Adrian Peterson, Patrick Willis, Darrelle Revis, Dwayne Bowe) but there were also some busts who are pretty much nobody's already after just three seasons (JaMarcus Russell, Ted Ginn, Jr., Justin Harrell, Brady Quinn, Greg Olsen, Anthony Gonzalez). To me it seems like in the NFL you get a year or twp tops (if you're not a QB) before your shot is over. In MLB guys make careers of off the word potential.

Reading the Dickerson vs. Gomez debate in the transaction forum finally pushed me to post this. In baseball, players are given many chances -- no matter how bad they do. Gomez, outside of defense, has shown little to anything that proves he will be a good or even adequate offensive player. However, despite four years and almost 1500 plate appearances of futility, he will probably be a teams' starting center fielder for the third year of his career. Let's compare that to Matt Cassell of the NFL. As football fans would remember, before Matt started for Tom Brady a few years ago he had not started a game since high school. Matt proved he was a capable starter (obviously playing for the Pats helped) and he was traded to the Chiefs to become the starter and was signed to an extension. It took one season for Matt to be deemed a capable player. Another example is Matt Schaub of Houston. He was a backup for years and had a few good games for Atlanta when Houston decided he was good enough to be a starter and traded for him. Since then he has proven to be a decent quarterback. Bringing it full circle, after Tom Brady's first year playing in place of Drew Bledsoe the Pats decided he was good enough for them to trade their Pro Bowl quarterback. My point here is that in baseball, one season means nothing. In football, one season can make a career. There are 162 MLB games and 16 NFL games. What is the difference? And I'm not only talking about on the MLB level either. Former top prospects will switch positions, go to or from the mound in the minors and never seem to go away. I've never figured out how it can be wise to keep giving the same failures more opportunities while other guys never get a chance. Even at the Major League level there are players that never go away despite showing no real value of anything. So let's discuss why Corey Patterson has always been able to get a pro baseball job.