HiAndTight

Why do you figure that? What would the players union care about this trade? I don't see why they would care, you're not asking a guy to take a pay cut(that they had a problem with, see the Boston Red Sox-Arod discussions). But in this case, Prince gets his money, the Brewers get their players. Nothing wrong with that. There was no problem with the Tigers paying most of Willis' deal, nor the Brewers paying Hall, the Tigers paying Robertson, and the list goes on and on.

I don't think Bush would have any chance to start for them down the stretch. They very well may have 10 starting pitching prospects in the system right now who are better than Bush. It's beginning to be almost a joke with that franchise. To be honest, I thought they were going to be a team with a very short window and once they stopped picking atop the draft, they'd fall off, but man alive they got an INCREDIBLE amount of talented young power arms. Matthew Moore, a guy who led MILB in K's last year and has a career K Per 9 of 12.8, throws 95-96 as a lefty and has three potential plus or plus-plus pitches is probably...what, their 8th or 9th best starting pitcher right now? That teams just going to keep churning out these aces at an heretofore unprecedented rate. AS for Gamel, I think he'd have a lot of interest to that team with the impending departure of Carlos Pena and a questionable situation at DH, but I wouldn't trade him for Shields straight up. Not by a long shot. I'm still, despite being in the minority, 100 pct convinced he's going to become a .300/.385/.500 with 25-35 HR potential left handed bat for us. I would love to see him manning 3rd and hitting 2nd for us for the foreseeable future. In fact, the prospect of a Weeks/Escobar/Gamel/Braun/Lawrie/Hart/Cain/Lucroy 1-8. We don't have the Prince bat in there, but I believe that 1-8, we should have a much more consistent lineup without any glaring holes in it.

I believe he meant former players on the team they'll be managing. Also, I agree. Why NOT go the Baltimore route and make Randolph/Svuem the interim manager and begin their search for the next manager right now. Of course you may miss out on a couple of managerial prospects you like who are coaching elsewhere. Still, at least get Macha out of there. And for the record, I don't particularly care about Mrs. Doubtfire one way or the other. Don't think he's been bad, rather, we simply need a change.

Oh, I absolutely agree. In fact, were I the GM, I'd probably go out and hire Paul Molitor simply because I believe he'd be a great manager. Why? I dunno, I loved the guy, my all-time favorite athlete, grew up watching him, even when he left because the Brewers couldn't pay the greatest player in their history a decent salary. So bias can come into play when you're talking about guys who've been organizational hero's. Though I DO believe Molitor would be an ideal hitting coach. So my belief that he could be a great manager is definitely tied up in personal bias. Money though would SEEM, again, from afar, to be a very good managerial candidate.

Perhaps not "laughably worthless", but I've seen it said on this board too many times to count that they ARE in fact the worst way of measuring a defenses ability. So I don't know how you want to equate that to "laughably worthless", but he's not exactly pulling this out of thin air. That said, i do think if you watch a player play long enough without having on team homer goggles, you can easily I have a bit of an issue with this, especially as it applies to most on this board. I think a lot of people use the defensive metrics, and if you believe in them, you're far more inclined to convince yourself that the player you're watching has the issues that the stats say than if it were the other way around. I don't believe if you watched Corey Hart play for an entire year, this year in particular, that you would come to the conclusion that he's an awful defender in RF. In fact, he's made a lot of exceptional plays in RF, and being that you seldom see an OF'ers 1st couple steps, by far the most important part of playing OF defense, all you see is the last 10-15 strides. So whereas you can see from time to time with Braun, he comes in on a ball and then has to retreat, or he's frozen and has to make an awkward catch, you do not see the same from Hart. And yet, again, I believe almost to a man, everyone on here would say Hart's a terrible defender in RF. So again, I believe this is a case of your eyes adhering to the stats rather than the other way around. Same thing with McGehee. You can see he doesn't have good range, but he's also made a number of highlight plays this year. His range, in particular the last month, has actually APPEARED to be actually pretty damn good. The main problem with fielding % is that it is almost completely dependent on one person to make a judgement and can actually hurt better defenders. Yes, but as was noted in here, they have someone watching the games and charting the results. They say in this certain situation, if a ball is hit 6 feet wide of 2nd base, 80 pct of Shortstops get to that ball. Yet it doesn't take into account(as far as I know) how hard a ground ball is hit, if it's smoked up the middle, if the SS is shaded a bit further to 3rd base, who is running, Johnny Estrada, or Carlos Gomez. So there's also a lot of subjectivity in that as well. I understand with OF'ers they are trying to become more exact in measuring how hard the balls are hit, but to the best of my knowledge they do not do the same for IF'ers as it's simply too difficult to measure how hard a ball is hit. Cherry picking a quote on correlations is not a good call. Why? He certainly cannot be expected to find every quote on the subject. It'd be a ridiculously long post. Not to mention, he's logically going to post the quotes that agree with his perception on it, and without any doubt, the other side is VERY well represented on here. No stats cannot be accurately made to say whatever you want. He's saying the OFTEN can, and he's absolutely, 100 pct correct. If you want to present evidence that a certain player is a good player, there are a plethora of stats, particularly in today's game, that can support such a theory, and a bevy of stats that can disprove the same. In the end, I think far-far too much emphasis is placed upon defensive metrics as a whole. They're useful, but as compared to OPS+, and..well, too many to list here, they're far too fallible, and simply are not as valuable as offensive rate numbers(Though I don't think anyone's suggested they're as reliable). But the bigger problem I have is that WAR is used by many as the best way to compare Player A to Player B. It's being used more and more these days in HOF voting and what not, and Defense is a large part of that equation. So, simply, I think they're far less reliable than many would have you believe.

I'm not as high on Svuem....though I don't think any of us REALLY have a great feel for these managers who haven't been Major League managers before, and I include Svuem in that as he was a manager for about 2 weeks two years ago for us. So with that said, I'd like to see one of two guys given the job. 1-Don Money He's a no-nonsense type guy, and while I generally hate that line, from hearing him talk and reading his quotes regarding his players in the paper, he sounds like a guy who doesn't want to hear excuses and is a pretty straight shooter. The article about Weeks a couple of weeks ago talked about how he reacted when people complained about the shadows in Miller Park. Money strikes me as the same type of guy, could possibly help instill a bit tougher mentality in the players. He's also a guy who was known for his exceptional defense, so we can only assume/hope that he places a premium on D. 2-Bobby Valentine He reminds me very much of a TLR type manager. Arrogant as can be, but also seems to be a very intelligent baseball man who is willing to do things that are a little bit unconventional. In other words, he's not afraid to follow the "Old school" ways of doing things in baseball. But again, we can only glean so much from managers from our vantage. We don't know how they are behind the scenes, and the majority of managers react the exact same ways in 90 pct of the decisions a manager has to make.

I believe the phrase is draw a bead or in this case had a bead on the ball. Is it? I always thought it was "had a beat on the ball".

With Sheets, team management did something to ice the relationship to the point where he didn't even consider returning to the Brewers. The guy started the all-star game in 2008, and the team doesn't even try to work on an extension. Meanwhile they were paying Soup 8 figures. I remember pithy little quotes here and there about Sheets durability and work ethic as well coming from the team. I can't even imagine being upset that the Brewers wanted to see Sheets make it through an entire season before coming to him with a contract extension, WHICH by the way, he declared he would not even consider(during the 2008 season). So A-We haven't got the first clue if they approached him with a contract extension, but even if they didn't actually approach him with an extension, it's rather absurd to proclaim they didn't even consider it. And B, again, he made a big deal of announcing during that '08 season that he was going to test the FA market. And finally, as far as his work ethic, do you consider that maybe they knew things we didn't? I certainly remember them being very vague in alluding to how the trainer called him to get on him to get his work in. It's certainly not a stretch to question if Sheets injuries aren't a result, or partially a result of him not working hard enough to keep his body in shape. As for Hardy, it was completely bush league for them to send him down to the minors last season. Melvin defenders can crow all day long that is was about his performance on the field, but simply put, it was dirty pool to delay his free agency. In theory, this was done to boost his trade value, but as we've seen, it most assuredly hurt it. How about the fact that they rushed Hardy up. Remember he separated his shoulder and was unable to play virtually the entire year prior to making his Brewers debut. He had, IIRC 15 games in AAA, so he will hit Free Agency when he should have hit it anyway. And again, how can you say it "most assuredly hurt it"? No, I think it was Hardy's awful season that hurt it. And by the way, he's proving that wasn't a fluke. Cutting Hall with 1.5 years left on his contract was stupid. Lets pay him to play somewhere else. The guy can play at least 5 or 6 positions, 3rd and short with above average defense. It just seems stupid to me that the Brewers are carrying a guy like Counsell on the roster to play once or twice a week, while they are paying Hall about 7 million to be the supersub for one of the largest markets in baseball (with 15 homers to boot). As it has been noted, they DID-NOT cut Hall, they traded him to Seattle. And it was HALL who asked for a trade and wanted out of Milwaukee. So I'm not sure how that's "kicking him to the curb", it's specifically what he asked for. Not to mention, his production was absolutely AWFUL. The three years after he signed his contract, he put up a line of; .229 BA .291 OBP .391 SLG for a OPS of .682 That's a OPS+ of 68. So I'm not sure how much more you think we owed him. As for his year this season, first of all, if you want to use the benefit of hindsight, how can you possibly argue that we should have extended Sheets? The fact of the matter is what he's doing this year is completely irrelevant, as is the size of the market he's currently playing in. I don't see what that has to do with anything. Jenkins was the only one where the circumstances of his parting made sense, that said, they could have at least given lip service that they would consider keeping him as he was a valued member of the team, and one of the few legit left handed sticks on the roster at this time. Instead, they made it well known that he was done as a Brewer before the season even ended. To what end? Why do you think lying to Geoff Jenkins would have been a good idea AT-ALL? The way the Jenkins situation ended was exactly how it should have. He was on a steep decline and we had no use for him anymore, so he left as a FA and went to Philly. This isn't summer camp, the Brewers aren't in business to make people feel better. He was no longer helping the team, so I don't know how much of a "valued member of the team" he could have been. I WOULD however ask you how they made it "well known" he was done as a Brewer before the season was over? I think it was obvious that his time was over before the year ended because it obviously SHOULD have been. But I don't see how they said anything to that effect publicly. As for mediocrity given a longer leash than these guys, where do I start? Suppan, Mench, Kendall, Riske, etc. all performed horribly here yet have or were given chance after chance to succeed. The only garbage that Melvin moved quickly to the curb was Estrada, and how could you not do that? I don't see what these guys have to do with Hall, Sheets, Hardy and Jenkins? Mench-He spent ONE season in Milwaukee(and 40 games after the trade). Not only was he not brought back after that one season, but he had a much better offensive year in Milwaukee than Jenkins, Hall OR Hardy had. Riske-Riske has been on the DL for the most part while he's been here, so we're paying him either way, and he has a long history of being a very good, effective big league pitcher. Why wouldn't we keep him around? Kendall-Spent 2 seasons in Milwaukee, far less time than Hall was given from when his struggles started, and the same for Jenkins. Suppan-Suppan was cut early this year, and was owed a lot of money the three prior years. When would you have had us cut Suppan? I don't understand how those guys were treated ANY differently than the homegrown guys you're talking about. Sheets and Jenkins were both simply NOT re-signed, and for good reason on both accounts. Hall was traded after putting up two miserable seasons(I referenced his numbers above), and Hardy was traded when we had a top 15 overall prospect in the game ready to take over for him. Why WOULDN'T you move Hardy at that time? Oh, and by the way, Geoff Jenkins signed a one day contract with the Brewers so he could retire as a Brewer, a sign that he most assuredly was NOT as upset about the way he left the team as you were.

Because he's one year away from becoming eligible for the full MLB pension. It'd be financially advisable to pay a team 450K to put him on the MLB roster next season so he can collect the 130K annual pension baseball players get when he's eligible for it.

That still seems to be a stretch from; Except that Sheets didn't want to come back to Milwaukee. I would have preferred it too, but there was zero chance of it happening. In fact, that article suggests that had the Brewers been willing to offer the money Sheets was looking for, he would have been back. I just think Sheets stance regarding Milwaukee has been exaggerated a bit. He always sounded as though he was open to coming back to Milwaukee provided the money was right. I think the problem with Sheets coming back was more about us being unwilling to commit multiple years to him given his history of injury while here.

At some point you have to force the team to give you PT. Gerut just hasn't really done anything outside of that '08 season in a little bit of playing time, to suggest he could be a big league starter, since '02. Plus, Gomez was 24 and a guy who has superstar tools. I don't know what else Melvin was offered, but I can't really see having an issue getting the 24 year old Gomez because of the 32 year old, oft-injured Gerut.

Agreed, I like these a lot. I also loved what Kentrail had to say about his weaknesses; A: "My defense, making better reads in the outfield. And probably my jumps on the base paths, although being injured probably has a little to do with that." Seems to be concerned with the right things. He's a very patient hitter, looks like he could be a legit .300/.385 type hitter with the power still a bit of a question mark, but he knows he's got to work on the defensive side of the game. I have hopes he could be a CF'er, but if not, a OF with him in LF, Cain in RF, and then a good CF'er could cover a lot of ground. Maybe Gomez if he can get his career turned around. Imagine that OF? Not a whole lotta balls that are going to find green.

Well, if that's the case, then my apologies.

I can't believe how many people have their minds made up on Mat Gamel last year despite the fact that as a whole, he ended up putting up solid, though unspectacular numbers last year, and his numbers shoot way up when you look at the games he started at 3rd. Now both are small samplings, but at worst he had a sorta "blah" debut in Milwaukee(excluding the '08 cup-o-coffee). And yet, so many are willing to let him go and are content to stick with Casey at 3rd. I'd be willing to bet that Gamel out produces McGehee over the next 4 years by a significant margin. Here's to hoping the Brewers can finally buy into the whole "buy low, sell high" concept. He's the best candidate within our organization to do so.

Saying Gomez "sucked" in the minors is greatly, greatly exaggerating the situation. As a 21 year old kid with superstar defense in CF, he put up a line up .275/.355/.392 with a .747 OPS between A+ and AAA. At 19 in AA he had a VERY good year putting up a.281/.350/.423 line with a .773 OPS At 18 in in Hi A he put up a line of .275/.331/.376 for a .707 OPS. So I think there was every reason to believe he'd be a very good big leaguer. Hell, I think he still could if he could spend a year in AAA(or if we could crush up some sedatives in the 25 Red Bulls he HAS to drink before every game. So for a kid who had those exceptional tools, and a kid who was a incredible defender out in CF, those are pretty good numbers he put up and he was always young for his league.

Agreed. I think the Rays have even more good pitching as they've got probably close to 8-9 guys who are either very early in their service time or still in the minors and playing very well. But yes, this is so much better than spending 10 million on a Wolf, or even 6.5 on a guy like Davis. Take back a bad contract, and who knows, a guy like Feldman could bounce back and have some modicum of success, and you get that prospect to go with him.

I understand it. I'm equally enamored with power armed pitchers who are still young. Kenny Williams has done a great job grabbing pitchers who have previously been top pitching prospects, who have good arms, and who haven't really had a lot of success yet(not sure if you'd count last year as "a lot" for Jackson). It seems to work once they get to Chicago. Hudson doesn't have nearly the arm that Jackson does either. I haven't seen how Jackson's doing for the White Sox, and frankly it doesn't care if he's doing great of not, but I get the motivation behind this trade and frankly agree with it.

I didn't say he was making an absurd point, I was saying I disagree...pretty strongly to be honest, but I see his point. Mine, as was touched on by Menace, was that Gamel's got much better range, and can get to a lot more balls than McGehee can. I also think people aren't giving Gamel the credit for improving at 3rd as much as he has. Many of the reports I've read this year, and even starting toward the end of last year have moved from the "Gamel has to move off 3rd" variety to the "Gamel's Defense has improved to the point where he can handle 3rd" type. I think he's improved a great deal over the last couple years. Mind you, I'm a guy who is of the belief that McGehee's D at 3rd isn't as bad as some of the defensive metrics would suggest, but from watching Gamel last year while he was up with us, as well as the ensuing positive reports on his D, I'm absolutely convinced he can handle 3rd base. Of course I've also been an advocate of moving Lawrie to 3rd for the last year and a half after watching him play for the Rattlers. He's a kid who's got very soft hands, but I question if he's going to have the quickness needed for 2nd base(Turning two, etc..), but I think he's ideally built and has the skills to be a very-very solid 3rd basemen. But that'd besides the point.

Alright, with Wolf and Yo, those are different numbers than I've seen, and with Braun I see I was off, and Hart I thought is 6.5 next year. Either way, obviously I'm not expecting them to take paycuts, just a couple oversights. We're talking about pennies relative to the actual roster. 2nd, yes, he should platoon with Dickerson. To be perfectly honest, I flat out forgot about him when I was making out my roster, and only when I got to the bench did I remember him. I would consider bringing in Hinske however, but Dickerson would be a MUCH better addition. In fact, I was perusing the FA list trying to find a good defensive Left handed bat who can play D in RF and get on base. And....he's already on our roster and cheap. Fielder, McGehee, Axford, Kentrail Davis, and $8 million for Garza and Moore is seriously over-paying. We'll have to agree to disagree here. Moore's a incredible young prospect, and to be honest, if one team were to decline this trade, I think it'd be the Rays. For a young, power lefty who's struck out 12.8 thus far in his minor league career, can hit 96 and sits in the 92-95 range, and has three legit pitches, you're going to have to pay through the nose. Now when you add in Garza, an established, sub 4.00 ERA in the AL East, despite his gaudy K numbers, he's obviously still valuable. To be honest, I think the Rays would would just as likely demand less players and Prince+Lawrie+money for this deal.

No question this would be a departure from the norm for the Rays, and unlike the Brewers when we traded for CC, I don't think the Rays would even try to sell the notion that they would re-sign Prince. But, a couple things make me think they MAY do this. 1-The Rays are just loaded with pitching prospects. They've got aces coming out of their....well..you get it. 2-They're loaded right now as well. They're going to have one helluva rotation with or without Garza next year, the best in the game in my opinion(potentially, never know if someone's gonna get banged up). 3-This is their last year with Crawford. Not that he's a deal breaker for them, but he's pretty big. A lineup with Carl Crawford, Longoria, Prince, Jennings, Zobrist, right there that's fearsome, especially with their D and their pitching. Of course if I were them, just like with CC, I'd rather get a inferior hitter, but still a good one, and get him for 3-4-5 years. But, who knows.

Simple. He never really had it after he came back from injury. I don't know why he always escaped the small sample size caveat, but he started 71 games that year. He had a nice start to his career and was a promising OF'er, but between performing poorly after his rookie year, missing two full seasons and parts of others, we're really just talking about half a season worth of starts in which he was solid. Seems like a likable guy though, hopefully he can catch on with a team like the Royals and get some regular AB's and prove some wrong....or right. Still, it's not like we gave up anything of substance for him. TGJ isn't making anyone regret that move too much.

So you think Gamel's going to throw the ball into the stands(or simply make an error throwing the ball) about as often as McGehee misses a GB or can't get to one that most 3rd basemen can? I'm not sure what that's based off of as Gamel looks to be much improved at 3rd, not to mention he has far better range.

I'm not signing Webb AND Penny, those were 2 of the 3 suggestions for the final spot along with Vazquez to go into the back of our rotation. 2nd, what do you mean "if we're not really going for it"? We are in this scenario, which is why we signed a closer. What happened to Axford was a I meant to include him in the TB trade as I believe he's got all the makings of another Turnbow. I accidentally omitted that. 3rd, what IS Hawkins making next year? I thought he was making 4 million? He signed a 2 year deal for 7.5 and is making 3.5 this year. Gallardo's due to make 3.5 million next year based on what I read, so he's not making an upgrade either. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5067405 As for Braun and Hart, I was using the numbers others had them at.

Actually if we're going to send them the 10 Million was more geared toward getting Moore back, a pitcher who may very well end up being better than Garza. I would think Prince+McGehee(or what we could get for McGehee) would be enough to get Garza.

There ya go, 3 games is equal to 3/4 of a season, that seems logical. No, of course not. But it's pretty much universally agreed that 3/4's of a season is NOT enough time to get any useful information from UZR.