HiAndTight

I can't speak to anyone elses reasons, but mine are simple. I think as Lawrie matures and continues to fill out, he's going to lack the ideal quickness for 2nd base, but will have plenty to play 3rd. On top of that, from what I've seen, he's got soft hands and a very strong arm. I understand 3B is one of the hardest positions to play, but the biggest reason guys are moved from 3B or SS is the arm strength needed, something I don't believe is an issue with Lawrie. Not to mention, it's easily debatable that 2nd base is more difficult to play than 3rd given the intricacies involved in turning two, and the additional ground they have to cover.

Every single team drafts guys and moves them. If you can get a premium bat will find a way on the field. I think the only player in there you can make a strong argument against us drafting where we drafted them is LaPorta, and he certainly yielded a nice return for us. The best athletes play premium positions at the lower levels obviously and very often move as they reach Pro-Ball. This isn't something unique to the Brewers. As for Lawrie, I think some of the most pessimistic outcomes for him have him as merely an "average" bat for any other position outside of 2B/C. We're talking about a 20 year old kid hitting ~.290/.350/.470 with an OPS of .816. I think we're looking at a guy who's going to be an impact bat anywhere he plays, and a middle of the order stick. Both he and Gamel aren't even in the big leagues yet, so talks of their moving are just that, and they're not talks behind had by organization at this point, rather by scouts who see a game or two at a time usually and then seem to often times simply reiterate whatever happens to be the "book" on a guy. I don't have any issues with the Brewers drafting of position players in the last decade. We've had atrocious luck with our pitching, or...drafted poorly, I don't care to split hairs there, we haven't made any great franchise changing trades, signed any franchise changing Free Agents(well, we have, but not for the better), and yet we've enjoyed a resurgence, however short lived it may have been, we've done that on the backs of our offense.

I agree completely that a catcher needs to be a leader and do the things you talk about. I can't possibly make an informed judgment about how much of that he shows and he doesn't however. What you're describing would definitely fall at the feet of the catcher, and I agree that it is his responsibility, but you're talking about one play of thousands in a season, and you're trying to quantify leadership from a fans perspective, a trait that takes place by in large out of our purview of fans. I said in another thread that catcher's the one position, the one in baseball where I can see a good case being made for bringing up a good prospect and NOT playing him everyday as there is so much more learning and development needed at catcher to understand the game, handle a pitching staff, and, like you said, being a leader on the field. I really like Kottaras offensively, and he's young enough for a catcher that I see him as a nice part of our future as a cheap backup for a while, but Lucroy has just been so much better than him. For a guy who struggles defensively according to reports, I think he's looked great. Still not there blocking the balls, but he looks good. Takes a lot of the sting out of Salome's unfortunate issues. Injuries aside, I think we've got our starter and our backup for the foreseeable future.

We heard how bad it was, however having watched him last year he looks much better than I thought he would based on the scouting reports. I don't know though, what does it take to believe in a prospect? Gamel's done just about everything needed in my mind at the Minor League level offensively. He was an average 3rd basemen last year offensively despite, again, getting really jerked around. McGehee's defense has been terrible this year...so while I'm a believer that he's not as bad as he's shown, I don't think you can make a very strong argument against Gamel and for McGehee by using defense. I don't know, I suppose I'm in the minority, but I was extremely impressed with Gamel last year, especially given how he was handled. I think he looked very, very impressive. Not sure what more you expected out of the kid in that situation than what he gave you, but I certainly don't see the justification for having no reason at all to believe in him.

No, technically that would be Madison Bumgarner, a Giants prospect. Hellickson is the Rays best prospect, rated number 18 overall, but you're pretty much splitting hairs between pitching prospects when discussing Perez, Bumgarner, and Hellickson. The Rays rotation is already loaded, one of those pitchers would have to go make room for Hellickson the way it is, right now he's blocked and stuck in AAA unless they would promote to him the bullpen, but I don't think that would happen till later in the season. If the Rays were going to move a pitcher out of the rotation I would guess Matt Garza maybe as he's not homegrown and they are going year to year with him in Arby. James Shields has the most service time, just over 3 years coming into the season, but he's got that wonderful contract. If the Rays wanted to trade him I'd take him in a heartbeat. Technically we it's difficult to quantify "best" prospect as I think many opinions have changed on Bumgarner from before this year as a result in his stretch of decreased velocity. As for Garza, I don't think the Rays are particularly interested in if he was homegrown or not. I sure wouldn't care if we drafted Gallardo or if we traded for Gallardo. It seems to be irrelevant. Shields though, I'd be on board with him for McGehee or Hart. Good K numbers, and a good ERA despite a high BABIP. Of course a much, MUCH better defensive team, but the move from the ALE to the NLC just might be good for him......

I don't think moving Weeks who's having a bad year defensively for another bad defensive 2nd basemen is a very good idea. Especially one who's having a career year and is going to see a significant pay increase next year. The last thing I want to see the Brewers do is trade for a player that plays a position that is among their strongest in the organization right now. Lawrie, Farris, Gennett, Dykstra, and Weeks at the major league level. I'm fine with Weeks at 2nd, or a below average defender at 2nd moving forward if we have to. Escobar I hope will end up an elite defender, I was far more impressed with Gamel at 3rd last year than I expected to be with the reports. The problem is right now we've got two corner IF'ers playing very poor defense, Escobar is playing poor defense and Weeks is struggling mightily defensively right now. He had at least become a average defender, now however it looks as though he's reverting back a bit. But for what Weeks offers us both in actual production and in potential production, I see no reason to move him.

The Brewers organization apparently believes this not to be an issue with Gindl and Kentrail Davis being all of 5'8". I'm sure they do see it as an issue with Gindl. And as for Davis, he's a unique build. Explosive and athletic. He doesn't grade out at 20 for his speed....

Kentrail Davis has looked alright given where he's playing. That move doesn't make sense production wise as he was struggling a bit, but he wasn't over matched. And while Arnett looks...terrible, Heckathorn looks much better than expected.

How many years ago was that? It would be a lot easier to give Melvin a break if he had obtained any well-regarded young arms during the past half decade and they just all failed to work out for one reason or another. That hasn't been the case. His solution has been instead to sign or trade for guys like Suppan, Vargas, Looper, Davis, etc -- in an ongoing attempt to put a band-aid on our pitching problems. It hasn't worked. My point is, it's not a plan of action to say we should try to go out and get good pitchers that most people don't think are really good pitchers and just hope they become good pitchers. That's essentially what's being said here. That Crew07 has always wanted Melvin to go out and trade for pitchers that were outside of the top 10, but who were actually much better. Yeah, it's obviously a good idea to try and find good values, I also think Melvin has been trying to. But you have to be willing to give something up first of all, and second, I don't see this dramatic difference that Crew07 see's when he mentions that a couple years ago "OBP and SLG was all the rage", and goes on to mention that young pitching wasn't as tough to trade for as it is now. The only differences are the big market teams have begun to hold onto their prospects much tighter and that started more than a couple years ago. That started with Theo building his player development empire nearly a decade ago, and Cashman and company following suit. I'm not saying don't blame Melvin, what I am saying is blaming Melvin for just not trading for undervalued prospects at this time when they were apparently readily available is a little illogical to me, and I think that is revisionist. I'm not saying you didn't want to trade for good young pitchers, I'm saying it's not as easy as it's being suggested, 2006 or 2010. And by the way, I don't think Doug Davis would fall into the list of errors by Doug Melvin. As for the subject of the post, of course there isn't evidence and as such, people will always point to the lack of concrete evidence to be absolve Mark A of any blame, but I do think based on the circumstantial evidence, it's fairly obvious he had a large hand in Suppan and Gagne. I also believe he's had a hand in holding onto Prince and not trading him based off many of the comments he's made regarding his desire to re-sign him. I guess the difference for me is this doesn't diminish what he's done for this organization. When he came here had you told me we'd be at 65 million dollars by now I'd have gladly taken it. He's risked losing money by going after CC, he's aggressively tried to bring a winner to Milwaukee and he came along at a perfect time to take this organization to the next level. Nobody's comparing him to Wendy Selig-Prieb because they believe he was behind the Suppan signing.

For the second part of this, we'll just agree to disagree. I don't think the elite young arms were that much easier to acquire 3-4 years ago than they are now. So I don't put any validity into that. As for getting good pitchers who aren't highly ranked, it's such a vague and general statement that again, it's easy to say. It doesn't always work. How about Zach Jackson? He sounds like that type of pitcher. Not an elite arm, but well respected. Didn't work out great there for instance. Finally, I sure as heck haven't seen people refusing to talk about players who aren't "proven", ie, prospects on here. I don't get where that comes from. In fact, I routinely see prospects who are not yet "proven" talked about or discussed in possible trades. You're basically saying, "if we could just get good pitching that nobody knows is really good yet, and if we could get them cheap, we could really turn around this thing". Well...of course. You also assume everyone uses BA Handbook to rank their prospects, so that you can go and ask the Rangers for their #11 and they'll be willing to deal him when they may have him at #2.

He also said they would likely lose money after the Sabathia trade, and they finished with about 10 million in revenues IIRC according to Forbes. He also said they were budgeted for somewhere in the 90's this year, and they're in the upper 80's right now, so I don't think we're in as much danger of losing money as some would have you believe. Of course this is mostly conjecture since the closest we come to seeing the Brewers books is the Forbes report done each year.

I don't think the value of talented young pitchers was lost on teams in the "mid" 2000's. It's easy to say that we should have just traded "someone" for "something better" and then signed someone to replace the someone we traded. And that we should look for players like Derek Holldand who don't rank among their teams top 10 prospects, but who turn out to be really good. It's even easier to say it AFTER they end up being pretty good.

I might be completely delusional, who's to say(those who are delusional never KNOW they're delusional), but I really, really like our young bats. Here's the thing, there's no question we don't have these MVP type bats we had when Braun, Prince, Weeks, Hardy and those were coming up. But what I DO believe we have is a trio of potential star players in Braun(*already is), Gamel who I'm higher on than almost anyone, and Lawrie who I think could be in the Braun stratosphere. Then I think we're going to surround them with a plethora of good, solid, not great, but just steady, reliable big leaguers. I really believe Taylor Green can be a very good #2 hitter profilling as a potential .285/.365 type hitter who hits 15-18 a year. Mark Loretta with more power. Lucroy as a catcher is a very similar type hitter. Rickie Weeks of course could be in that first group if he were to figure it out and re-sign(and we should have the resources to do so). Escobar won't be a great bat, but I think he could also become a good #2 type hitter at his best. .300/.335. He's another guy I really think is going to develop some pop as he fills out. Not Hardy pop, but 10-15 with 35-40 doubles and he could OPS around .750. Kentrail Davis and Lorenzo Cain are two 5 tool prsopects, AND Caleb Gindl. Bottom line, I think we're going to be able to put up a lineup 1-8 that's not going to have any of these black holes and will have a league average player at every spot with the potential for a couple guys like Gamel, Braun, Lawrie, Weeks and Cain potentially becoming more. Lets say 3 years down the road we've got a lineup of 2B-Weeks(RH) CF-Cain(RH LF-Braun(RH) 1B-Gamel(LH) 3B-Lawrie(RH) RF-/K Davis(LH) C-LuCroy(RH) SS-Escobar(RH) Bench Kottaras/Salome(I still can't believe he won't move back behind the plate) OF-Gindl 1B/2B/3B-T Green I think Lawrie profiles best at 3B personally as he has the athletic ability to offer GOOD range there, the strong arm to play there, and the stick to play wherever the hell he wants. Though it's certainly possible he moves to RF, in which case Taylor Green could move into the lineup at the #2 hole playing 3rd. I see where people are saying we're getting thin on bats, but I do like the bats we've got and I think we've got a plethora of very sure fire big league bats. And more over, this is a lineup that could really put up a very nice OBP as a group.

Yeah I'd fault Jack Z for the pick. A guy like Kyle Drabek or even Ian Kennedy would have been a much better pick in hind sight. That said, if Jeffress avoids the off the field issues, his upside as a top of the rotation starter was probably hard for him to pass on. The Brewers are due to hit on one of these type of pitchers and maybe, just maybe, Covey is that guy.I don't fault him for it at all. I don't think the final book has been written on Jeffress yet. It's certainly up to him, but I believe he'll end up as a starter. Scouts say a lot of things at the time a guy is drafted. Any pitcher who throws in the upper 90's without a great 3rd pitch they say "could end up as a closer", or "might profile best as a reliever". Scouting reports are often intentionally vague giving themselves the most cover. I believe that the Brewers will continue to have Jeffress work on his entire repetoire hoping he can put together a dominating season as a reliever in an attempt to ease him back in, and then next year move him back into the rotation. He never showed the CONSISTENT command and control to be a starter, but so what? Guys with his type of arm seldom do right out of the gate, and he's certainly provided some additional hurdles for himself to get over. At the end of the day however, I do not believe the Brewers have relegated him to relief duty from here on out. We'll see though..... By the way, to this day, I would still prefer Jeremy Jeffress to Ian Kennedy. Obviously Kyle Drabek would be nice, though last I saw he was struggling this year as well and didn't he have a big price tag and some maturity concerns? Obviously those seems to have gone the other way. Again, to re-use the cliche at the end of the day, Jeffress is healthy, he's got one of the minors best arms, and he's got three pitches. They're in there. They just need to be brought out. Now if they think that him potentially pitching everyday can keep him more ''engaged", fine, whatever. But we can always move him back into the starting rotation. Especially with his free and easy delivery.

... Obviously his emotional well being is a distant 2nd to his playing future, but this obviously hurts his playing future a TON. HiAndTight, did you mean his playing futuer is a distant 2nd to his emotional well being or did you reall mean you think his playing baseball future is way more important than his mental well being? If so that seems pretty harsh and a mixed up view of priorities. OBVIOUSLY I mis-wrote it.

Yep. They got the two highest-upside prep arms in the draft, Taillon and Allie.What do I know, but it seems to me as though if we could have grabbed Cole and Covey, throw in a Gibson signing and this draft would have done a little bit more for me. Of course you never know how these guys will develop, but I'm just not a big fan this draft. I loved last years draft, even with the struggles or Arnett and Davis, I'm still thrilled with it. Brooks Hall and Gennett are two of my favorites and have been. Maybe we have plans to be aggressive on the Latin American market, who knows. Hindsight is 20/20, but imagine if we could have signed Sheets rather than Wolf for instance, and spend the difference on Chapman, how much better would we look right now? Strasburg lite, and Yo heading our rotation? Or any number of bad signings could have allowed us to save the money for Chapman. For some reason I was actually convinced we were going to try and get in on him. Ah well, still like our farm system, but I'm liking it less and less with some of these moves, Jeffress and Salome in particular.

First of all, I wasn't really being serious with my Yo or Braun ideas....although....given that they were so over the top I'm not sure I'd say no to either trade. However, I don't see Axford as being the least bit untouchable. It's very nice he's come up and had a nice little run, but he's Turnbow waiting to happen. I have no confidence his newfound control can be sustained. Braddock I love, and I don't know what his value is, but again, relievers with the issues he has are NOT untouchable. They simply have a lot of value. And Casey McGehee.....Casey is the MOST touchable to me. Offer us a good-GOOD pitching prospect and I'd be glad to move him. In fact, Bill Hall, and Chris Capuano would have likely been on this list a few years ago. And hell, lets take this a step further, so would have Derrick Turnbow. The only players you label as "untouchable" and even that's never the case as there are always players you would trade, but the only close to that are the young superstars who are controlled for long periods of time. Such as Yo and Braun. Beyond that, give me an upper level flame throwing top prospect? I'll give up anyone on this team and any two players not named Prince.

Yeah, I'm more concerned about Kottaras and his absolutely atrocious ability to block balls whatsoever. He looks as bad doing that as any catcher we've had in some time here.

I'm alright with trading for Haren even while sorta "retooling" rather than rebuilding, but I just can't bring myself to part with either Lawrie or Gamel. I like both too much and I think moving forward we're going to need to replace Princes production by committee and those two are huge keys to that. Lawrie should be ready by late '11, OD '12, Gamel right now. So that doesn't leave a whole lot. Lorenzo Cain I suppose. Salome has almost no value now as he can no longer catch. He was a nice bat for a catcher, not so much for a RF'er. In fact, I'd be surprised if he ever sees 50 starts on an even 75 win team as a Of'er moving forward. So Haren's right on that outter limit of types of pitchers I'd go after in terms of age and contract length, if you have to trade Prince it doesn't make much sense to add Haren. The only way you add Haren is if you re-sign Prince. And that would require Prince to develop the requisite backbone to stand up to Boras and allow the Brewers to sign him BEFORE Free Agency. But with Boras thinking he can get Prince MORE than Howard, it's pretty much over.

And yet....he STILL posted a league average OPS and put up fantastic numbers when he was actually in the starting lineup at 3rd. Now I don't play a whole lot of weight on those numbers. I, as I said, place far more on what I saw which was incredibly impressive to me. However what the numbers pretty easily dismiss is this nonsense that he was somehow a failure last year. The only reason he should have been sent back to the minors is because the Brewers chose to screw around with one of the cornerstones of their franchise rather than play him. His PLAY didn't dictate he should be sent down, his lack of play dictated he should be sent down. Two more points. First, I couldn't care less how many times a guy strikes out in his first taste of the big leagues, especially when they came in the form that Gamel's came. In large part the result of a backward K for taking a close pitch. He'll learn. And that overwhelming LACK of holes in his swing(not that there aren't any) assuage my concerns over long term issues. And again, his OPS was far, far, far more significant to me than BA. I'll tell ya what, I'll take a Ryan Howard type player on my team anyday, and he could easily give you 200 K's and a .250 BA. Those two stats don't tell me nearly enough.

I know it's been said, but again, he really reminds me of Yo and Odorizzi. I hope we can be a tad more aggressive with Covey as it'd be nice to see him in HiA possibly by the 2nd half of next year, though that's probably overly optimistic. I'll readily admit when we grabbed Mat Gamel I was uninspired. Gave him little thought, so I don't pretend to be an expert on these guys, but this draft was pretty uninspiring to me. If we can get Gibson into the mix, I'll be a little happier with the draft.

Yeah, ever since Huntington's hire, I've felt this. I sure hope they don't get it figured out, though http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif They didn't start to really worry me before this draft. They've got a couple arms that could REALLY turn out to be something nasty in the future. They ended up with Allie, didn't they?

I, too, would like to see them sign Gibson, but if he's truly a potential top HS LHP with a commitment to Florida, it's going to cost a lot more than $400k. I'd think more in the $1 - $2 M range, but that's a guess, too. That's mid to upper 1st round money. I'd be fairly stunned if that's what it took to sign him. Seems to be pretty similar to Gennett from last year. It might be more than 400K, but I can't imagine it even approaching 2 million.

My concern isn't nearly so much about getting lefties out as it is getting the ball over the plate. With his stuff, I think if he can command it, or at least be "effectively wild", he'll get out RH'ers or LH'ers. I'm more worried he's going to revert to his astronomical BB numbers that may be his undoing.

\ I have no idea what you do or do not know. I can only go by what you type. And when you say that Rivas and Rogers are are "only hope", it sounds as though you don't know about any others. By the way, Braddock and Jeffress are two ENTIRELY different situations. I don't think you could have two moves for two more different reasons. Anyway, I guess I don't see how you can dismiss that other group of pitchers, and then talk about a guy coming off a 100 game suspension who hasn't had much success past HiA as the reason for your new angst. It's very contradictory.