Warning Track Power

TLB... Is there a way you can remove the box around the logo? Wehn I saved it, there was a black background. One of the things I truly love about my current avatar is that it is just the logo and no background regardless of whether my post is an odd number in the thread (white) or even number in the thread (gray). If not no worries, but thanks again.

Sigh...listening to the Twins game at work. Once Uecker retires, I wouldn't mind seeing us go hard after Provus as the main guy. I never realized how much I actually enjoyed listening to him call the game. Almost as much as Uecker. I wonder if he would come back. Not sure how you incentivize an announcer to come back.

Where is Uecker?

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/rick-ankiel-throw-earns-standing-ovation-nats-fans-134322346.html Like the article says..."one of the best parts of the video is that the ball crosses home plate — or at least came darn close to it — which is something Ankiel struggled to do from 6o feet, 6 inches when he was a highly touted pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals." Absolutely unreal arm. Schafer is very fast too.

I am not so sure I would want to do that. Depends on the money but we have Gamel through 2016 which is his age 31 season. I wouldn't want to pay much for his age 32-33 years. I think he is a good player who may age well but I wouldn't look at a long term contract for him yet. Honestly, if you are the Brewers and are reasonably confident Gamel will be the 1B for the next 5-6 seasons, I think you explore the possibility for the sake of cost certainty. Knowing what the costs are for half of your everyday players LF Braun, 2B Weeks, C Lucroy and 1B Gamel into at least 2015 may allow them to forecast their budget enough to make big signings like Greinke possible. The risk is if Gamel and or Lucroy regress or underachieve. I like this idea if it allows for the Brewers to extend elite talent like Greinke elsewhere.

To me this is the same situation as what occurred with Brett Favre and the Packers in terms of a terrible parting of ways. However, this does not cloud the fact that Molitor was the best Brewer to ever wear the uniform. I love Yount. Love him. But Molitor was the better player. Had Molitor stayed healthy, he would've been a legitimate threat to 4,000 hits. I understand the Brewers retired #4 but Molitor is not just an icon to the Brewers. Digging a little deeper into Molitor and you realize just how good he was. Molitor played in 2,683 games in 21 seasons. An average of 128 games per season. 128 out of 162, save the 1981 strike season. Over 20 seasons (excluding 1981), he missed on average 34 games per season or 680 games over his career or the equivalent of 4 seasons. Now extrapolate Molitor's 162 game average of 200 hits and give him 3 seasons of 200 hits instead of 4 seasons (simply because expecting any player to be Cal Ripken is not fair) and Molitor has 600 more hits for his career. Despite all his injuries, Molitor STILL finished with 3,319 hits. Add in these additional 600 hits and Molitor is knocking on 4,000 with 3,919. #3 all-time hits leader Hank Aaron had 3,771, 452 hits more than Molitor. Molitor was literally 2+ healthy seasons away from having the 3rd most hits in MLB history. MLB HISTORY! Yes, this is all what if but still should be considered in my opinion when judging Molitor and how good he actually was. As for the Hank Aaron statue and the idea of Eddie Mathews and/or Warren Spahn...I mean yeah I get it. They were HOF players in the City of Milwaukee. Unfortunately, they also played for an organization that resides in Atlanta now. Not their fault by any stretch of the imagination but if there is an additional statue to be erected the first on the list should be the other BREWER HOF before we start honoring Braves.

I think the signing will still prove to be fruitful for at least the first half of the contract but I would have been ok with a platoon of Hairston and Taylor Green. My only issue with the idea of not having signed Ramirez is the lack of protection in the lineup for Ryan Braun and lineup construction. Corey Hart is perfect in the #5 spot. I think Rickie could have been moved to #4, especially given his alarming number of strikeouts right now. Trying to build a lineup minus Ramirez is tricky but I think we could have survived against a RHP with Morgan, Gamel, Braun, Weeks, Hart, Gonzalez, Green, Lucroy order. Trickier is against a LHP where you would really have to juggle guys around with Weeks, Hairston, Braun, Hart, Gamel, Lucroy, Gonzalez, Gomez. Not saying this is impossible but given RRR's propensity to not juggle the lineup too much I think he preferred the idea of a non-platoon at 3B. Pure speculation.

There is absolutely zero chance the Brewers blow anything up in my opinion. There is a passionate fan base for the Brewers now. Miller Park constantly has 30,000 people in the stands. I don't think losing Prince via free agency, likely K-Rod, possibly Greinke, Marcum and Wolf, then dealing of Hart and Weeks will keep attendance around 30,000. Now we can argue the merits of how to build a franchise or whether or not losing Greinke will affect the Brewers ability to compete. However, Attanasio is not the losing type and I don't see him allowing for any type of fire sale in this manner. The Brewers will simply retool.

TLB if the Brewers introduced that logo and that color scheme I think they would have a nice blend of the past and the present. That looks awesome. Thanks for putting that together for me.

I have Braun and Hart on my team. Wanna pick up a backup for when they get a day off. So my question for you guys is who do you pick up...Gomez or Aoki? Aoki is probably Braun's backup, Morgan is probably Hart's meaning Gomez plays CF. I'm leaning toward Gomez because i think Hart will get more days off but wanted to get some other opinions. What's your thought?

I think it was just more of a curiosity thing. I like the royal and yellow that I have but I know a lot of people feel it is very 80s-ish. I like the idea of blending the new colors with the old colors. I think the perfect color combo for updating the Ball in Glove logo is the University of Michigan navy and yellow. ...And I agree TLB. The new colors on the Ball in Glove look very, very average.

Nor would I. I don't think we need to go into full rebuild mode. While I would prefer Greinke/Estrada over Marcum/Wolf I don't think that the Brewers would necessarily need to deal off Weeks and Hart. That team could still compete and if it caught a lot of the breaks could still be an 85-92 win team. I just believe that the dual ace potential of Gallardo and Greinke is worth the financial risks. Now if the team is making the financial decision of who they can afford to pay, Gallardo or Greinke, then I am 100% behind Gallardo.

If I wasn't so attached to "Warning Track Power" Joe Gamel might be my new user name. That avatar would be amazing

I said it once a few years ago in a post and had a bunch of people get mad and call me immature, probably even worse than when I called the Journal Sentinel the Urinal Sentinel. I'm always shocked when people don't know about something that's basically common knowledge around MKE, at least you can have a sense of humor about it. I can't begin to tell you how upset I was when they started charging after 20 free articles. Who are they ESPN?

Casey can you hook me up again...? As I am still computer illiterate when it comes to design, I would like to take my current avatar and change the royal blue to the navy blue of the current uniform. Is that something you have the ability to do? If not no worries. I love my current one that you hooked me up on. Thanks again for that.

I think Mat will make us very happy that we did not re-sign Prince. I'm not saying we could have matched the Tigers offer or that Mat will approach 35-45 HRs per season. What I mean by that is simply that our resources can be allocated other places where we are deficient in prospects such as a true ace coming through the system. This will at least give us the possiblity of re-signing Greinke. As for how Gamel performs, I love what I am seeing of his game. Fluid bat. Solid D. Fleet of foot. He looks like he could be a double machine while also hitting 25 HR per season. I projected him to be around .270, 17 HR, 80 RBI this season. After seeing him this first week, I think when he has a little more seasoning he will be around .300, 25 HR, 90 RBI guy. Additionally, given his keen eye at the plate, I think he will slide into the #2 spot in the lineup sooner or later. Additionally, there is a different vibe to this year's team. I can't place my finger on it yet but it is almost like they are more relaxed. I think Corey may have hit on something when he alluded to Prince almost being a drag on team morale. I think Mat may play a role in this as well as he seems to be a pretty laid back guy. I'm a big Gamel guy.

I wish the Brewers would either go with the new ones full time, go back to the ball and glove or find a happy medium and combine the best of the ball and glove and the current set. It seems to me that most fans prefer the ball and glove and the players and organization prefer the current set. I for one would prefer returning to the past with the ball and glove logo full time with a blend of the old and the new by using the yellow of the ball and glove logo with the navy blue of the current uniform. I also prefer the number and lettering on these far more than the current set. I would prefer they use the ball and glove as the main logo and not the script of the team. Sort of how the Yankees always use the interlocked NY and not anything else. I also would be ok though with a few minor tweaks to the current set to blend the old with the new. For example, I really hate the gold they use. I would like to see them modify the gold to a more yellow-ish. And my biggest pet peeve...please lose the Times New Roman letters and numerals. I actually have really gotten to like the current set save the gold and Times New Roman. I especially like our current cap logo. I just think the Brewers should really settle on one or the other and for me, judging by what I see more of, that logo should be the ball and glove with some minor modifications.

Hopefully Greinke provides a little bit of clairty what is going on when he speaks after the game today. Although with Greinke, it might just add to the confusion about where the situation stands.

This got me thinking. Why would they release a statement like this? Here is what we know... -Greinke hired an agent earlier than most anticipated -Melvin stated last week that he was going to talk to Close on Thursday, then again Monday -Tuesday says contract talks have been tabled and could be open again later None of these pieces fit in a nice neat box in my opinion so I am apt to believe SOMETHING is happening here. A nice neat box would consist of Greinke not hiring an agent. He stated in Spring Training as seeing no need for one yet all of a sudden hires one. There also would have been no leak of any discussions between Melvin and Greinke and then Melvin and Close. Why would Greinke hire Close if things weren't down the road to an extension? Similarly, why would Melvin discuss meeting with Close and then say talks have been tabled? The only rational thing in my mind is that Melvin and Greinke don't want to constantly be asked about the ongoing negotiation and Greinke wants to keep questions from the media to the field. Wishful thinking maybe, but I don't believe Attanasio and Melvin were oblivious to what Greinke would be looking for in an extension and this is a ploy to allow negotiations to continue without constant questions from the media.

I hate Reed Johnson...Scares the ba-jesus out of me.

Yes is the answer. Give me Braun, Yo, Greinke, Weeks, Lucroy, Gamel as the core and I will gladly fill in around them with whatever cheap talent the farm system can produce. Most of the posters on this forum seem to believe we have a cheap replacements at CF Scahfer, 3B Green, RF Gindl to piece around Braun, Rickie, Lucroy and Gamel. Additionally, with SP Peralta, Jungmann, Bradley, Thornburg, to add to Yo, Greinke and Narveson we have some cheap pieces to fill in our gaps. I truly believe this is the best way the Brewers can remain competitive in the future.

I know some of you will disagree but I'd like to add Hart's deal in the discussion as well. 3 years/$26.5 million. He has been pretty special at the plate in 2010, 2011 and so far in 2012 and I feel he is generally underappreciated for what he brings to the team.

I just don't see the point here when I think about it. If the Brewers can't re-sign Greinke, I am guessing Marcum will be resigned to a Suppan-esque type deal. 4 years $42 million-ish or something that averages $10-11ish million per year. Additionally, I see them exercising Wolf's option at $10 million for 2013. That is $20ish million locked into those two pitchers for 2013 or approximately what Greinke will likely get, give or take a few million. Given this scenario, I am guessing Yo #1, Marcum #2, Wolf #3, Narveson #5 and breaking Peralta in at #4. That's not a terrible rotation but that Marcum deal would have the chance to go south. I guess I would much rather have the two aces in Gallardo and Greinke, Narveson at #3, Peralta at #4 and Estrada at #5. Your choices essentially break down to Greinke/Estrada vs. Marcum/Wolf for approximately the same cost.

Bye Zack and bye competing. Like a few others have said, having Greinke is the key to competing within the next few years for the Brewers because their isn't another Yo or Sheets in the system right now. Looks like a bunch of #3s with the possibility of a #2 down the road in their careers. Greinke leaves after 2012 and we're a .500 team at best even with Wolf and Marcum back (which will happen in the event Greinke leaves). Not being negative, just being a realist.

I'm in California so I don't have much Brewer chatter other than you guys and this site is rather PG most of the time. Must have missed it...but I can't believe I hadn't thought of it myself.